Digital Photography Courses

More and more experts are shopping for these impermeable digital cameras to capture a world in that new encounters are created day after day. In the past notso long ago these amazing things of recent creation was once so big and heavy that it required extraordinary care to move them from place to place. Currently thanks to knowledge our engineers can build new Rainproof Digital Camera with smaller components to accommodate the electronics. In time the only factor that may stick out and be an eyesore would be the standard water proof lens used to capture the underwater world.

Everybody should own a Rainproof Digital Camera not for showing off however solely to seizure what your eyes see. Every camper who either goes camping in the hills beside a running river or to the sea out on a ship definitely needs to possess a water-resistant digital camera. It’s not only bad not to have one but silly if you have left home without one.

The pioneer invariably encompasses a recording medium to catch those moments for eternity and what better approach than with a water-proof digital camera digital. These marvels don’t need to be pricey. As a matter of fact they are not much more completely different then those that are not impermeable digital cameras. The costs of watertight digital camera has come back down thanks to competition and customer purchase strength.

Several individuals are owning a unit or two now. A number of these beauties come with ten mega pixel capability and over. As I said they are around the same worth range as the non-rainproof digital camera. Most brands are of equal par since the technology advances at about the equivalent rate for all manufacturers. My desired camera brand is the Olympus since they do have sameness in their expertise. But, Canon, Panasonic and different brands additionally have nice impermeable digital cameras.

Always have one handy ready and charged with further batteries to capture all those valuable moments to disk, but make sure you create a backup version of your photos when you get back home so that in the event of a hard-disk crash you’ve got a safe copy of your cherished photos and films.

One ought to also bear in mind that just because something is rainproof digital cameras will not mean that you should treat them with less protection. Although water is sort of a soft to touch form the identical can not be said of mud or sand. Thus do make sure to take care of your watertight digital camera.

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If you aren’t an expert photographer and want to develop their skills then these five guidelines as well as a photography degree can help. But, even though these are great tips they can’t improve the quality if you’re not currently succeeding with the basics. Keep in mind to keep the photo rather balanced and centered. And if you’re taking a photo of a person or animal in action use a faster shutter speed. There are lots of things you can do to improve your photos but here are five principal tips that can change the overall quality.

1. Focusing
This may seem like common sense but blurred photographs keep appearing. Some people shoot great pictures without ever thinking about it while others have photo albums full of crappy photos. Many digital cameras come with auto focus yet people still don’t understand that they have to hold the button half way down before it goes into focus. Make sure you know how your camera works but if you are struggling to focus on small subjects then put your camera in spot focus mode which will let you have more control over what the camera is really focusing on.

2. Using a Tripod
Although tripods can be a pain to lug around they will improve the quality of your pictures. Especially if you’re trying to get a photograph from a distance away and you have to use zoom. The more you use the zoom button the more difficult it is to get a picture that isn’t fuzzy from the slightest movement. A cheap tripod can make a huge difference in the sharpness of the photo.

3. Aperture Priority Mode
If you want to focus on a single thing then put your camera into the aperture priority mode. Setting the aperture to the highest number is essential the closer you get to the subject. This mode allows the photographer to control the depth of the field and is used especially in landscape and portrait photography.

4. Use Soft Lighting
Product photography rarely gives good results if your camera has a built-in flash. So for soft lighting you should photograph outside or on an overcast day. Soft lighting results in the best product photography but if you can’t tell which type it is then do this test. Start out by holding out your left hand and keep it flat and then use your other hand to hold a finger sideways from a few inches away on top of it. The darker and harsher the shadow cast by your finger the greater the hard light conditions.

5. Image Editing Software
It doesn’t matter what type of software you use, but the quality of your photo will increase by using it. Editing software is splendid because it allows you to take a flawed photo and crop, resize, or sharpen the image in a minimum of sixty seconds.

Sharpness and lighting are the greatest distinction between individual and professional photographs. And these steps will help you improve your pictures. Tips one through three help with sharpness while four increases the lighting and five is the final solution. Photography can be fun and these tips can help you improve the sharpness and lighting of your photos.

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In this digital age, it seems as if a lot of things can be done and accomplished in just a snap. And if you’ll try to detail those wonderful advances, digital photography would certainly top the list. If you have a digital camera and are wondering what subjects are worthy and beautiful to shoot, you might want to consider tackling anything that concerns human interest. Now what contains human interest? From the name itself, it is anything and everything that grabs attention and sparks curiosity and awe. To further introduce you to the main topic, here are ways to capture human interest the perfect and seamless way.

Take a shot of people you meet along the way – There is nothing more interesting than faces of strangers that you’re able to rub shoulders with along the way. Apart from an outstanding keepsake to have, the idea of not forcing them to look at the camera and smile makes the mood more natural and the image more actual.

Human jobs – This is another subject that interests and moves people to catch a glimpse of. Taking photos of different people attending to different kinds of jobs make the entire look of the photo effortless, guileless and bona fide.

Silly pictures – Even these types of images deserve to be photographed. To make silly pictures more enjoyable to look at, all you need to do is capture it as it is and have fun while doing it. Photographing it with further effects and accessories is already overkill, so make it simple and you’ll surely come up with silly yet worthy images to boot.

The marketplace attack – If you want to capture colorful and interesting still life, the marketplace is the best place to tread on. Color is everywhere in this side of town and everything works perfectly,especially when wide-angle lens are used.

The fountain concept – Capturing images during the night is difficult, especially if you’re a novice photographer. But there is one thing that makes digital photography a good companion during the night – its the ability to take shots of theatrically lighted fountains. The dim light of the night hides unsightly backgrounds around the fountain making it a perfect subject for night shots.

Capturing the natural world – If you know how to shoot, any weather condition is not a hindrance to come up with a great picture. Although sometimes it’s merely the weather that really makes a photograph, still you can pull things off beautifully if you know how to take advantage of a beautiful sunny day or see attraction even during rainy days. Do you know that even a grimy, polluted road in the middle of nowhere can be a great storyline? Keep in mind, when you’re shooting anything in the natural world, each and every subject is precious.

Beautiful places, happy faces, moods, landscapes, marketplaces, relationships — all these are what makes up human interest. And if you’re able to capture any of those, you sure have a pleasing subject to fit in your digital image story.

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Digital photography concerns photographs in hundreds of thousands, or millions of tiny square picture elements, “pixel.” Computers and printers use these minute pixels to display photograph images. It’s compared to a painter who dabs small bits of paint on subject he expressed in canvas. 

Determining color and brightness is processed thru number-value counts of grid pixel from the digital photograph prints, after computer divides the screen and print page into grid pixels. Controlling grid of each pixel this way is bit mapping, and “bit-maps” are the produced digital images.

Purchasing a digital camera starts to digital photography.

Hundreds are available but the best digital cameras run down to a few top feature cost brands, guaranteed to produce best quality results with complete lighting kits. 

Combining passion in portrait photography skills, computer software applications, and digital technology completes the elements of digital photography. Putting into photos the perfect touch of light distribution and color is essential to a successful print copy. 

Taking pictures in most cases does not focus on the subject always. It’s up for the photographer to apply a situation best suited to time and place of photo sessions.
Manipulating control of lights is done either ways: under the direct heat of the sun, or in the interior of a closed dark room. A seasoned digital photographer can do both, finishing photos of standard quality.



Traditionally, people love to take a shot involving the full body into the background. Those that do this will realize that the image of those in the picture are too small so it is advisable to take an upper body shot or from the shoulders up. If this is too difficult for the user, another way to get the shot will be to put the people on the picture on the side rather than the center. The owner should just zoom in properly in order to get both properly. 

Lighting still plays a factor whether using the old or the digital camera. This is because an image with the sun behind the subject will turn out to be a silhouette while the same effect with the light in front will make the person squint unless there are sunglasses on. 



Capturing Light Effectively



1. Direct Sunlight – The mid-day sun creates shadows immediately underneath a certain subject. Set some modifications to control bright sunlight in facing the reality, you can’t move the sun from its axis. 

Dark shadows that bounce beneath developed the harsh “raccoon” image on the subjects’ face, an ill effect-results of the whole process. If it can’t be avoided, placing a reflectors underneath the subject’s chin, takes instant neutralizing effects of unpleasant shadow, could lighten intensity. 

Other reflectors could cause eyes to be watery. Recourse is to use a white poster board also providing enough light to the shadowed face. Avoiding direct sunlight and be devoid from eye squinting that destroys beautiful facial expressions, is a shift to some shaded place with likewise shaded background. Bright backgrounds could result on the iris’ automatically turning the subject to silhouette form in effort to compensate the bright effect of the sun.



2. Orange Color – The hues of dawn and near twilight, best “peak setting” in photography. For best results in lighting about digital photos, do your shooting just after sunrise or just before sunset (at daytime and dusk, Orange disappears), when the color of orange around makes everything look better.

Your computer represents the dark room in digital photography, mediating to take the tasks necessary on adjustments you wish to achieve of images input after photograph sessions. 

Necessitates cropping, working on brightness, contrast, and color adjustments. You can add special effects in frames and shadowing to create a unique dimensional appearance, taught in multi-task image editing software.
More information about perfect digital shot click here

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For Photographers who are just starting out with their very own photography venture, it is frequently tough to know precisely where in your Photographic Niche you sit. One thing is for sure, is that you will need to create a Price List that is reflective of you and your new Photographic Enterprise.

Within that, you will want to make up a photography price list for the services that you will offer. You will need to have a list that you can present to future clients.

However before you set up your photography price list, you will have to do a little investigation so that you do not overprice or under-price your services. There are a few easy ways that you can work on making this photography list. It is important though to get a belief about yourself and your work before you actually embark on this task.

The reason for this? Picture your self standing in front of a prospective client, hesitant and irresolute about what you should charge. I believe that you are you liable to under price your work, yes? Now picture yourself full of self-belief, brimming over with sureness about your photography, your services, your market place and your place in it. Chest out and shoulders back. Now I expect that the next words out of your mouth will be more representitve of the real value of your work! Don’t you think?

Through some basic exploration and honest self assessment, you can realize all of this. You can get the information you need about the best ways to continue, for free, from Photgraphy resources. They have other resources freely accessible too, that you may find useful in your new career direction.

Amongst other things, in seeing what other photographers do, you will learn that prices vary crazily within the same niche. You will find that a number of Photographers do not even issue a price list (probably on the basis that ‘if you have to ask, you can’t afford it!’) Others present a pricing ‘guide’. Others are a bit too complete with the information offered, such as having lots of special offers with ugly little exclusions and disclaimers attached!

Wherever you are right now in your new photography business development, whether you want to run it as a home based business, or to run it from a studio, you need market information and certainty. Pick up the free E-Book at Portrait and Wedding Photography resources site. You will be in advance of yourself before you know it!

As a final note with all of this. The only way forward is to take action. By taking action, we invariably make mistakes! So, the more mistakes we make, the further we can go. Or so the theory goes anyway. It is only through making mistakes that we can grow…so lets put our best foot forward.

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Ever been disappointed by a tiny printed image after editing a picture from your digital camera? Have you ever emailed a digital photo to your mother but the image file size was so big that her inbox rejected your attachment?

If you are just getting started with digital scrapbooking, then this short lesson is for you. It is a lot easier than you might guess.

Pixels and Resolution

The tiny dots that make up an image are called pixels. The word “pixel” is shorthand for picture element and generally is the smallest part of any type of digitally represented image. People are easily confused because the word pixel assumes subtle differences in meaning depending on the context in which it is used such as in printed images or the megapixels in a digital camera.

To simplify this discussion, just think of a pixel as a tiny point of light or color representing a very small component of a much larger image.

People also talk about resolution when referring to pixels. Resolution is the quantity of how many pixels fit into a certain defined space. You may have heard of “dots per inch” (DPI) or “pixels per inch” (PPI) and the meaning of these two terms adds to the confusion because once again it depends on the context in which the term is used.

Let’s simplify once again by saying that image resolution is an expression of how much detail an image holds.

Our televisions, computer displays, cell phones, and even digital photographs are full of pixels – thousands upon thousands of them all packed together so closely it tricks the human brain into thinking these tiny dots are a smooth image. These digital images appear just about anywhere we look in our technology filled world, from our PDAs to our car dashboard to the giant electronic billboards on display along the highway or in New York’s Times Square.

The more pixels inside an image, the smoother the photo looks. On the other hand, if the pixel count is too low, the image quality suffers. So you may be able to distinguish the individual dots in a microwave display but a printed digital photo looks as smooth as glass. When the pixel count is so low you can see the jagged edges, you’ve got a pixelated image.

Digital cameras have made sharing photos easier than ever. No longer do you have to get film developed and multiple copies printed. Today, many people share their photos through email and social network sites. However, before doing this the image taken from the digital camera is usually downsized.

Digital cameras are built to duplicate film camera quality and therefore capture images with a huge pixel resolution. Compare that to nearly all home computer screens that have a low pixel count, usually under 100 pixels in an inch. Displaying the former on the latter results in an image that appears much bigger on the computer screen. Digital cameras catch images at high resolution to permit photographic quality prints. But e-mailing this large image file will use megabytes of data and many e-mail users will disallow it.

Adjusting Resolution

The solution is to resample the image which is geek speak for altering the resolution. Decreasing the number of pixels will make the image appear normal on a computer screen. And this will let you e-mail Mom with the hottest family photos from your recent vacation. But after changing the resolution of the image, don’t think that you will still get a quality print any longer since you’ve taken out so many pixels.

So here is the fundamental point to remember. Digital images meant for printing need to be at a high resolution whereas images displayed on a computer screen need only a low resolution.

If you choose to do both of the above, make a copy of your original digital image for fiddling with. Besides preparing for both printing and viewing images correctly, this is also a highly recommended backup plan for all of your digital images.

Now that you know how pixel count affects digital images, you will enjoy complete success in printing and viewing any image you grab with your digital camera.

For a more thorough explanation of how to re-sample pictures and more topics on photo resolution, see Photoshop video tutorials at www.toNoodle.com.

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If you love taking pictures and have a decent digital camera, computer and have access to the internet, you can easily turn your hobby into a nice source of additional income by selling online photos. Selling photographs online is a growing industry and a valuable source of income for many photographers, both hobby and professional. For some, it can even become a full-time home business.

For those just becoming interested or starting out in this business, though, knowing where to begin can be a bit confusing. So here are a few suggestions to help you break into the business of selling your photographs online.

1) Find the Right Place to Sell Your Photos Online. There are many different ways to sell photographs online. Most newcomers, however, will find the most luck with selling stock photos through online stock photo agencies. The biggest stock photo agencies have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of customers purchasing stock photographs from them daily. These photographs are used for a wide range of website content and advertising purposes, and the pay you receive will be dependent on the agreement you have with the agency and the rights you are selling. Often, however, you will be selling the same photograph time and time, and earn a small amount (for example, $1) for each sale. This may not seem like much, but if you sell one photograph 100 times, it adds up. And if you have 100 photographs that sell 100 times… well, you do the math!

2) Find the Right Photographs to Sell. Often it is not the most artistic photographs that are the most successful. Frequently, well taken photographs of common objects well sell the best with stock photo agencies. Taking photographs of people is always a bit more complicated, since model releases are required (although you can choose to use yourself as your subject, to make things easier). For this reason, sticking to photographs without humans in it may be easiest while you are still learning the ropes.

3) Make Sure Your Pictures are Found in Online Searches. You need to learn how to conduct research on what kinds of photographs are most in demand. Much of this will focus on the keywords that people are typing into search engines like Google.

4) Submit Only Quality Photos For Sale. Blurred, fuzzy or otherwise poorly shot photographs will not only not sell well, they will can also damage your relationship with the stock photo agency that is selling your photographs. Take the time to take quality photographs and only submit the best for sale.

5) Improve Your Photographic Quality Over Time. As with any business, the more you learn and the better your technique, the more profitable you will be. Fortunately, if photography is also a hobby that you love, learning more about it will not be a chore but and enjoyable activity.

To learn more about techniques to successfully sell your photos, you should also visit http://sell-your-photos.info.

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If you are considering becoming an Event Photographer this guide may be useful. I spent a long time researching all the kit needed to be a successfu Event photographer, testing and costing carefully. It’s all current gear available now so it’s up to date unlike some of the guides I read.

I’ve been on training courses and I’ve done quite a few different Events now, so this is to help others avoid some of the common mistakes. This guide to Event photography is based on my personal experience and you are welcome to reproduce it as long as you credit event photographer http://www.fullframeevents.co.uk or add a link to this page.

It is divided into sections as follows:

1, Camera Equipment needed for Event Photographers;
2. Lighting equipment for Event Photography;
3. Printers for Instant Event Photos;
4. Mitsubishi Click system for Event Photography;
5. Green Screen Event Photography;
6. Starting an Event Photography Business.

1. Camera Equipment for Event Photographers.

You don’t NEED the latest high-end professional DSLR with pro glass lenses to shoot an event! It’s nice to have good kit but that should be a given for any Pro Photographer. In reality the customer at a football tournament, school prom or black tie event doesn’t care what kit you have as long as the results are good, and you don’t want to be carrying a heavy camera with fragile glass in an environment that is often boisterous and busy !

You don’t need to shoot huge resolution RAW files and won’t have time to post process or mess about with hundreds of settings.You are aiming to get a sharp, vibrant and well lit photograph of enough resolution to print at your final output size. Conecentrate on making the people look great!

I do recommend a wireless workflow which I cover later, and again you need the files to be small enough to send quickly. I use a Nikon D700 but that’s only because I have one for Property photography as I need the full frame and low light capablilities
(see www.fullfamefotos.com for examples).

I shoot jpg at just medium resolution for most events, and use a Sigma 24-70mm HSM lens so I can quickly zoom between individuals and groups. A Nikon D40 with a kit lens will do just as well. and I always carry one as a backup. It also takes my Nikon flashguns and is much lighter than a D700.

It is important to have a backup camera, I’ve even made do with a Nikon Coolpix P6000 when my D700 was being used pitch side at a Cricket Event. With proper lighting (see lighting section) I got almost identical results shooting people in front of a green screen. You must have at least one fully charged spare battery for each camera at an event, a couple of spare and preformatted memory cards, and spare batteries for your flashguns. I use the new Duracell rechargeables for the flashguns as they stay charged in the bag.

So don’t go mad on the camera kit, it will get bashed around at an event! As for settings, indoors I shoot at around f7.1 to f8 for groups so I get good depth of field, I use shutter speeds of around 125 to get sharp shots as I don’t like a tripod, too restrictive, and I use ISO 400 to get enough sensitivity. White balance is easy on a Nikon, see lighting but the flash setting will do. For individuals and couples I open up to around f5 and shoot full length, head and shoulders and a close-up. Outdoors events are more dependent on the available light and the lens.

One tip, using a wireless transmitter to send the images straight to your PC, Mac or Click system avoids the pitfall of people (the ladies mainly) wanting to see each shot on the back of the camera as you take it! That gets them through quicker and lets your team at the workstation show the images properly at full size. I do actually keep the images stored in the camera as a backup though in case the wireless system stops working.

Another tip, if you are shooting groups at a School Prom or Corporate event, take a stepladder! If you get above them and shoot down it changes the angles and stops the people at the front looking much larger than those at the back! This lets you squeeze bigger groups in as well, especially useful if you are shooting in front of a green screen at an event.

Also, if you ever get a large group of girls at a School Prom or Sweet Sixteen event, take LOTS of shots! It is very hard to get a single photo where every girl is happy with how she looks, guys really are not as fussy. The girls will buy the photo that they look best in.

We tend to charge the standard rate £10 per shoot including a 6×9 mounted photograph, but do offer incentives for groups such as discounting copies of the same photograph, or offering 3 for the price of 2 if they are different shots that need processing.

2. Lighting Equipment for Event Photography

I don’t use studio lighting for indoor events! Initially I used the standard large softbox above the camera and shot in front of a grey, back or white backdrop. But that’s boring and old hat nowadays, the lighting is very flat and there is always the risk of people tripping over cables and the hassle of finding a nearby power socket.

At School proms, Bar-Mitzvahs and especially Sweet Sixteen parties it gets very busy and although we carry full insurance I don’t want a heavy studio light falling on a guest. It’s the same at Corporate events and Black Tie dinners, there’s usually a huge rush after dinner for photos and even a taped down light can get pulled over by an inebriated partygoer!

So now I use a Nikon SB-900 on the camera with the wide-angle flap down and the soft diffuser fitted. This controls two other Nikon SB-600′s also with the wide-angle flaps down using Nikon’s excellent CLS lighting system. The two SB-600′s are mounted on sturdy but portable stands and shoot through white umbrellas for lovely soft lighting. You can do the same with Canon Speedlights, or a radio trigger and some Vivitar or similar flashguns.

At an Event you don’t want to be messing around changing lighting when you have queues, but this setup is flexible and light enough to be safe to move quickly if you need to. The Nikon system lets me control the brightness of each flash directly from the camera without having to touch the lights.

As we use Green Screen backdrops at most events to add effects and digital backgrounds, I have to ensure the backdrop is evenly lit to avoid problems when chromakeying out the green. By mounting the umbrellas high up at either side and shooting through them, the green (or blue) backdrop gets evenly lit where it matters. The guests get a nice flattering lighting setup which I can easily adjust for large groups or closeups. I

I shoot on full manual with the on camera flash at about 1/32 power to give a little fill light, (I also use the wideangle flap and the soft diffuser!) but mainly to trigger the two mounted lights. These are usually on about 1/8th power which is plenty! Recyling is very fast and I’ve never had to change batteries yet at an event, although I have charged spares on hand.

If I get a large group like a football or cricket team at a sporting event I can quickly move the two sidelights back and up the power.If it quietens down and we get a guest who wants some special shots, the lights can be moved so one acts as a keylight and one as a fill for classic Rembrandt lighting. We have professional makeover software running on the workstations so can enhance pictures quickly if someone wants portfolio shots.

The SB-900 on the camera can also be removed and used as a slave for hair lighting or other effects, triggered by the on canera flash. So we can do a three light setup easily! White balance is crucial, on Nikon cameras just stand where the subjects will be, set the white balance to “pre” then hold down the wb button for three seconds. When the display flashes, point the camera back between the lights and shoot. If it says “good” in the display, you are set to go. If not, try shooting again straight at one of the sb600, it will work!

The real beauty of this system is that it all fits in one calumet rolling case and is easily portable! It is very flexible for other types of photography. These flashguns are just as powerful as studio lights, and we even carry Fong diffusers and softboxes just in case we get a chance to do some glamour photography. (and yes, you can book us for private shoots!)

3. Printers for Instant Event Photos.

I used to to run a large independent company selling calibrated colour printers, scanners and displays into the corporate design market and previously worked with Canon, Xerox, Mitsubishi and Tektronix as a colour consultant. So choosing the best Event printers was an interesting exercise!

Inkjets and colour lasers were instantly dismissed as I needed portability, reliability and photographic quality. Plus I needed to know exactly what each print would cost. An inkjet will produce the quality with a bit of tweaking but will never match the quality, speed or durability of a dedicated dye-sublimation printer.

I don’t believe in compatible inks as I’ve seen first hand the amount of R&D that goes into a manufacturers own ink. So ink-jet prints are going to be too expensive for event printing. Lasers are fast but lacking in colour quality, and extremely tricky to transport. After testing all the current offerings I decided on the Mitsubishi 9550 DW linked to the Mitsubishi Click system as our basic workhorse for producing large 9 x 6 inch photographs.

As I use a full frame camera this is exactly the size the camera shoots at, so no cropping needed! The photographs are fast and very accurate thanks to the dedicated colour profiling we use supplied by Systems Insight and fine-tuned by me!

The dye-sub process basically involves heating the ink on a ribbon until it turns into a gas and sublimates into the special paper. This is a true continuous tone process so the colour gamut is much wider than other processes, giving smooth and accurate skin tones with no dot patterns.

You can actually roll a photograph up and stand it in a pint of coke, leave it for hours and then wipe dry without any signs of running or fading, as demonstrated on the training course by Stuart! These photographs really won’t fade and are fingerprint proof thanks to the special coating. They will last longer than any other photograph!

The fixed cost per photograph allows us to offer discounted pricing for pre-paid events like weddings or school proms as we know exactly what our costs will be per photo regardless of how much of each colour is used.

But we also offer a unique digital make-over service for events using a very special PC with professional retouching software so needed a printer we could connect directly. And we wanted to be able to offer instant 12″ x 10″ photos and other large sizes for Sporting Events like football and cricket events where team shots are popular.

So we decided on the larger format Mitsubishi as well as we have now found out it also works on the Click! Consumables for the Mitsubishi Event printers are readily available and therefore discounted prices help bring the costs down. Some of the more obscure brands like Shinko and Olmec are often tricky to source.

We are happy with the speed, quality and reliability of our printers, but more importantly, our customers love the results.

4. Mitsubishi Click System for Event Photographers.

My background is in colour technology as mentioned, but prior to that I was a DEC system manager, I have a HND in Computer Science and am a qualified programmer. Yes, I’m old enough to have done all that and spent 7 years in the Army controlling Artlillery fire by computers and by slide rules and log books when those systems were taken out.

So i’m probably more of a technical geek than most photographers. So why did I choose a dedicated turnkey solution for producing event photographs rather than use my expertise in PC and Mac solutions?

Laziness really, why re-invent the wheel! I quickly realised that to make any money at all in Event Photography you have to produce very good photographs to a very high standard very quickly! Workflow is very important. Initially I was either going to use a big 27″ Mac with a studio display for quality to handle all the incoming pictures, or go down the Windows 7 route with a couple of fast Sony Vaio AW notebooks with their gorgeous Adobe RGB 18″ monitors, with either system linked to a dye-sub or two.

But once I started looking at the workflow and software required I realised the Mitsubishi Click would cover all the bases. Yes, I could run either system quickly and use dedicated green screen software and professional retouching software to produce stunning results. But then who would take the photos? I needed a system that was streamlined and simple to use so I could train others to use it.

My first event was a corporate Xmas dinner and the only person available to do the green screen effects, printing, mounting and sales was my wife! The Click system is very straightforward, you set up a new event and pictures are sent wirelessly from the photographer. Selecting them by just touching the screem allows for full screen previews, once the customers have decided which photographs they want it is quite easy to drop in a green screen background and print, all by touch!

Camera cards and CD’s can be easily read or burnt, multiple printers are supported and the whole system runs smoothly and look very professional. We’ve even had customers connect their own cameras or mobile phones by bluetooth and print their own photos! My wife managed well on our first event, and we had over thirty satisfied customers that evening, in a very short period of about 2 hours from when the meal ended to going home.

Many purchased multiple photos, with different backdrops and effects, but she handled it all while I took the shots. Now we have more trained assistants as it did wear her out a bit But I still wanted the flexibility and power to use more specialised green screen software to drop in overlays and fine tune some of the more tricky effects.

So with a bit of help from the techies at System Insight I worked out how to access the system directly, and underneath the smooth software front end is a powerful windows PC. So now if we get a really special request (like “put me in the Oval Office with President Obama”) I can jump in and alt tab to Photokey or Portrait pro running in the background! And yes, you can print directy to the dedicated 9550DW by dropping jobs straight into the queue, email for details:)

You can also boost the processor speed, add more RAM, put in a HDMI graphics card to support external displays, even change out the motherboard if you are brave enough and don’t mind voiding your warranty!

I’d recommend this system to anyone starting out, and would also recommend you buy it from Stuart or Darren at Systems Insight as they know the system well!

5) Green Screen Event Photography

To be successful in Event Photography as in any business you need a key differentiator, something to make you unique. We all provide basically the same service, photographing people having a good time and offering prints or downloads. Some specialise in niche markets like weddings or school photographs, or certain types of events like Equestrian or Motorcycling. I chose Green Screen Event Photography for a variety of reasons.

I like the portability of our lighting system and didn’t want to spoil that by having to carry around various huge coloured backdrops for different occasions. I find it boring having dozens of people shot the same way, and I’m sure most people who go to events are getting fed up of the same bluey grey backdrop, or the “ultra modern” white or black high or low key shoot.

I want to have fun at an event and want the guests to experience something new. So we shoot everyone in front of a blue or more usually a green screen and then our special software can replace that colour with any of our 2500 digital backgrounds! This gives us the flexibility to add classy studio backdrops to Black Tie and Corporate Events, and lets us choose appropraite colours to enhance what the guests are wearing.

For School proms and Sweet Sixteens we can get the guests flying through space, on stage with their favourite rock bands or in the latest movies. Bar and Bat-Mitzvahs are great fun as we can transport the guests anywhere in the world, and for all events we offer free personalised overlays and designs so the event is memorable and unique.

The secret to Chromakey Event Photography is keeping the workflow fast! If you offer a guest 2500 choices, expect a huge queue or a lot of disapointed people. We tend to design 10 choices for each event and will print an example of each so they can decide before we shoot. That way if they are going to be posing alongside a Twilight Vampire or on the dance floor with John Travolta, they can strike an appropriate pose! It does slow things down having to add backdrops but we prefer the interaction and the guests enjoy the experience.

It’s not all about getting them shot and printed to us, some event companies work like a slaughterhouse concentrating on quantity rather than quality, that’s what the auto cameras at theme parks are for, we would rather spend a little time earning our money!

We prefer green screens to blue screens as less people wear the actual shade of green we use. Blue clothing, eyes and jewellery are more common and can cause probems unless you know how to mask out those areas. We use very special green screen material now, direct from the film studios. This is a special white backed material that absorbs light and glows evenly. Ordinary green muslin will reflect light and cause problems especially with very blonde hair. Contact me for details, it’s twice the price but worth it!

Don’t worry about evenly lighting the backdrop as many claim, that will just cause more spill and you need more lights power and cabling! You can’t get your guests the recommended 10-12 feet away at an event, which you need to if you light the backdrop! Imagine if you were shooting a group and they all had to be 12 feet in front of the cloth!, how big would it need to be! Using pro software lets you quickly adjust for spill and reflected green light.

The trick is to light the people not the backdrop, that should only appear in the gaps anyway and if you have a light enough green it will work. Less is more, light from the sides and above so any shadows are still green and they will disappear.We use overlays and backgrounds to get realistic Magazine covers and special effects .

People don’t notice that usually the models on magazines go in front of the title heading but behind the informative text! And watch out for copyrights, design your own magazine covers that are similar but not identical, you can buy these from the USA as overlays. .PNG files are best but won’t work on the Click, you need to do what we do and switch.

The President Obama shot is a good example, He is in the background, the guests are dropped in on top, then the desk is added as an overlay in front.

6. Starting an Event Photography Business.

Don’t believe some of the salesmen out there who claim it’s a licence to print money! That is their job and they do it well, but like any business you need to really work at it. Most pro photographers woudn’t dream of doing a photoshoot AND supplying a framed large photograph for a tenner! And don’t think just because you get a booking at a black tie event for example with 100 people that you are going to sell 100 photos !

30% of those people won’t even want a photo taken! That’s just the way it is. There won’t be many single people wanting a photo on their own, and there’s always a large group who want just one shot of all of them, but will buy additional copies at a discounted rate. That leaves the couples, so that brings you down to around five singles, a large group and twenty couples.

You will earn about £300 at an event of this size. Ok, that’s a small event but just about possible for two people to cover so that’s only one assistant to pay. Then there is the cost of the prints, mounts and bags, travelling costs, insurance costs not to mention an hour to setup and an hour to pack down plus sometimes many hours of waiting for a dinner speech to end.

Don’t forget the website you need, the adverts to get bookings, the expense of all the gear, marketing your website, the admin and post production work to get the images online. The usual business costs of stationery, phone bills, promotional gear and all the insurance.

Also remember there are a lot of excellent photographers out there, and anyone can buy a good camera, lens, and a fast printer and go out and do this. The big companies will already have the big events sewn up, So you need to use your contacts, ask around, advertise and promote. Offer to do some small events free for the practice, but still charge the going rate. Even if you only sell 10 shoots in a night, the experience is invaluable before you tackle a busy event.

Once you get a booking, splash out on some pop up banners showing what you do, flyers and business cards. When you get there and setup, take a few test shots of the bar staff, waitresses and event organisers to test everything. Frame these up and give them out as gifts, asking them to show the guests! Great advertising! Get the DJ to tell guests where you are and what you are doing. Work the tables if it’s quiet. Above all enjoy it and be polite and professional as you are representing us all!

That’s enough secrets revealed for now, if anyone wants to ask any questions feel free. This is just my opinions and experience so far, I’ll add more as I get time. If you find this at all useful, please tell others, I’m not charging to write all this, nor am I selling anything, but links to my site party photographer www.fullframeevents.co.uk will really be appreciated, or a mention in any blogs etc.

I only work locally 30 miles around my location in Hemel Hempstead and share events with other event photographers if I can’t get there, it’s top far away or I need more photographers, so the link won’t hurt your business! Cheers, Paul Harrison

Technorati Tags: Event Photography

With the age of digital cameras now lots of people are thinking of that box or drawer of old 35 mm film and old photos. Everyone has plans to organize them into albums or create scrapbooks but we never really get around to it do we? Scanning these photos and negatives into digital format will save them for the future. This may seem intimidating to technophobes but it’s really quite simple with the advent for negative photo scanners.

A photo negative scanner will easily scan all of your old photos and even restore the color and enhance them. You can edit out damage from time and even dust. You can even use your old photos as a layers to create new photos and projects from. Creating a digital photo album of all of your old photos from childhood is fun and something the whole family can be involved in.

Are you into scrap booking? Scanning your old 35mm negatives will give you loads of ideas for new templates and new albums. Most scanners come with trays to load 35mm negative strips and scan an entire strip in no time. It’s really amazing how fast you go through them, making it a snap to digitize all of your old negatives. Always prepare your negative films for scanning first by cleaning them with a soft cloth making sure to wipe away any smudges or fingerprints. This will make for a better scan of your pictures and a better overall outcome.

How about making a photo quilt of all of the grandchildren for Grandma? Scanning the photos and printing it out on transfer paper is a snap. All that’s left is transferring the images to the quilt and you have a wonderful gift. The same process can be used to make tote bags, T-shirts and pretty much anything. The possibilities are endless for those crafty people.

A good photo film negative scanner like the epson v500 photo scanner will come with software for enhancing and recreating photos as well. This gives you loads of control over your photos. You can use your scanner to create high quality prints as well saving lots of cash. Some scanners double as document scanners as well and even create .PDF files and send email making them even more versatile.

Taking the time to learn how to use your scanner correctly will help ensure better photos. Make sure you read all instructions that come with your scanner before use. Then just start trying it out, it’s fun to see what all you can do with your old photos and before long you’ll have them all scanned and saved for posterity.

Photo negative scanners are easy to use and fun. Creating lasting memories for you and your family for years to come.

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