PHOTOGRAPHY SLIDE

Basically photography is a combination of visual imagination and design, craft skills, and practical organizing ability.

One of the first attractions of photography for many people is the lure of the equipment itself. All that ingenious modern technology designed to fit hand and eye – there is great appeal in pressing buttons, clicking precision components into place, and collecting and wearing cameras.

Photography is to do with light forming an image, normally by means of a lens. The image is then permanently recorded either by:

(a) chemical means, using film, liquid chemicals and darkroomprocesses or

(b) digital means, using an electronic sensor, data storage andprocessing, and print-out via a computer.

1. Basic Photography

1.1 Chemical Route- Processing- Printing Negatives- Colour and black and white

1.2 Digital Route- Storing, downloading and processing- Printing out

Whether you work by chemical or digital means, photography involves you in two complementary skills :

First, there are set routines where consistency is all important, for example film processing or paper processing, especially in colour, and the disciplines of inputting and saving digital image files.

Second, there are those stages at which creative decisions must be made, and where a great deal of choice and variation is possible. These include organization of your subject, lighting and camera handling, as well as editing and printing the work. As a photographer you will need to handle and make these decisions yourself, or at least closely direct them.

2. Lighting

Light is fundamental to photography; it is even in its very name (‘photo’). Light is something your eyes are sensitive to, just as your ears relate to sound and your tongue to taste. It is the raw material of sight, communicating information about objects which are out of range of other senses.

2.1 Wavelengths and colours

When a relatively even mixture of all the visible wavelengths is produced by a light source the illumination looks ‘white’ and colourless. But if only some wavelengths are present the light appears coloured.

2.2 Shadow

Light travels in straight lines and in all directions from a light source. This means that if you have direct light from a comparatively ‘compact’ source such as the sun in a clear sky, a candle, bare light bulb or a small flash unit, this light is harsh. Objects throw contrast, sharp-edged shadows.

Light travels in straight lines, as if in wave motion. Wavelengths are measured in nanometers. Light forms a tiny part of a much wider range of electromagnetic radiation. It transmits energy in the form of ‘photons’.

3. Post Photography

Images captured by the camera are an interpretation of the scene that you have photographed. The mood, contrast and color may differ from how you remember the scene when it was first captured. Image-editing software can be used to either optimize and enhance the image so that it communicates a faithful rendition of how you saw the original subject or it can be used to manipulate the subject matter so that it communicates an entirely different mood.

3.1 The Picasa Software

The Picasa software provides a simple way to view, edit, and organize the photos on your computer. As you get started, there are two things you should always remember:

a)Picasa does not store the photos on your computer.b)Your original photos are always preserved.

Once you've downloaded and installed Picasa, you have total control over the photos that Picasa displays. Picasa shows you the photo and video file types that you tell it to find, in the folders that you tell it to search

3.1.1 Add Photo

Control the folders that display

Click Tools > Folder Manager to control which folders are displayed:

3.1.2 Organize Photo

The folder list on the left is the hub for Picasa organization. By scrolling through this list, you can access all photos displayed by Picasa. To understand Picasa organization, you need to understand the following three collections:

FoldersFolders in Picasa represent the folders on your computer. You control the folders that are scanned and displayed by Picasa.

AlbumsUnlike folders, albums exist only in Picasa. Albums allow you to create virtual groups of photos taken from multiple folders on your computer.

PeopleIn this collection, you can organize your photos by what frequently matters most -- the people in them. Picasa uses facial recognition technology to find and group similar faces together across your entire collection of photos.

3.1.3 Edit photos

Picasa provides a range of one-click fixes to help you improve almost any photo, adjust its color and lighting, and add effects like black and white or sepia toning. Double-click a photo and use the three editing tabs on the left.

Basic Fixes Tuning Effects

Make simple edits -- such as cropping, straightening, removing redeye, retouching blemishes, or adding text -- to your photos.

Use the sliders to adjust the color and lighting aspects of your photo to produce a more visually enhanced image.

Choose from 12 effects to make your photos more interesting: Sharpen, convert to sepia or black and white, warm the photo, apply tint, saturate the colors, and more.

3.1.4 Share your photos

Your photos take on more meaning when you share them with friends and family. Here are two ways to quick share your photos:

Upload photos to the webUse the Upload button in Picasa to upload all selected photos to Picasa Web Albums.

Email photosClick the Email button in Picasa to quickly send all selected photos to friends and family, using the email provider of your choice.

3.1.5 Discover more features

Resize photos: One of the most popular -- and most hidden -- features of Picasa is the ability to resize photos. Use the Export button to quickly resize your photos.

Use Movie Maker: Combine your photos, videos, and music into a movie and upload it directly to YouTube. You can also trim existing video files.

Map photos: Use the Maps tab in Picasa to embed latitude and longitude information into the EXIF data of your photo file. This geographic data accompanies your photo when you upload it to Picasa Web Albums.

Upload to Blogger: Use the BlogThis! button to post photos directly from Picasa to Blogger.

Print photos: Use the Shop button to order prints from our online print partners or use the Print button to print your photos at home.

4. Organizing the picture

This part is concerned with composing the image of your subject as a picture. It deals with recognizing and exploiting visual features of scenes and framing them up in the strongest possible way, more than technological aspects of photography.

4.1 Noticing subject features

4.1.1 Shape

A bold shape or outline is one of the strongest ways to identify an object or person, dramatically so in the case of a silhouette or shadow. A shape can be just a single item, or formed collectively by a mixed group of objects.

4.1.2 Texture

Texture is concerned with surface – for example, the tight smooth skin of an apple, or the pitted surface of corroded metal. It can vary in scale from the rugged contours of a distant mountain range to a brick in close-up.

4.1.3 Pattern

The human eye seems to enjoy pattern, whether repetitive and formal, or irregular and off-beat. So by finding and exploiting a visual pattern in a scene you can create harmony, even transform something consisting of many disparate parts into a satisfying whole.

4.1.4 Form

Form is to do with an object’s volume and solidity. It is best shown in two-dimensional photography through tone graduation (shading), although shape contributes greatly too.

4.1.5 Colour and tone values

The colours and tone values in a scene contribute greatly to emphasis and to mood. The relationship of object colours themselves, plus any predominant colour in the lighting (due to surroundings or the light source itself) can have a harmonious or discordant effect. Colours close to each other in the spectrum tend to blend, while widely separated colours contrast.

4.2 Structuring pictures through the camera

4.2.1 Proportions

Most cameras take rectangular pictures, so your first decision must be whether to shoot a vertical or a horizontal composition. Sometimes this choice is dictated by the proportions of the subject itself, or by how the result will be used

4.2.2 Balance

Your combination of subject and the camera’s viewpoint and framing often divide up the picture area into distinctly different areas of tone, colour and detail. Frequently these are the shapes and proportions of objects themselves, but sometimes they are formed by the way edges of the frame ‘cut into’ things: a cropped building or person.The main division in a scene might be the horizon line, or someforeground vertical wall or post which crosses the picture, or even the junction of wall and floor in an interior.

4.2.3 Line

You will improve the composition of pictures if you can use lines within your subject matter to give an appropriate structure or shape. They also help the mood you want to create. Lines need not be complete outlines but a whole chain of spaced or overlapping shapes – clouds, hedges and a blurred movement.

4.2.4 Emphasis

Try to ensure that everything included in the frame in some waysupplements and supports your main theme. The trouble is that photography tends to record too much, so you must be able to stress your chosen main element relative to the rest of the picture. There are several well-proven ways of doing this. One is to choose a viewpoint which makes lines within the picture ‘lead in’ to the main subject.

4.2.5 Framing movement

You can alter your impression of active subjects by picture composition and choice of moment. Think of the frame as a stage. If the action is across the frame and you show the main subject at one side facing inwards the activity seems just to have started.

5. Summary

‘Photography’, or ‘light drawing’, is essentially a combination of technique and visual observation.

Location photography covers a wide range of disciplines. From the captured image of a fleeting moment using existing light to the highly structured and preconceived advertising image using introduced lighting.

With the knowledge it might open with a broad look at photography – putting it in context as a versatile and important contemporary medium. Then it goes on to show how photography’s components, procedures and chemical processes fit together.