Reflections on a Reflection, for Skywatch

I love when the farmer floods the pecan orchards surrounding our house. They look like this. 

Or, they can be rotated to look like this. You can hardly tell that this is upside-down, or can you?

Using the same upside-down view and some of the special effects at Picnik, they can also look like this...

HSL (hue, saturation, and lightness) variations

Another HSL

And another

 ... or this...

Heat Map

 ... or even this...

HDR-ish (HDR stands for high dynamic range imaging)

For skies of all hues and degrees of saturation, be sure to visit Skywatch Friday.

Hummingbirds

It turns out that it isn't so easy to photograph hummingbirds. Oh, they are very cooperative, casually feeding just a couple of feet from where I was balanced on a step stool. The trick is to get them into focus. I tried focusing the camera on the spot where I figured they would show up, but you know hummingbirds--all that darting and moving around at an incomprehensible speed.

I took almost 60 photos the other morning, standing on tiptoe and trying not to move. After downloading the pictures, I tossed out at least half right away because the birds were a blur, or were behind the feeder, or had left the frame by the time I pressed the shutter.

I plan to practice a lot more.

The background music for these photos features an African drum called a ngungu that mimics the sound of a wild pig. It also reminds me of the hum of hummingbird wings.

Just a few more days to vote (every day, as many photos as you want to vote for) in the New Mexico Day of Enchantment photo contest. Thank you for your support--the vote count is going up and up!

Digital Challenge: The Results

Last week I told you that Linda from the 7MSN Ranch blog had offered to edit one photo each for a group of her readers. In that post, I offered Linda a choice of either of these:

Linda chose, instead, the photo that I have been using as the header. Those poles and wires really bothered her. I deal with them every day, because they are situated squarely between me and the view I love to photograph. When the shot comes so early in the morning that I haven't even gotten dressed, I just shoot away from the patio in my nightie--otherwise, if I'm dressed I just run past the pole before taking the shot. But I'm not so great at photo editing and end up with distracting details that clutter up the picture, including the reflection of the stop sign in the water.

First, the photo as it came out of the camera...

... and after I had added a bit of the color that I actually saw when taking the photo--but still cluttered with the wires and poles and reflected stop sign:

Now, ta-dah! Just take a look at what Linda has achieved with her magic:

She is an inspiration--I want to learn more about photo editing so I can work some magic, too! I'll let you know as soon as Linda starts posting the other photos she has been working on. In the meantime, you will learn lots about photography, editing, ranch life, and will get to meet her wonderful companions if you visit the 7 MSN Ranch every day.

Later note: The first of Linda's Touch-it-up-Thursday (later changed to Touch-it-up-Tuesday) posts can be seen here.

***

Don't forget to keep voting every day in the New Mexico Day of Enchantment Photo Contest, which is continuing to the end of June.

Digital Challenge

Linda, over at the 7MSN Ranch blog, has offered to fix some photos for her loyal readers. Since I have little understanding of the possibilities of what can be done with Photoshop, I am posting two photos here so she can choose whichever seems to be appropriate.

These pictures were taken on one of those winter mornings when I realized that the sky colors, just glimpsed from my pillow when I first opened my eyes, were going to be fleeting. I rushed out in bare feet and nightgown (no photos of that!) to brave the frightened glances of the morning commuters. No glasses--no fiddling with the camera.

I don't ever think that any of my photos are in focus. We'll just let Linda choose one of these and see what she can do with it, if anything...

Don't forget to keep voting every day in the New Mexico Day of Enchantment Photo Contest, which is continuing to the end of June.

Digital Photography on the Zees: An Index

Digital Photography, My New Class

Digital Photography: Food Photos

Which is the Best Digital Camera for You?

Shopping List for Digital Photography Class

Everybody Knows You Have to Read the Manual, LOL

On the Subject of Light

Shooting Portraits

Macro Photography

Running Past the Pole: Landscape Photography

The Mysteries of ISO and How I Came to Have A

Glimmer of Understanding

Aperture and Shutter Speed: (Mostly) Still Quite a

Mystery to Me

White Balance

Editing Your Digital Photos

Archiving, Printing, and Displaying Your Digital Photos

Digital Photography: Need Inspiration?

Digital Photography: Resources

Digital Photography: Resources

My Digital Photography class, which cost $65 for three classes and a field trip, was taken through the Las Cruces Museum of Art. Putting together this series, What I Learned in My Digital Photography Class, on my blog has really helped me to organize and better understand the mass of information that overwhelmed me during the all-too-brief meetings with our very brilliant and talented instructor.

As I worked my way through the details, I came across quite a few resources that I would like to share with you. Some were mentioned previously; and some are to give you ideas and information far beyond anything I could tell you!

Basic Digital Photography.com--"Your Personal Guide to Digital Photography"--equipment reviews, tutorials on shooting, editing, organizing your photos.

DigitalCameraInfo.com--Camera reviews and ratings, by brand and by type.

Lensmodern--Online photographic handling agency, beautiful images.

PBase--Browse images and galleries, see photograph and camera information. If you are considering a particular camera, see what kinds of photos people are taking with that model.

Photo Editing Software--All are programs available online--basic versions of all but iPhoto and Photoshop are free.

GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program

iPhoto

Photoshop

Picnik

Picasa

Paint

Photofocus, a blog by Scott Bourne (recommended in one of the comments on this blog by The Fabulous Penguin). It's full of useful tips and lessons.

Photo.net--images, critiques, discussions, and tutorials.

Pioneer Woman Photography--Tutorials from Ree Drummond, with clear, easy-to-understand explanations and lots of excellent photograph examples. Ree runs contests every once in a while and the entries are really something to see! Great prizes, too.

Digital Photography: Need Inspiration?

Mesilla, NM doorway

What I learned in my Digital Photography class, part 13

During our last class meeting, our instructor threw a lot of ideas at us. Scribbling as fast as I could, I realized that our three evening meetings plus a field trip hadn't really given us the time we needed to explore even an introduction to this wonderful art/science.

Here are some of the ideas that came out of that last discussion. It's a miscellaneous list, but a valuable one.

Pecos, NM doorway

• Shoot a lot. Experiment with manual settings. Look at the photo information to help you make comparisons. Learn from your experiments.
• In certain settings--a theatre, for example--you will want to ask permission to take photos before you start shooting. Offer to send copies of your shots via email.
• When your camera sounds might be intrusive, shut them off. (Check your manual!)
• When a flash would irritate others or a performer, shut it off. Remember, we learned how to do this in a previous post (On the Subject of Light).
• Tell a story with your photos by shooting a series. Establish the setting with a wide shot, then move in closer and closer to your subject.
• Try some time lapse photography by setting up a tripod and shooting a photo of the same subject at the same time every day (or once an hour, etc.--you get the idea). The instructor mentioned a wonderful documentary film he had seen that showed still shots of a farm, taken over time as the crops matured and people came to work in the fields and then to harvest.
• Shoot a biography. For example, take portrait shots of an artist, then photos of her studio, her tools, other settings where she might produce her art, then the works of art themselves. We saw such a series in our class--the photos of the artist's hands and of his workbench and tools (with the artist absent) were very powerful.
• Try shooting moving targets--children, animals, ocean waves--moving along with the subject so it is in focus and the rest of the shot a bit blurred and emphasizing the action
• Shoot a series using a theme--gates, doorways, or windows, for example.

Lincoln, NM gateway

Archiving, Printing, and Displaying Your Digital Photos

What I learned in my Digital Photography Class, Part 12

Archiving

It seems to me that "archiving" is just a fancy way of saying "saving." Until I took this class, I felt that saving my photos to the hard drive and to an online album like Picasa was good enough. However, I guess when you really take a lot of digital photos you might want to also put them on a CD. When doing this you can print an index to go along with the CD. And, of course, you can print your pictures as well, but you should know a few things about that.

Printing

Because I take photos mainly for my blog, I haven't had anything from my digital camera printed yet and didn't know anything about the process. I discovered that you transport the photos to the photo lab by first downloading them to your flash drive or to a CD.

I was interested, and a little dismayed, to find out that regular commercial printers will automatically crop your digital photos on all sides by 5%. You should certainly keep this in mind while shooting, or you can just decide to go to a custom printer, where you can get your photos printed exactly the way you want, and have them enlarged (all the way up to poster size) or printed on specialty papers and even on canvas.

Displaying

Again, because I have thought of taking photos only to put online, I hadn't really thought about displaying them anywhere else. However, our instructor encouraged us to print and frame the best of our shots and to hang them at home. He suggested grouping framed photos by theme, or getting the best of the best enlarged to "painting"-size. It's a good way to look even more deeply into your photo results, and a guaranteed method for getting some feedback.

He also suggested using those digital photo frames that automatically run a slide show of photos that have been downloaded. This was another "aha" moment for me, as we got one of these for Christmas a couple of years ago and I didn't even realize that I could add photos to the collection that was already downloaded. (Another case of not reading the whole manual!)

Editing Your Digital Photos

What I learned in my Digital Photography class, part 11

I see it all the time in photos--the photo isn't sharp, the horizon line is tilted, or there is too much extraneous "stuff" in the background. As our instructor constantly pointed out to us, you should strive to shoot the photo correctly from the beginning. Always.

And for those times when your photos need a little help, there is editing! Of course, whole books have been written on special effects that you can do with your photos, but if you just learn a bit about straightening and cropping photos, your results will improve dramatically.

We used iPhoto (great software that comes already loaded on Mac computers) in our class, and that is what we have at home, too. I have also used Photoshop on our old computer.

In addition to these software packages that you can purchase, you should know that there is also an open-source, no-cost version of photo editing software available to you, called Gimp. It's a little tricky to figure out, but it's free!

Another online freebie is Picnik, which has all kinds of fun effects that you can play with. Check out Picasa (free photo editing software from Google), or Paint (for Windows).

Whichever one you choose, make yourself aware of all the types of edits that you can make. Here is a list of what iPhoto can do:

Photo information (The camera provides the title, date and time taken, type of file, and size; you can add your rating, keywords, and description)

Compare two similar photos so you can choose which one to keep

Rotate

Crop

Straighten

Enhance

Reduce red-eye

Retouch

Effects (Black & white, sepia, antique, fade color, boost color, matte, vignette, edge blur)

Adjust (Exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, saturation, temperature, tint, sharpness, and noise reduction)

Remember, you can always duplicate your original and just play around with the duplicate until it looks just the way you want it to.

White Balance

What I learned in my Digital Photography class, Part 10

Now here's a subject that was all new to me, easily understood, and very useful to know. You know how sometimes the color in your photos just seems a bit off? Perhaps there is a strange cast to the colors that you know wasn't there when observed by your own eye?

That's because we are taking photos under a variety of light conditions. Your camera will not always see "white" as the pure "white" you want it to be (although our own eyes tell our brain that the white is white), depending on the light source--sunshine, shade, artificial light, etc. We can make the assumption that if white looks right in your photos, the other colors will, too.

You can deal with this "white balance" by doing one of three things: Leave the white balance on "auto" and take what you get, choose to set the camera's white balance from a variety of choices, or set up a custom white balance.

My camera gives the following choices, in addition to auto and custom: Daylight, shade, cloudy/twilight/sunset, tungsten, white fluorescent light, or flash--each has a little icon that shows up when I press the shutter halfway, so I can see what setting I have already chosen. I find all these choices on the white balance menu, and you will, too, once you check your manual to locate the menu.

If you choose, instead, to set up a custom white balance, you shoot a white object that will serve as the basis for the white balance setting. By selecting this image, you import its white balance data for the white balance setting. (Quoted from my camera manual).

There! That's white balance, and now that you know about it, you should find that the colors in your photos will look a little truer to your eye.

If you would like to read more about this issue and see some photos illustrating how different settings affect results, read this photo.net article on White Balance by Jon Sienkiewicz.

Aperture and Shutter Speed: (Mostly) Still Quite a Mystery to Me

What I learned in my Digital Photography Class, Part 9

I learned a bit about aperture and shutter speed back when I was teaching myself film photography from a book, many years ago. I can tell you this much--the aperture refers to the size of the opening of the diaphragm that lets in the light, and the shutter speed is how long the shutter stays open. I can't say that I learned much more on the subject during our all-too-brief course in digital photography.

If I truly understood the relationship between aperture and shutter speed, I could go on. However, in all honesty, I don't understand the subject well enough to explain it to anyone else. I can only recommend that you do the following.

First of all, go to Pioneer Woman Photography, where you will find some of the clearest explanations I have ever read, complete with plenty of photographic examples. Read What the Heck is an Aperture?, found in the Exposure Archives and in the What the Heck? Basic Photography Archives. I've discovered that I can read a bit of Ree's explanations, then go off and try a bit of application, then come back later and repeat the process. In doing so, I learn almost more than I was able to take in from my entire Digital Photography class.

Sit down with your camera and play with the settings. Take lots and lots of shots, changing the variables (aperture, shutter speed, and ISO) and look at your results. Then, perhaps, you can explain the subject to me.

The Mysteries of ISO and How I Came to Have A Glimmer of Understanding

What I learned in my Digital Photography Class, Part 8

I'm on dangerous ground here, attempting to explain something that I can just barely understand myself. Just keep that in mind, and proceed with caution.

When the instructor in my photography class asked, "What is ISO?" I can't begin to tell you my thoughts, but I'd like to try. ISO? What do you mean, what is ISO? How the heck would I know? I thought you were the instructor here? Yes, my thoughts ran along those lines.

Things didn't get any clearer when one of my classmates answered rather triumphantly, "ISO is what ASA used to be!" I had to hold on to my chair to keep myself from fleeing.

Here is what I eventually took in during the class and worked out later, using a variety of resources:

ISO (according to my camera's manual) is a numeric indication of the sensitivity to light. The actual letters stand for International Organization for Standardization. A doubling of the sensitivity of a film requires a doubling of the numerical film speed value (from "Film Speed," Wikipedia). So, according to my calculations, an ISO of 200 means double the sensitivity of an ISO of 100. The numbers I can choose on my camera in manual mode range from 100 to 1600.

When shooting with an automatic setting, the camera will choose the ISO for you. My camera stays within 100 to 400, unless I mess with it, as I did on the fateful day when our assignment was to shoot photos at the Farmer's Market, using all manual settings.

All you really need to know is this: The brighter the day, the lower you should set the ISO number. On the other hand, if you are shooting in a low light situation, you will want to set the ISO at a higher number, which means that your camera will be more sensitive to light.

My problem was that I remembered this in reverse, thinking aha! the brighter the light, the higher the ISO number. You should forget that you ever read that sentence, or you will have some truly dreadful results, like this horrendously overexposed shot:

The good thing about this messed up assignment is that I will never forget: The higher the light, the lower the ISO.

For a much clearer and more knowledgeable explanation of ISO, please visit Pioneer Woman Photography: ISO Setting. Ree will set you straight in no time!

Running Past the Pole: Landscape Photography

What I learned in my Digital Photography Class, Part 7

My photography instructor was able to touch on the subject of landscape photography only briefly, due to the very limited number of classes in our short course. I am hoping that we will be able to spend a little more time on the subject in the next course that he teaches.

In the meantime, here are some points that he made:

Don't just take a photo of distant hills--frame the landscape with some close-by flowers, branches, or other objects to make the photo more interesting.

Interesting

More interesting when framed by tree in foreground (but darn that telephone wire!)

Use a wide angle lens for landscape shots to get a better view

This shot might have been better if taken with the wide-angle lens that is on my shopping list

Always remember the light: Shoot on overcast or cloudy days; or at the beginning or the end of sunny days when the light source comes from a low angle

Remember that the best sky views and colors often come not at the moment of sunset, but just after, when the sun--even though below the horizon--is still reflecting its light up into the sky

Sunsets are always better when there are some clouds in the sky (sounds like a philosophy to me!)

Scout out some good locations ahead of time, so when the light is right (or when it is about to be right!) you can dash to your perfect spot as quickly as you can to take advantage of the opportunity. My patio has a wonderful view of the mountains, for example, but that darned telephone pole is right in the way. All I have to do is to remember to remain publicly presentable at all times so that when the moment comes, I can run past the pole to get my perfect picture!

Macro Photography

What I learned in my Digital Photography Class, Part 6

Taking macro shots is just old-fashioned close-up photography done with new-fangled equipment, as far as I can tell. My digital camera has a flower on its mode dial that allows me to move in and fill the frame with the subject close-up. According to our instructor, you focus for macro shots by moving in as closely as the camera will allow you. With my camera, that's about 8 inches. You should be aware that you will have limited depth of field when this close, so you should take care to focus carefully on the most important element in your picture.

Again, just as in shooting portraits, one wants to fill the frame completely. And, as we discussed in the post, On the Subject of Light, low-angle lighting works well.

At least, low angle lighting worked for this photo, below. As I told you in an earlier post, I carted this poor little bowl of Cheerios, bananas, and strawberries everywhere--indoors under artificial lighting and by windows, then outdoors with the low, just rising sun lighting it from the side. I liked the latter lighting best.

I am usually frugal with file sizes, but this photo looks best when viewed in great detail, so I have given you a much larger file than usual. Be sure to click on the small photo below to view it.

By the way, I just noticed that the banana slice on the right has a perfect little face, full of rueful expression and a realization of impending doom! If only I had noticed it in time, I might have sold it on e-Bay!

See the macro tutorial by Philip Greenspun on photo.net. It will get you started and includes a discussion of lenses to add to your shopping list.

Shooting Portraits

What I learned in my Digital Photography Class, Part 5

Our instructor started us right out with portraits. He said that for some reason, when people take photos of people, they seem to want to get everything in the world into the shot, leading to lots of extraneous details and background busyness, with a tiny little figure somewhere in the middle. Just like this one, which (in my defense) was actually shot to give an idea of the immensity of the desert:

He told us that when we are taking a photo of someone, we should move in, then move in some more. It felt odd at first, and my first portrait shots taken in class reflected my unease.

The next tip he offered was to focus on the eyes. Frame your shot, zero in on the eyes, then press the shutter halfway down to focus properly.

The next step was an interesting one. Keeping your shutter depressed halfway in order to keep the correct focus, shift the camera so that the subject is off center for a more interesting composition. Then take your shot.

You can also use a bit of fill flash to take out shadows on a person's face (see the previous post, On the Subject of Light). On the other hand, you might want the light coming from one side, leaving the other side of the subject's face in relative darkness.

Here is a later portrait shot I took, when I had some time to digest all the new information coming at me in class. I'll have you know that I set up this shot manually, setting the ISO, the aperture, and the shutter speed myself. No more automatic stuff for me!

On the Subject of Light

Light coming from a low angle

What I learned in my Digital Photography Class, Part 4

Everyone raves about the quality of light in New Mexico. Everyone, that is, except my photography instructor and, indeed, anyone who has ever tried to take photos in the middle of the day here. Yes, we have lots and lots of sunlight. No, it isn't easy to take photos that don't look flat and overexposed when you are trying to shoot outdoors.

There are several things you can do to improve the lighting of your subjects. The instructor told us to find one of our rare overcast days, then get out there and shoot. Too bad for us (lol) but those overcast days are few and far between. So we do what we can with our relentless sun. The best photos taken outdoors in this part of the world are taken at either end of the day--early in the morning, or just before the sun sets. The reason? The light will be coming at a low angle and there will be interesting shadows and better colors--far better than at midday, when the sun is blazing and everything is washed out.

Regarding another issue with light: I have been frustrated for a long time by my unruly automatic flash. There is nothing worse than trying to take a photo of a beautiful sunset, then having the flash go off and light up the cactus in the foreground, making the sky hard to see. I couldn't seem to control that darned flash and I know that I am not the only one. I actually know of someone who duct-taped his flash down so it would never go off!

The answer? Not so hard, it turns out. Simply look in the index of your manual under "flash off," or something similar. Because I never found this entry before, I guess I've been looking in the quick start guide all this time. So, you simply turn the mode dial to whichever little icon stands for "no flash" on your particular camera, and the auto flash feature will be turned off. The manual for my camera notes that you might have to use a tripod when you have chosen the "flash off" mode, in order to avoid camera shake.

Have the opposite problem? Want a bit of flash to fill in some shadows on a subject's face, for example? Locate the button that turns the flash on for the next photo--mine is on the front of the camera with a little squiggly arrow pointing to it.

A few further notes on lighting: You can "bounce" light into a subject's face. For example, have the person you are photographing hold a book and focus some artificial or real light source onto the book's pages. The light will reflect up into the person's face, helping to fill in shadows. Now that you've read about this, you will start noticing this technique in photos.

Skylights are a great light source for interior shots, as are windows.

And, of course, you can do as the pros do--set up lamps to light your scene, either directly or bounced off the interior of a carefully placed umbrella, which is outside of the frame of your photo, of course.

As a matter of fact, in our class we sat and looked at many, many photos with the instructor asking us, time and time again, where is the light source? It was good practice, and helped me to train my eye so that now I ask myself that same question when looking a photo or at potential subjects--where is the light source?

For a wonderful article on light, with lots of photographs for examples, see Light, by Philip Greenspun on photo.net.

Next: Tips we learned about taking the best portrait shot

Everybody Knows You Have to Read the Manual, LOL!

What I learned in my Digital Photography Class, Part 3

If you are anything like me, when you got your new camera you probably looked at the thick manual and thought to yourself--now, where's that little quick-start guide? I only want to take some photos, for Pete's sake! That's just what I did--figured out just enough to get started and went from there. Along the way, I added bits of information from the big manual when there was something I needed to do but, of course, using that method I didn't know what I didn't know!

The next thing we did in our class, after locating the battery and memory card, was to take a tour of all those little mysterious buttons on the camera. Here are the most memorable buttons and dials we found (you can explore yours some time sitting with your manual and your camera--who knows what you'll find!):

The power switch (ha! I knew this one)

The mode dial: I had used this, sure. I just set it to "automatic," ignoring all the other mysterious modes available (more about these in a later post)

The main dial: Used to set aperture and shutter speed when shooting manually

The depth of field preview button (Who knew!)

Dioptric adjustment knob: I mentioned this in an earlier post. This little knob adjusts the viewfinder image to suit my own vision

A little switch that toggles from AF (auto focus) to MF (manual focus)

There are more, of course, but I want to save them for the next post, which will be on the subject of light.

Shopping List for Digital Photography Class

An 8 GB flash drive

What I learned from my Digital Photography Class, Part 2:

The first thing our instructor asked us to do with our cameras was to identify the battery type and the memory card. I had already embarrassed myself by not knowing how to turn off my cell phone at the beginning of class as requested--in my defense, I have to tell you that I am a new and somewhat reluctant cell phone user. I got the darned phone turned off with some help (saw a classmate roll her eyes) and was immediately faced with another technological challenge.

Battery? That wasn't so bad, as I had just charged up the battery in preparation for the class. And, what's this? They want me to buy a second battery in case the first one runs out in the middle of a shoot? Don't they know how much these things cost?

Okay, I got over the shock at having to buy an extra battery ($42 and up) and then I had to deal with the memory card. I hadn't seen the thing since buying the camera, but found its little compartment and popped it out. Oops, it was a SanDisk compact flash card all right, but its memory was only 2 GB (only? what do these people want?). Right away, I had to add another item to my shopping list--a 4 GB compact flash card.

Thank goodness I didn't shame myself by not bringing along a USB cable to download photos from the camera to the computer--one of my classmates had never downloaded anything from his camera in the two years he had owned it (!) and kept muttering to himself, buy an ABC cable, buy an ABC cable. I loved that man right away, he made me feel so much better about myself.

However, now there was one more item to add to my list--a flash drive (we used to call them thumb drives)--in order to save our edited photos and transport them between home and the classroom. The old one I had somewhere in a drawer at home was laughingly outdated, memory-wise--kind of like me. So, there was one more item to buy--an 8 GB flash drive.

The good news is that I ordered all three items--the flash drive, the memory card, and the extra battery--from Amazon the next morning and had them all in time for the next week's class, even without paying extra for any kind of fancy shipping.

Which is the Best Digital Camera For You?

What I learned from my Digital Photography Class, Part 1:

Question: Which is the best camera for you?

Answer: The camera you have!

Our instructor's point was that most of us are not using all the features on our current camera and we can use the camera we own to learn a great deal about digital photography. My single lens reflex camera is a Canon EOS Rebel XT, shown below. I chose it because I could use either automatic or manual mode, and because I could change from the lens that came with it to either a telephoto or wide angle lens. It can store a LOT of photos, depending on the quality image I choose. It will keep me busy learning about photography for years to come.

It's a wonderful camera and I really love it, especially as I learn more and more about what I can do with it. The only drawback? It's a bit heavy to carry, especially when I am out bird watching and also carrying a pair of binoculars, or when I am riding my bike. And it was expensive to start with.

Our instructor suggested that for occasions when portability is an issue, I might consider getting a digital point and shoot camera like the one my sister has, shown below. It is small and lightweight, and easy to slip into a pocket wherever I might be heading. The lenses in these cameras are getting better and better, there is built-in optical image stabilization (vibration reduction), and the small cameras are becoming more affordable all the time.

I realize that this is just a very superficial description of these two types of cameras. For more information, see this Consumer Reports guide to digital cameras.

Digital Photography: Food Photos

The Digital Photography class continues to be a tiny bit overwhelming. After all, whole books have been written on just single facets of this art/science, and we are cramming an awful lot of information into three classes and a field trip.

I can tell you that one thing I have learned from the class that is already making my photos clearer is that there is a diopter/dioptric adjustment knob on the camera that will adjust the viewfinder image to suit my eyes, even without glasses. Now I have a much better chance at shooting sharp, focused photos. Who knew? Actually, it was right there in the owner's manual all along, of course!

For the "taking photos of food" assignment, I visited the Farmer's Market and shot all morning. Then just this morning when I was slicing bananas and strawberries into my bowl of Cheerios, I was struck by the wonderful colors and ended up carrying my bowl from room to room and even outside, and shooting it in a variety of settings, with a flash and with natural light. Those Cheerios photos turned out to be my favorites.

Here are the five photos I used for the assignment. All have had some slight corrections made with iPhoto (cropping, straightening, exposure and highlight adjustments), which we worked with in class.

If you click on this photo of honey jars (above), you can see the market (and the photographer!) reflected. The other colors are the reflection of the tablecloth

The class pointed out, quite rightly, that I could have shot this from another angle to make it more interesting. I was pleased with the sun shining through the honey though. Some of this very honey is poured over my breakfast bowl, below

These last two shots are much more impressive when viewed full screen in iPhoto