Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Photography : Advice for people-who-won't-admit-they-need-it

Start small  - keep it simple. It never hurt to start small, so your Digital Camera would do. Cos they is no point in you investing in a expensive DSLR and not knowing how to use it or know the basics. I had humble beginnings as well... and it was from my Canon DigiCam



Taking your camera with you - It never a bad idea cos you don't want to come home with regrets "Damn it, i should have taken the cam and shot that pretty bird (not the other kind)" Next time you got out there take your camera with you, maybe you might get that lucky shot. I've taken great pictures whenever I've taken my camera out of my house or on a trip




Photographic Wish list - Well if you can't take your cam with you make-a-pics-i-like-to take... A bird, the sunset, kids playing, sleeping dog... whatever comes to your head.. i had an idea of visiting the local cemetery...i planned it... took the cam... snapped a few pictures.. 


Don't expect a lot - Don't expect a flock of flamingos to fly by and stay still for you or bevy full of playboy playmates to pose you ... take a look around... maybe that bicycle parked by the shop or the sunlight hitting that flower... maybe worth taking a snap!... 


Stop being lazy - Sometimes you have to get those jeans dirty... it doesn't mean you have to get into mud or cross a swarm... maybe that angle of the subject isn't working for you... try different sides, angles and depths... personally i was a lazy photographer when a friend advised "stop being lazy"... i took it to heart....


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Continued from last week


Be Organized -  Yes I'm being a hypocrite here... when you take your pictures and upload them to your computer/laptop make folders. I make it simple - (Full, Selected/Unedited, Selected/Edited and Resized Final Folder...

TIP

If your uploading to FACEBOOK and for example say you image resolution is 2500x 1500 mega-pixels and the size of the image is avg size of 2.5 Mb.. It'll take time to upload especially if you have a whole album to upload.. Use PICASA to resize the image the to 800x540ish mega-pixels and 134-300 kb in size it creates a duplicate image while keeping the Original picture intact.

(Remember the longer side of the pic should be changed from say 2500 to 800)

and also

If you want to print a picture - Use the Original Sized Image (eg- 2500 x 1500 - 1.7-2.5 mb)


and if you want to upload of facebook or anywhere else (800 is good to go)



Set up a portfolio - Go for a FLICKR Page. Best way to share you pictures with family, friends and different people around world. All you need is yahoo account... it's simple as that!




Sunday, November 21, 2010

Welcome to my Blog!...

WTF am i thinking? A blog... my mind constantly wanders from one thing to another... quite rarely i stick to one thing... so let's give this BLOG thing a freakin try...

I'll be sharing with you two things with you on this journey... My passion for Photography and Movies... It'll be my experiences on photography since I'm pretty new to it and my personal view on movies I've watched... I'm a Sri Lankan guy almost in his late stages of the early 20s and coming towards the mid 20s...

As i was growing up i wasn't the smartest kid around.... neither was i the dumbest... just your average kid who occasionally pays attention at class... but loved doodling around and drawing around... but constantly in the shadow of my brother by academics... nothing else... he was a top of the class student... so you get the picture.... so we very well know that i aint gonna be ending up as an accountant or doctor... but as a person involved in the arts... an artist maybe, a photographer, a writer, a film maker or even an actor... creativity is passion and blah blah....

I discovered my passion for photography in last December almost a year ago... photographing this and that... It fuels my creativity... and my two years at Advertising fueled it more...

I started quite humbly with a normal point n shoot camera then few months later I shared my brother's power zoom camera and finally got my hand on my cousin's old DSLR... Movies on the other hand was a growing experience.. i remember my folks renting out VHS from this place called Video19 near Liberty Plaza in Kolpity, Sri Lanka... only a few movies I faintly remember my folks renting out Batman, Sound of Music and for me and my brother Disney movies and cartoons and plenty of it...

Those were the days... sigh... but nothing has changed I still enjoy the goody-two-shoes squeaky clean Disney cartoon much as the raunchy obscene, the politically offended and racially discriminating and sometimes pornographic cartoon series like Drawn Together, The Simpsons, American Dad and so on....

I've enjoyed movies any guy my age would enjoy... latest being Inception and slightly old like James Cameron's Avatar.. and life learning mafioso movies like The Godfather.. Shockingly I've enjoyed old movies like Hatari, Breakfast at Tiffany's and of course the genius Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange...

So i'm sure you get the picture and the purpose of this blog... who knows... you might be following it slave... er... i mean friend...

If this is the only post you see you know where this is heading... ;)