Shwe Beauty Project

Notes 26-05-2011

ကြ်န္ေတာ္ သည္လ Blog post အတြက္ အေတာ္နည္းနည္းကိုပဲ တင္ျဖစ္သြားခဲ႔ပါတယ္။ စိတ္ထဲမွာေတာ႔ ဘာသာျပန္စရာေတြ ၊ ရွယ္ရမယ္႔စာအုပ္ေတြ လင္႔ေတြအမ်ားၾကီးရွိေနေပမယ္႔ ခုရက္ပိုင္း ရံုးမွာလဲ ရံုးအလုပ္ရွဳပ္ေန တာက တစ္ပိုင္း (Audit ၀င္ေနျပီေလ) အိမ္ျပန္ေရာက္ေတာ႔ လဲ ေမာတာတစ္ေၾကာင္း အိမ္ေျပာင္းဖို႔ အတြက္ ေတြ ျပင္ဆင္ေနရတာက တစ္မ်ိဳးရယ္မို႔ မေရးျဖစ္ဘူးျဖစ္ေနပါတယ္။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ လာမယ္႔အပတ္ အိမ္ေျပာင္းမွာဗ်။ အိမ္ေျပာင္းျပီးရင္ေတာ႔ က်ယ္က်ယ္ျပန္႔ျပန္႔ ျဖစ္သြားတာရယ္ေၾကာင္႔ ပိုျပီး ပံုေတြဘက္ကို အားစိုက္ျဖစ္မယ္ထင္ပါတယ္။ ေလာေလာဆယ္ေတာ႔ အခန္းက်ဥ္းေလးကို ရွင္းေနတာ လင္မယား၂ေယာက္ ျပီးကိုမျပီးေသးဘူးဗ်ာ။

ေလးစားစြားျဖင္႔
ႏိုင္ထြန္းလြင္

Top 10 Movies About Photographers! (Web Info)

ကြ်န္ေတာ္ web ေတြထဲ ေလွ်ာက္သြားရင္း အသံုးလို ႏိုင္တယ္လို႔ထင္တာေလးေတြေတြ႔ရင္ ကြ်န္ေတာ္႔မွတ္စုအေနနဲ႔ေကာ တျခားသူေတြလိုအပ္ရင္ သံုးလို႔ရေအာင္ေကာ ဆိုျပီး ပို႔စ္ေလးေတြတင္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အခု Article ကေတာ႔ Photographer ေတြအေၾကာငး္ ရုပ္ရွင္ ၁၀ခုပါ။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ သည္ရုပ္ရွင္ေတြထဲကေန Photo နဲ႔ပတ္သက္တဲ႔ဗဟုသုတေတြရႏိုင္မလားလို႔ တင္လိုက္တာပါ။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ကိုယ္တိုင္လဲ ခုမွ စၾကည္႔မယ္ဆိုျပီး ေဒါင္းလုပ္ဆြဲတုန္းမို႔ .... ။

Why write a “Top 10 Movies About Photographers!” list on Your Photo Tips? Because we can learn some lessons from movies, even if they’re fictional and not really accurate as far as technique or equipment goes. The biggest thing I get from them is inspiration. Do you ever get that feeling after a movie, you know, the feeling that screams “I should be lucky enough to have that kind of drive!” or whatever? After watching Rocky I can totally take on the world (or at least it inspires me to hit the gym). Anyway, maybe this list will help you get off the couch and go create some great photography. As T.O. would say “Get your popcorn ready!”

10. Pretty Baby (1978)

Pretty Baby [Amazon] – This is a Louis Malle film set in a New Orleans bordello about Violet (a young Brooke Shields) who, at age twelve, is preparing to become a prostitute. Bellocq (Keith Carradine) enters the district area to photograph the prostitutes and falls in love with Violet. It’s a beautiful and heartbreaking tale with wonderful cinematography. This one is for the true art lovers of the world.

9. Calendar (1993)

Calendar [Amazon] – A photographer and his wife are capturing images of old churches for a calendar. Wonderfully directed with strong performances by everyone involved. It’s hard to sum up this movie in a short paragraph. It’s filled with so many layers you just have to see it over and over again, each time deriving insights that weren’t there before, but they were.

8. Photographing Fairies (1997)

Photographing Fairies [Amazon] – A photographer (Toby Stephens) becomes obsessed with trying to disprove the “true sightings” of fairies in this wonderfully directed movie. The musical score is nothing short of brilliant which perfectly compliments the complexities in this movie. It’s about life, love, faith…

7. Pecker (1998)

Pecker [Amazon] – Edward Furlong plays a young photographer who gets discovered after putting together an exhibit depicting everyday life. Well, everyday if you happen to have friends like his. It’s a punch in the mouth to the art world and a funny way to look at photography before flickr.

6. Under Fire (1983)

Under Fire [Amazon] – This one is for all the photojournalist out there. Nick Nolte gives a great performance in this political thriller. It’s romantic and filled with ethical dilemmas when the correspondents start taking sides. Timeless lessons to be learned here. Quotable line “In 20 years we shall see who is right.”

5. A Lot Like Love (2005)

A Lot Like Love [Amazon] – I love Amanda Peet. There, I said it. This is what my wife and I refer to as a good lazy Sunday movie. It’s a romantic comedy that doesn’t require a ton of thinking. Boy with camera meets girl. Boy gives camera to girl who then becomes a photographer. Boy finds girl through her works and they reunite. Simple but I love the photography in it.

4. Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Full Metal Jacket [Amazon] – War is hell. If you haven’t seen this movie, where the heck have you been? It’s Kubrick at his best and his worst. The film seems like short stories patched together, but I’ve always thought it gave a great insight into the complexities of being a war journalist. I’m a guy, so I have to love this movie. Besides…it’s KUBRICK!

3. Closer (2004)

Closer [Amazon] – Julia Roberts plays a photographer who falls in love with a writer who’s dating a stripper but she marries a dermatologist. It’s a movie about love, betrayal, and heartbreak. But more than that it makes you take a contemplative look at how ugly the world can be when we are surrounded by such beauty. My favorite scene in the movie is when Julia’s character, Anna, has her gallery showing. The works in this exhibit are fantastic.

2. High Art (1998)

High Art [Amazon] – An up and coming editor at an art magazine meets photographer Syd (Ally Sheedy) and tries to help her own career by featuring Syd’s work in the mag. A love interest sparks and difficulties ensue. Syd struggles with the paradigm of creating content the magazine wants or creating the art that she needs to produce. The art world can be so pretentious that it hurts. Sheedy puts in a superb performance and the storyline is top notch.

1. Blow-up (1966)

Blow Up [Amazon] – This film is simply essential. It should be taught in all photography courses the world over. Set in London’s swinging sixties a fashion photographer accidentally stumbles across something in his negatives. It’s provocative and mysterious, you’ll question everything about this movie. Then you’ll watch it again. It’s an art movie like no other and you’ll love the mime tennis scene at the end.

source: http://www.pixiq.com/article/top-10-movies-about-photographers

Hair in the Air

Dreamy

Mika Day Out

Thanks for Makeup Artist - Haymar Htoo

Outdoor Portrait Photography Tips

အခုေနာက္ပိုင္းကာလ မွာေခတ္စားလာတာကေတာ႔ပါ႔ထရိတ္ဆိုတဲ႔ အလွပုံရိုက္တာပါပဲ။ Portrait ေတြထဲက အခုကြ်န္ေတာ္ outdoor portrait အေၾကာင္းေလးကို ဘာသာျပန္ဖို႔ စိတ္၀င္စားလာပါတယ္။ထိလဲထိေရာက္ မွတ္သားရတာလဲလြယ္ကူႏိုင္တာမို႔ အနည္းအမ်ားဆိုသလို အေထာက္အကူျဖစ္ႏိုင္ေလာက္ပါတယ္။ မွတ္ထားရတာလဲလြယ္ကူတယ္ ၊ ခရီးသြားရင္း အေပ်ာ္ရိုက္ၾကတာမ်ိဳး တို႔ ၊ သစ္ရြက္ေလးေတြ ေၾကြက်လာတာမ်ိဳးတို႔ ကေလးေတြကစားေနတာေတြဟာ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ပတ္၀န္းက်င္မွာ အျမဲၾကံဳေတြျပီး လြယ္လြယ္ကူကူရိုက္လို႔ ရတဲ႔အမ်ိဴးအစားေတြပါပဲ။ အခု ေအာက္မွ Outdoor Portraits အတြက္ အလြယ္တကူ Tips ေလးေတြကို မွ်လိုက္ရျပန္ပါတယ္။

Turn your Flash on
အရိုက္ခံမယ္႔ သူဟာ အမ်ားဆံုး ၁၅ ေပအတြင္းမွာရွိေနမယ္ဆိုရင္ ၊ Harsh Shadows ေတြနည္းေနျပီဆိုရင္။ ဒါမွမဟုတ္ ေန ကိုမ်က္ႏွာျပဳျပီးရိုက္ေတာ႔မယ္ဆိုရင္ Flash ကိုဖြင္႔ျပီးရိုက္သင္႔ပါတယ္လို႔ေျပာထားပါတယ္။ သည္လိုမွလဲ လူေတြရဲ႔မ်က္ႏွာကို ျမင္ရျပီး မဲ မေနမွာပါတဲ႔။ သည္လို႔ Flash ကိုဖြင္႔ရိုက္တဲ႔ေနရာမွာ သတိထားဖို႔ တစ္ခ်က္က 'Red Eye Deduction' Flash ရိုက္လိုက္တဲ႔အခ်ိန္မ်က္လံုးေတြနီမသြားေအာင္ လုပ္ေပးတဲ႔ Function ကိုဖြင္႔ထား မထား စစ္ဖို႔သတိေပးခ်င္ပါတယ္။ အထူးသျဖင္႔ ကမ္းေျခလို ညေန ေန၀င္ခ်ိန္မ်ိဳးမွာ ရိုက္တဲ႔အခါ ေနာက္ခံ ေနလံုးကိုလဲေပၚခ်င္တယ္၊ ေရွ႔လူကိုလဲ ထင္ထင္ရွားရွားျဖစ္ေနခ်င္ရင္ေတာ႔ Flash ဟာအေကာင္းဆံုးပါပဲ အကယ္လို႔ ရိုက္တဲ႔အခါမွာ ေသျခာမေပၚဘူးစိတ္တိုင္းမက်ဘူးဆိုရင္ေတာ႔ Shutter speed ကို အေႏွးအျမန္ လုပ္ခ်င္းေသာ္လည္ေကာင္း ဒါမွမဟုတ္ လူကို ေရွ႔တိုးေနာက္ဆုတ္လုပ္ျပီး လိုအပ္တဲ႔ အေနအထားရေအာင္ေရႊ႔ယူရင္ျဖင္႔ေသာ္လည္ေကာင္း လုပ္လို႔ရပါတယ္။

Shoot on a cloudly day
လူအလွပံုေလးေတြရိုက္ဖို႔ ဘယ္အခ်ိန္အေကာင္းဆံုးပါလဲ? ကန္႔သတ္အခ်ိန္အားျဖင္႔ မနက္ ၁၀နာရီမေက်ာ္ခင္နဲ႔ ညေန ၂နာရီေနာက္ပိုင္းအခ်ိန္ေတြဟာ Portraits ေတြရုိက္ဖို႔ အေကာင္းဆံုးအခ်ိန္ေတြပါ။ ဘာျဖစ္လို႔လဲဆိုေတာ႔ ၁၀ကေန ၂ နာရီၾကားေလာက္မွာ ေနဟာ ဦးေခါင္းတည္႔တည္႔ေရာက္ေနလို႔ပါ။ မ်က္ႏွာကို တိုက္ရိုက္ ေရာင္ျပန္ အရိပ္ေတြ က်ေရာက္နိုင္တာမို႔ အမည္းကြက္ေတြျဖစ္ေပၚတတ္ပါတယ္။ သည္လိုအခ်ိန္မ်ိဳးမွာ အေျခအေနအရ ရိုက္မယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ႔ reflector ေတြကိုသံုးျပီး အရိပ္က် ေနရာေတြကို ေဖ်ာက္ျပီးရိုက္ရင္ေတာ႔အဆင္ေျပပါတယ္။ တိမ္ရွိေနတဲ႔ေန႔တစ္ေန႔ဆိုရင္ေတာ႔ အလြန္ေကာင္းတာေပါ႔ေနာ္။ ေနရဲ႔အလင္းဟာ တိမ္ကို ေဖာက္၀င္တဲ႔အခ်ိန္မွာ သဘာ၀ diffuser အေနနဲ႔အလင္းေတြဟာ လူရဲ႔ ကိုယ္ေပၚကို က်ေရာက္မွာျဖစ္တာမို႔ အရမ္းလွတဲ႔ ပံုေလးေတြကိုရလာမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

Use a medium telephoto lens
ပံုမွန္ ေပါ႔ထရိတ္ပံုအေနနဲ႔သာရိုက္မယ္လို႔ စိတ္ကူးထားမယ္ဆုိရင္ေတာ႔ zoom lens ကိုသံုးသင္႔ပါတယ္ေျပာပါတယ္။ 80-135mm range အမ်ားဆံုးသံုး ျပီးရိုက္သင္႔တယ္လုိ႔ စာေရးသူက ေျပာျပထားပါတယ္။ ဘာလို႔လဲဆိုေတာ႔ အဲ႔သည္႔ range lens ေတြသံုးမယ္ဆိုရင္ ႏွာေခါင္းၾကီးသြားတဲ႔ ျပသနာေတြ နားရြက္ ၾကီးေနတာေတြ စတဲ႔ျပသနာေတြက သက္သာတယ္ လို႔လဲေျပာထားတာကိုေတြ႔ရပါတယ္။ ကို႔ယ္ရဲ႔ subject ကို အသားေပးတဲ႔ ပံုျဖစ္ဖို႔အတြက္ကေတာ႔ ရိုးရွင္းတဲ႔ ေျဗာင္ နည္းပါးရွိတဲ႔ background ကိုသံုးတာဟာအေကာင္းဆံုး ၊အသင္႔ေတာ္ဆံုး ပါ။ ဒါမွလဲ ကိုျပခ်င္တဲ႔ လူဟာ ထင္ထင္ရွားရွားပံုထဲမွာ ေပၚထြက္လာမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေနာက္တစ္ခုက Rule of Thirds ကိုသံုးျပီး တစ္ဘက္ဘက္ကိုေထာင္႔ ကပ္ေပးလိုက္ရင္လဲ သိသိသာသာ ေပၚလာမယ္လို႔လဲဆိုထားပါတယ္။




Show the Action
သက္၀င္ လွဳပ္ရွားေနတဲ႔ ပံုေလးေတြျဖစ္ဖို႔အတြက္ကေတာ႔ တစ္ခုခုစကားေျပာလိုက္တာမ်ိဳး ၊ ေက်ာက္ခဲကို ေရထဲပစ္ခိုင္းလိုက္တာ ေရကိုလက္နဲ႔ထိခိုင္းတာ ေၾကာင္ ေခြး စတဲ႔အေကာင္ေပါက္ေလးေတြနဲ႔ ေဆာ႔တာမ်ိဳးေလးေတြက သဘာ၀ ပိုက်ျပီး ခ်စ္ဖုိ႔ေကာင္းတဲ႔ ပံုေလးေတြ ျဖစ္လာမွာ ရလာမွာလို႔လဲ ရွင္းျပထားပါတယ္။

ေနာက္ဆံုးအေနနဲ႔ သတိထားရမွာကေတာ႔ အလင္းေရာင္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အလင္းရဲ႔အေနအထားကိုလိုက္ျပီး ISO Levels ကို အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးအသံုးခ်သြားဖို႔လိုပါတယ္။ ခုအမ်ားအေနနဲ႔က ISO 100 သာလ်ွင္အေကာင္းဆံုး လို႔ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔လက္ခံထားၾကတယ္။ သို႔ေပမယ္႔ Portraits ေတြရိုက္တဲ႔အခါမွာ တစ္ခါတစ္ေလ မ်က္ႏွာေပၚကို အရိပ္က်တာေဖ်ာက္ခ်င္ရင္၊ ေမွာင္ေနတာမ်ိဳးေတြျဖစ္ေနရင္ ISO 100 မွ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး လိုသလို ISO Levels ကိုကစားသင္႔ပါတယ္။ ISO 200 400 800 စသည္ျဖင္႔ လိုအပ္သလို ေရႊ႔ျပီးအသံုးျပဳသင္႔ပါတယ္။ တစ္ခါတစ္ေလ ခဲျခစ္သလိုမ်ိဳး၊ Noise ေလးေတြပါေနတာမ်ိဳး ပံုေလးေတြကလဲ လူေတြရဲ႔ အျမင္ကို တစ္မ်ိဳးတစ္ဖံုဆန္းသစ္ေစတာကိုေမ႔ထားဖို႔ မသင္႔ပါဘူး။ ဒါေၾကာင္႔ Portraits outdoor မွာ ISO ကိုမေၾကာက္ပါနဲ႔ လိုအပ္သလိုအသံုးခ်ၾကည္႔ပါ။

Naing H Lwin
06/05/2011

Tap Magazine April 2011 Issue

I phone , I pad သံုးစြဲၾကတဲ႔သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြအတြက္ေကာ။ သြားရင္းလာရင္း ဟိုရွာသည္ရွာလုပ္ရာကေနရလာခဲ႔တဲ႔ စာေစာင္ေလးပါ။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္လဲ ဖတ္တာသေဘာက်တာက တစ္ေၾကာင္း ဗဟုသုတလဲ ရတာတစ္ေၾကာင္းမို႔ ကြ်န္ေတာ္႔ Personal Blog ေလးထဲမွာ ထည္႔ျပီးသိမ္းထားမိလိုက္တာပါ။ အားလံုး ဖတ္ခ်င္ခဲ႔ေသာ္ download လုပ္လို႔ရဖုိ႔ ေအာက္မွာ လင္႔ ေလးလဲ ေရးထားပါတယ္။

http://www.mediafire.com/file/1c7dqd8ccc5sd28/Tap_The_iPhone_and_iPad_Magazine_2011_04.pdf

Popular Photography May 2011 Issue

Popular Photography ရဲ႔ ေမလ ၂၀၁၁ ထုတ္ issue ကို မွ်ေ၀လိုက္ပါတယ္ခင္ဗ်ာ။ Pop Photo လို႔လဲေခၚတဲ႔ သည ္စာေစာင္ကို တစ္လတစ္ၾကိမ္ ထုတ္ေ၀တာျဖစ္ျပီး 1937 ခုႏွစ္ထဲကစတင္ထုတ္ေ၀ခဲ႔တယ္လို႔သိရွိခဲ႔ရပါတယ္။

ေအာက္ေဖာ္ျပတဲ႔လင္႔ကေနျပီး ေဒါင္းလုပ္ လုပ္ယူႏိုင္ပါတယ္။
http://www.mediafire.com/file/mazxh7qt6xp65ly/Popular_Photography_2011-05.pdf

P&S ကင္မရာေတြထဲမွာ ဘယ္ဟာကိုလူသံုးအမ်ားဆံုးတဲ႔လဲ

တစ္ေန႔တစ္ေန႔ သည္လိုပဲ ဟိုစပ္စု သည္စပ္စုရာကေန P&S ကင္မရာေတြထဲမွာ ဘယ္ Brand ဟာလူသံုးအမ်ားဆံုးလဲ လို႔စိတ္ကူးက ေပၚသြားပါတယ္ ဒါနဲ႔ပဲ ဂူးဂဲ ပစ္သြင္းျပီးရွာၾကည္႔လိုက္ေတာ႔ ေအာက္ကအတိုင္း ေတြ႔ရပါတယ္။ သည္ေအာက္က ဇယားေလးကို Darren Rower ရဲ႔ Digital Photography School ကေန ကူးျပီးျပန္တင္ျပတာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

အေပၚက ဇယားကိုၾကည္႔လိုက္ ျခင္းျဖင္႔ ကင္နြန္ကင္မရာဟာ လူသံုးအမ်ားဆံုး No.1 အေနနဲ႔ရွိေနတာကိုေတြ႔ရျပီး။ ဆုိနီ နဲ႔ ဖူဂ်ီ ကင္မရာဟာ P&S (ကင္မရာအေသး) ေတြထဲမွာ ဒုတိယလူသံုးအမ်ားဆံုးလုိ႔ေဖာ္ျပထားပါတယ္။ သည္အခ်က္အလက္ေတြ အားလံုးဟာ သည္စာကို မူရင္းေရးသားသူ Darren Rower ဟာ သူ႔ web တစ္ခုထဲက users ေတြကိုအေျခခံထားတယ္လို႔လဲေျပာပါတယ္။ ထူးထူးျခားျခား DSLR ကင္မရာေတြထဲ က နာမည္ၾကီး နီကြန္ ဟာ သည္ကင္မရာ(P&S) အေသးေလာက မွာ နံပါတ္ (၆) ေနရာမွာရွိေန တာကိုေတြ႔ရပါတယ္။ Elloit ဆိုတဲ႔လူတစ္ေယာက္ကေတာ႔ သူဟာ နီကြန္ SLR ကို သေဘာက်ေပမယ္႔ P&S မွာဆိုရင္ သူ႔ကိုလာေမးတဲ႔ သူေတြကို ကင္ႏြန္ကိုပဲ ေရြးခ်ယ္ဖို႔ တိုက္တြန္းမိမွာပါလို႔လဲ ၀င္ျပီးေရးထားတာကိုလဲေတြ႔ရပါတယ္။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ကိုတိုင္လဲ လြန္ခဲ႔တဲ႔ (၁)ပတ္က ကြ်န္ေတာ္႔ ညီမက P&S တစ္လံုးေလာက္လိုခ်င္တယ္ဆိုလို႔ လိုက္ရွာေပးရင္း ေနာက္ဆံုး ကင္ႏြန္ကိုပဲ ေရြး၀ယ္ေပး လိုက္ပါတယ္။

Top 10 Tips to imporve Point-and-Shoot Travel Photography

Top 10 Tips to Improve Point-and-Shoot Travel Photography

by Karen M. Cheung

photography by Josh Root and Hannah Thiem

Do you flip through your photo albums and/or online gallery and sigh at the fact that all your photos look the same? The vacations all might blend together into an array of similar photos. It’s easy to fall into a rut of taking the same types of travel pictures, especially when our point-and-shoot cameras seem to do all the hard work of shooting. That’s the fun of it though. Rather than photographing the same old pictures from summers past, try out some of these improvement techniques from our top 10 tips for using your digital point-and-shoot this travel season.

1. Use the manual modes

Hannah Thiem

Make the bold move to switch the camera dial from “Auto” to “Manual.” More point-and-shoot digital cameras these days come with built-in manual modes, depending on price and manufacturer. Some point-and-shoots cameras include manual features in which users can control aperture and shutter speed, features that were once only limited to higher-priced SLRs for advanced users. That isn’t the case anymore. Some point-and-shoots now carry manual functions that give users the benefit to control shooting capabilities in varied lighting and speed situations. Users can access aperture and shutter speed usually through menu settings and then via a zoom button. Although not all compact cameras have aperture and shutter speed controls, the majority of point-and-shoots include controls for ISO speed (usually 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, and sometimes 3200), flash (On, Off, Auto, Red-eye Reduction), and sometimes exposure stops (+/- 2).

Experiment with the manual modes by first playing with the menu items. Change your menu settings by pressing the zoom toggle or main four-way controller, depending on the layout for your camera. If you have more time before the trip, remove the plastic wrap from the manual guide for some light reading about your camera’s full feature set, usually listed in the index. If you’ve lost the manual, access the manufacturer website for the online version to your camera’s guide.

2. When to turn off the flash

Josh Root

Point-and-shoots tend to employ a flash-on setting as the default mode. For travel photography though, most situations will call for little flash compensation since most vacationers spend their time outdoors that is already well lit. Those with a traveler’s heart, though, should shut off the automatic flash or suppress the pop-up in situations with plenty of light. To turn off the flash, hit the multi-controller button marked with a lighting bolt icon, which is oftentimes the preferred method that point-and-shoots identify the flash setting. Change the “Flash On” setting to “Flash Off.” Use natural lighting shining through a window during the daytime in lieu of the flash.

You can also turn off the flash for nighttime shooting. To compensate for the lack of light and flash, the camera will boost ISO or slow down the shutter speed, usually automatically, unless overridden in manual mode by the user. You might want to also use a mini travel tripod or simply set the camera to an automatic timer that is included on almost every camera for the increased time it takes to capture the night picture. Turning off the flash captures the ambient light for more natural-looking pictures.

3. When to turn on the flash

Josh Root

Some situations do call for the extra help of a flash such as the standard indoors settings or even outdoors in bright sun or shady days. For those outdoors situations, users should consider turning down flash to fill in for overcast or shady conditions. Not all point-and-shoots offer this adjustable feature to increase and decrease flash increments, but if your cameras does, use it. It can help properly expose your outdoor photos for even lighting.

4. Remember the zoom

Josh Root

Do a practice run on your zoom by photographing objects like flower buds and engagement rings. Sometimes, you might notice that your point-and-shoot sets off a ”!” alert that indicates the image might be blurry. Instead of putting the lens too close to the subject, move back and then zoom in using the lens.

This technique is also particularly useful for portraiture. Pulling back away from the subject allows the person to feel more relaxed for more natural smiles, but also provides less foreshortening of noses or foreheads for more realistic and prettier faces.

5. Get a new perspective

Josh Root

One of the easiest ways to vary your shooting involves some exercise. Photograph from below or shoot from above. Try getting down on the ground to spruce up landscape photography that can make small churches look like cathedrals. You can kneel or simply crouch similar to the way baseman empires do. Point your camera upwards to make things in the foreground appear much bigger than they really are. Look for things like street signs with the city behind it or flowers in the foreground with the grassy knoll in the background.

Also consider shooting overhead for a bird’s eye view. Climb to the second level of a shopping mall or other multi-floor venues, and shoot down below. Zoom out, and keep your camera parallel to the ground. This will get the tops of people’s heads, which is interesting for big crowds or people in formal wear. This is particularly effective for wide shots in banquet halls for weddings or rockers at concerts. Get the muscles moving for new perspective shooting.

6. Steadier landscapes and night scenes

Hannah Thiem

Tripods are helpful for nighttime and landscape photography. Bolt the point-and-shoot to the camera socket. Be careful to twist just enough for stability, but not too tight, particularly if the socket is made from plastic, which can peel if worn away from over usage.

During nights, turn off the flash for some long exposures. The tripod will steady the camera. Try shooting cars zooming by on a busy city street. The long exposure will make the cars look like streaks and the light posts like starbursts.

You can consider using the tripod for landscape shots. Rotate the camera horizontally using the tripod. Take a series of photos at the same level for a 180-degree, panoramic view. If you choose to, you can use this series of photos for a post-processing stitching to create one long, wide photo.

Josh Root

7. Creative subject framing

To get a little more creative, try framing your subjects off center. Try depressing the shutter halfway to focus. Recompose the photo off-center, and take the shot. This should keep the focus on the subject, even if it is not at the center of frame, adding a dynamic element particularly to your portraiture photography. This should work with most point-and-shoots, but some cameras will default to the center as the point of focus. In that case, change the AF setting to “Spot” or “Tracking AF” via the menu system.

Josh Root

8. Find some red

Look for interesting points in a landscape or street scene with a flash of red to make subjects stand out from their surroundings. Ask your portrait subject to wear a red scarf or hat or switch shirts to a red color. Just as in car colors, people are more likely to be drawn to red.

9. Always be ready to take a great photo

Josh Root

If you are using the manual mode on your p&s, make sure you have the settings correct for the environment you are in (i.e. ISO set to 100 for broad daylight, or 800 for nighttime, aperture and shutter speed appropriate for action or still shots). If you are suddenly inspired to take a photo, or something interesting happens, be ready to capture that moment instantaneously without fumbling to change the settings.

Also, it may seem obvious, but all users should remember that battery life during vacation is the key to successful travel shooting. Charge your batteries the night before your hike for the full amount of required time that your manual dictates. Most chargers have a blinking light that signals when the charge is complete. Remember that overcharging your battery can also lead to damage to your battery. Read the fine print on your camera’s battery charge times, as spelled out in your manual specifications.

10. Submit your photos for critique

Josh Root

There’s no better way to improve your travel photography than sharing your photos with other photographers through a network. Try submitting your favorites to Photo.net’s Photo Critique Forum or even informal person-to-person feedback. You’ll find that other photographers—novice users and professionals—have plenty of travel tips to offer.

Conclusion

Travel time is playtime and what better time to experiment with your point-and-shoot than on your vacation? Remember that a new environment means a new kind of shooting. Practice these tips prior to the trip, and then use them for live event. You might be surprised at how easy some of the techniques are. It merely requires you getting to know your point-and-shoot better to take advantage of its full feature set of manual modes and customizable settings. Beyond the camera itself, remember to mix it up a bit with varied angles. In addition to thinking about what kind of shoes to pack, consider the places of travel when deciding on what camera equipment to bring (camera bag, extra batteries, and memory card reader). A little planning can go a long way when it comes to travel photography. Using these tips can help capture you to fully capture your travels.

Stupid Joke: The Baby Photographer

The Smiths were unable to conceive children and decided to use a surrogate father to start their family. On the day the proxy father was to arrive, Mr. Smith kissed his wife goodbye and said, "Well, I'm off now. The man should be here soon."

Half an hour later, just by chance, a door-to-door baby photographer happened to ring the doorbell, hoping to make a sale.

"Good morning, Ma'am", he said, "I've come to..."

"Oh, no need to explain," Mrs. Smith cut in, embarrassed, "I've been expecting you."

"Have you really?" said the photographer. "Well, that's good. Did you know babies are my specialty?"

"Well that's what my husband and I had hoped. Please come in and have a seat "

After a moment she asked, blushing, "Well, where do we start?"

"Leave everything to me. I usually try two in the bathtub, one on the couch, and perhaps a couple on the bed. And sometimes the living room floor is fun. You can really spread out there."

"Bathtub, living room floor? No wonder it didn't work out for Harry and me!"

"Well, Ma'am, none of us can guarantee a good one every time. But if we try several different positions and I shoot from six or seven angles, I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results."

"My, that's a lot!" gasped Mrs. Smith.

"Ma'am, in my line of work a man has to take his time. I'd love to be in and out in five minutes, but I'm sure you'd be disappointed with that."

"Don't I know it," said Mrs. Smith quietly.

The photographer opened his briefcase and pulled out a portfolio of his baby pictures. "This was done on the top of a bus," he said.

"Oh my God!" Mrs. Smith exclaimed, grasping at her throat.

"And these twins turned out exceptionally well - when you consider her mother was so difficult to work with."

"She was difficult?" asked Mrs. Smith.

"Yes, I'm afraid so. I finally had to take her to the park to get the job done right. People were crowding around four and five deep to get a good look."

"Four and five deep?" said Mrs. Smith, her eyes wide with amazement.

"Yes", the photographer replied. "And for more than three hours, too. The mother was constantly squealing and yelling - I could hardly concentrate, and when darkness approached I had to rush my shots. Finally, when the squirrels began nibbling on my equipment, I just had to pack it all in."

Mrs. Smith leaned forward. "Do you mean they actually chewed on your, um... equipment?"

"It's true, Ma'am, yes. Well, if you're ready, I'll set-up my tripod and we can get to work right away."

"Tripod?"

"Oh yes, Ma'am. I need to use a tripod to rest my Canon on. It's much too heavy to be held in the hand very long."

With that, Mrs. Smith fainted.

A Trip in Mid of March 2011