Photos - 101, Use a Camera

It doesn't need to be fancy, but it does need to portray your subject in a way that can be seen by others. Light and optics are critical. Photo was actually the Greek word for light. Optics, Greek for appearance.
You need both, to effectively portray your subject.
Light can be achieved in many ways, sunlight or flash, or occasionally with the help of an exceptional camera, but you must have light to make a viewable photo.
For your "optics", look for a camera with an "optical zoom" lense, which can be acquired very economically these days. This alone is your primary source for clear, concise, photos.

What's next?
Learn how to use it.
This is not as simple as it once was, when we loaded film, ...rolled till it locked, ....pointed, ...and clicked. But then again, ....maybe it is simpler. Now, you just "point and shoot", but still should use some thought as to what you're pointing,... and shooting, at, and, how you want it to look. It can be crooked, and, upside down, but what will that portray? Maybe more about the shooter than the subject? Too often, that is sadly the case.
If you're going after the artistic approach, for submital to Nat'l Geo, by all means, put the happy little clouds and the happy little trees in front of the happy little mountains.
If, however, you are looking to submit this photo for someone to use in evaluating a particular item, get the clouds out the picture, go straight for the shot, the clear, the precise, the right between the eyes shot.

Which brings us to the viewfinder.
Most digital cameras have an LCD screen, or an option to use the EVF(electronic viewfinder). For distance I mostly prefer using the EVF, although for up close shots, the LCD screen works well for getting the subject of the shot rightly framed.

Framed! Whichever viewfinder you choose for any given shot, consider what the result will (hopefully) be, and click accordingly. If it's a square board, square up with it. If you'll use flash, shoot it from an angle, so as not to get the flash back in your eyes(or in the picture), and get your best shot. Shoot it straight on, and right side up.

If you have to take several shots(which most photographers readily do), do it! If you have to go back and take several more, to get a clear shot, do it! Don't waste thousands of peoples time trying to see what you posted in haste, because you were "too busy" to be bothered with offering your audience a shot worth looking at.



Just my

Originally Posted by Bear

I wasn't trying to be offensive there, Gravitar. This wasn't intended to be a photo or a camera contest. It was merely to provide a few thoughts for those who might wish to post better photos, and a few tips about how to do it

I know you weren't. I just misunderstood the post. Sorry about that.

Originally Posted by Bear

I hope nobody was taking videos ; )

Hahaha!

Thanks Larry. I know some could care less, but others do, and it was merely intended to give them a better chance to present their best shot to the different audiences they encounter. It does make a lot of difference whether some will even stay around long enough to view it or not. Especially on places like Ebay, or Craigslist. I've seen threads on CL help forums where the guy was asking why his ads kept getting flagged so quickly, and they were trying to explain to him that while the ad and it's behemoth pics was trying to load, the only thing showing for them to click on was the flag. They'll also use the "X" on Ebay just as quickly, for the very same reasons .

Originally Posted by Bear

Thanks a lot Gus! You use Linux don't you? I bet that's a whole nuther ball game. Does it have the same type GUI as Windows has in its programs ? I've never used a Linux based editor

Yes I've been using one flavor or another of Linux since the early 90's, Red Hat was top dog. I feel out of favor when Red Hat went with their IPO instead of being bull headed should have bought shares.

Too many distro's out there to confuse people, you have your Linus Trovolds Linux and you have BSD from the university in Berkly which is much closer to Unix than Linux. In the beginning apps for one OS would not run in another but over the years cross compatibility has become the norm.

In fact many apps written for Linux are platform independent and will run in Windows those that are platform dependent have been ported for windows.

BSD from Berkly was out long before Linux but the Unix people took them to court over code thus stopping the development of BSD while in litigation, once the court case was over and that Berkly had won they decided to distribute the OS under the BSD license.

While BSD was in court Linus steps up to the plate with Linux giving this OS momentum which to this day is still going strong. Because Linux is Open Source every Tom **** and Harry wants his/her claim to fame thus we have so may distro's with different names out there to choose from. Just remember that the Linux flavors all run the latest Linux kernel and that the face of the OS is the only thing different.

Yea I know we have our Linux basher's out there and rightly so, Windows XP was and is Microsoft's best ever operating system.

When Microsoft had to face the courts over the anti trust case part of their punishment from the Courts was that the company could not bring out a new OS for another five years. In order for MS to stay in the game had no choice other than to work out the bugs in XP, just think about it, XP will probably be the only OS in history to have worked up to service pack 3, which by this time was essentially Vista.

When ever there's a bug of vulnerability known coming from Redmond it take a lot of public and Government pressure to get them to work on it. With big corporations the problem is that no one person has the authority to make a decision it has to go to a board meeting then the board members assign a priority rating before getting to the nuts and bolts of the problem. In fact some bugs have never been fixed, MS just moves you onto the next version.

Linux has no share holders or board room to account to when there is a know vulnerability it gets fixed within days.

I was recently running XP for my large format printer because HP does not support Linux, yea a $5000.00 printer relies on either Windows or Mac OSX. Ok I went with XP ran fine for a week or so then i changed the video card then ended up spending the next half hour on the telephone with some guy in India to get an authorization number this has happened twice now the latest was to loose my user profile.

My desktop vanished totally, when i finally got it back every licensed application had lost its serial number, my new photography hobby should be enjoyable not spent in anguish. I do not wish to spend hours reloading software or reentering software serials.

I can tell you all that this is not going to happen ever again. Right after New Years my next computer is going to be a Mac running OSX Snow Leopard.

When I had my laptop running Vista then hooked up a external LCD monitor to watch a movie, the OS ( Vista ) would not permit viewing said my external monitor was an illegal recording device.

So I would say running any microsoft operating system is a real trip backwards, go with the future - Linux. If it wer'nt for my special needs I would not be buying a Mac.

Bear using a Linux based HTML editor is similar to using this forum editor when posting to a thread.