Happy New Year!

It's an new year, and a new challenge for your photography!

This year, I'll be taking the Weekly Photo Challenge, and it's pretty self explanatory, but pretty much, you have to take a finished photo every week, and this year, I'm doing it!  I'll upload my weekly photo to the blog, with a full write up of what I did (with the full technique in a separate article) and where it was taken, along with how I edited it!

I look forward to sharing my work, and hope you can take the challenge with me!

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Band Set

Hello! Toady I've got a little post and a few photos about Portraiture and Theme!

The other day, me and two other band mates were in a garage, practising and I couldn't miss the chance to get some photos,

The above photo is quite boring in colour, but in black and white made it looks a lot more emotive. When taking photos, always think of what you can do to them afterwards, and how you can adjust photos to give a better feel and atmosphere! 

Colour splashing! Draw attention away from the things you don't want people to see and towards what you do want them to see, you can do this in picnik, using their black and white tools!

Softening; this is a like colour splash. use the soften tool in picnik, and then using the brush tool, remove the effect from the desired focus point, which in this photo, is the guitarist.  This effect can add a lot of depth to a photo, and really help make the composition of your photo look a lot better! you can also use this effect in macro photos.

Having trouble defocusing the background in your macro photos? Use the soften tool to give the same effect, then use the brush to remove the softness from your focus point!

Use vignetting (the blurred shadowed edges) to draw attention to the middle of your photo, and create a more emotive photo, how ever, I dislike this photo, as the vignetting is far too strong.

That's all for now guys! Thanks for reading!

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Rule of Thirds!

Rule Of Thirds
First of all, I have to say a huge sorry, mostly to Liaata, for not updating in quite a while! I've had a number of problems, as well as 100 other things to do, with a constant barrage of exams following me around! But here we are:

Rule of Thirds, A technique that enhances the composition of a lot of photos! If you look at a lot of professional photography, do you usually see that the main subject, or focal point of an image is usually off centre.  This is usually because of the use of the rule of thirds.

By the Wikipedia definition: "The rule of thirds is a compositional rule of thumb in visual arts such as painting, photography and design. The rule states that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centring the subject would."            Or a simpler explanation,

Divide your photo into 9 boxes like above, and make sure the focal point is on one of those dots around the middle box! on some cameras, you can find this grid as an option on your camera, so you can see it over the photo as you take it, if not, just try to visualise the grid.  This technique can really enhance the composition and feeling behind any photo!

A really useful way of utilising rule of thirds if you have trouble using it while out and about, is to crop your photo afterwards, which if I were honest, is the way I usually do it!

To crop your photo, to use this technique, first go to Picnik.com, and upload the photo you want to use, when it loads, look at the side bar, and click the Crop option, it should then look like this:

Then, crop the photo to get your focal point on one of the four dots, and see if you  like the result!
Here was my result:

This small edit can really help make your photos look a lot better! so next time you pull out your camera to take a photo, try and have a go at this technique!

Thanks to Calum for some fantastic modelling there! xD

Source

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Autumn Angles

With Autumn here you can get some really nice photos that are impossible to take during other seasons, and you can really capture nature's beauty in full!

When thinking about how to take a photo, and where, you must always place a great deal of thought into the angle, this is REALLY important!  Angle can make, or break a photo, and it's up to you to look at various view points, or you won't get the perspective or feel you really want! For instance, I was walking down this particular path, and it looked beautiful with the leaves falling and the sky a really nice colour, but as I tried to take a photo, it looked awful, until I remembered a photo I had seen the day before, taken from a very low angle, so I gave it a go, and I loved the effect!

Remeber: don't give up if you don't get it right first time! Mess about with the settings, and positioning, and you WILL get a great photo!

Photo Source

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After Effects!

When looking or thinking of photos to take, taking the photo is only the beginning! With powerful editing software available for free online (e.g Picnik) taking the photo is only the first step!

  

          This photo was taken on a gloomy day, in a few minutes, with no preparation, when I got home,I opened it up on paint. That's right, good ol' MS paint,and I PAINTED the sky blue! Lo-tech edits master ;)
 I then uploaded it to picnik, straightened the photo out, and cropped it into a nice size,  and had a mess around with the exposure and contrast,I then added a focal zoom for the blurring effect,and Voila! A finished picture!

Even if a photo look awful, mess around with it,You might be surprised! 

Source

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The Bigger Picture: Pt2!

Part 2 of a panoramic set I plan on doing,Will take LOADS of these and upload a few to the set!

What do you guys think of this one? like it? hate it? anyway to improve?

http://frankcom.deviantart.com/  Check it out, It's where I upload all my art!

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The Bigger Picture!

A lot of cameras, have difficulty fitting a lot into a picture, meaning we may not always be able to capture what we want to, or have to miss some bits out.

   Is there a cure for this madness?   Yes! In the picture above, I took 20ish photos, And put them all into Autopano Giga, and this is the result! I added the bluring myself, the original pictures came out spotless, no lines or joins spoted, it was a smooth photo!

If you want to try it yourself, I recomend Autostitch, a free program that produces quite incredible results! It also has an iPhone app!

Source

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Focus

Normaly in life, one thing will catch your eye above all others in the scene, be it a person, an object, or any other mundane thing! In photos, the focus captures what really stood out to the photographer, even shows other people how they saw it, one more reason I love photography, seeing a different point of view!

Source:  http://frankcom.deviantart.com/art/Us-Pedestrians-195510548


Personally, I always carry my point and shoot camera with me, becuase when I havent got it, I always miss a fantastic photo, or somthing I want to express! 

Enjoy! :D

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