Digital Photography Made Easy

" You would never gain very much by jet-flighting from one fleshpot to another wearing an expensive camera around your neck like a rosary and expecting the world to stand still while you search for some elusive truth. But try covering the same distance in an old car that is guaranteed to break down every few hundred miles, and see what you end up with!" - George Rodger, Photographer, 1970

Thanks for visiting my blog! All too often consumers buy cameras that are more than they can handle. The salesmen assure you that it is the camera that makes the photo great, and that is the greatest fallacy in this entire subject. First and foremost, it is the photographer that makes the photo, not the camera.

And that is why this blog exists.

Just as a painter can paint an amazing painting with the same paints a 4 year old can make smudges with. It's about knowing your tools, how to use them, and their strengths and weakness. One of my photography teachers once told me of a student of his who used a very primitive digital camera, very old, for all of his projects. The student got an A in the course. His pictures were solid technically, and composed appropriately. Not only that- they played up the weaknesses of old digital cameras- and he used the pixilated pictures to his advantage!

In my opinion, it's important to start small, and learn the basics of what pulls a picture together. It's important to have a camera that fosters that. Things such as exposure and composition can be learned without even having a Digital SLR Camera in the first place! If you're asking, what is a DSLR anyways? Then it would be smart for you to not start with one.

Would you teach a child how to run before they learn how to walk?

Unfortunately, if you were in a big box retailer, and wanted a quality camera and got stuck with something with more dials and knobs and buttons than you know what to do with, you have been expected to run before you were even crawling.

And I'll be honest with you, I have one of those kinds of cameras, but I don't always use it. Sometimes a small portable non DSLR camera is what the situation calls for, and believe me, the pictures are just as swell and of the same quality. They're also more flexible as well, in terms of when where and how they can be used.

As I said, the first thing to learn and understand is exposure. Of course, every camera is different and how they have you set the key components of exposure is different. They are as follows:

• Shutter Speed
• Aperture
• ISO

These basic and crucial elements will be explained in an upcoming entry.

Photo Academy App for iOS

You could have a fancy DSLR, an expensive lens, a sturdy tripod, an extra battery pack, heck even a gnarly camera bag but if you don't know how to take pictures, you don't know how to take pictures. Photo Academy is an app that teaches you how to take better snappies.

It's like a tutorial app, or a how-to-in-an-app, that covers the basics like how to hold your camera and what tweaking ISO and exposure do to more complex instructions like professional photographer tips and editing ideas. There's literally hundreds of different tips for various situations along with ideal camera settings to maximize your pictures—basically, if you're an amateur photographer, you're bound to learn something.

You can even add your photos to "track your progress" though it's sorta unnecessary given that the app's goal is for you to take pictures with your DSLR and not your iPhone cam. $1

via Engadget

I'm excited to get this blog started, as well as explaining why I have created it, within the coming week. Until then, if you have an iOS Device (a iPad, an iPod Touch, iPhone) than the app outlined in this post by tech blog Engadget may be a helpful learning and reference tool to have! If I'm ever to drop a term you may not know, it could clear things up or shed more light on that area of the subject. To download it, check out the Engadget link for more details.

Looking forward to a great Fall Semester!