george_ghio

<p>One of my favorites for small portraits is an old home movie screen with the screen removed and replaced with black velvet (or material of your choice). I get a 3/4 length portrait from mine. </p>

<p>Just a question about your camera.<br>

Have you set your camera to record you as the copy right owner in the EXIF data? </p>

<p>Eye-Fi Card and iPad.</p>

<p>Wrist weight from a sporting store. Adds weight to arm with out added strain on wrist.</p>

<p>Hi Tammy<br>

What you describe is not at all uncommon with artists. My solution to this sort of angst with my photography is to shoot as if there is no post production. I might spend 4-5 hours setting up for a 10 minute shoot to achieve a single photo. My aim is to have a shot that requires little to no PP. <br>

There is nothing wrong with you, you have just learned too much. Having learned all the the tips and tricks you feel obliged to use them on every photo. <br>

You have a wedding coming up, I suggest that you go to the venue and spend time learning where to shoot, take pictures, stay long enough to learn lighting around the area. Take a tripod and take self portraits with different poses. Make notes as to where the good vantage points are and note the time they have the light you want. Treat each photo as if there is no such thing as post production. When it comes to the PP do as little as it takes. <br>

Post production is an inverse activity, yes you can do hundreds of PP tricks with software. If you make three small changes then you are tweeking the photo, making more than five changes is salvage work on a photo that probably should have been abandoned.<br>

Style will come to you in time. You will find that more of your work will be using the same sort of shots and pretty much the same style of post production. Have fun, take good photos and use only the post required. </p>

<p>Cardboard, black velvet, glue and velcro. Once you have the materials shouldn't take more than 20 minutes</p>

<p>Simple.</p>

<p>Take your sons photos and show them to others without giving his age. If you get a better than 60% approval rating put him on staff. If questioned, claim him as your apprentice. </p>

<p>Fruit Snoot - works, cheap, light weight, takes up almost no space and the best part is the expression on peoples faces when you use it.</p>

<p>Google Fruit Snoot. </p>

<p>Oh Jeff, you sound like a disgruntled teacher feeling sorry for yourself.</p>

<p>Being a person who has been a student of various disciplines across several industries in the last 50 years I can assure you that while my statement was glib, it is also, as often as not, true. Some of the most impressive people I have met were teachers. Sadly, an awful lot of teachers I have met have been fools and buffoons. <br>

Glib or not, the statement stands.</p>

<p>Well from what we have seen of your work (well within the standard for its type) I would say:</p>

<p>Those that can, do<br>

Those that can't, teach</p>

<p>I wouldn't loose any sleep over her comments as there would seem to be nothing in the criticism of any value.</p>

 

<p>Hi Melinda<br>

Nice work. You know it is salable because people have bought it. Now, the question of where you are going. Slap of reality - First is that, yes, you have to make a decision because no else can make it for you. Second, applicable platitudes - Nothing ventured, nothing gained - The fortune of the man that sits, also sits.<br>

Are you happy with the prospect of just selling a few prints now and then as an amateur or are you an artist driven to excel in your art?<br>

Face book is a start you also need a proper website and Wordpress to begin with, a trip to the library for business books. Some sort of framing service would be a plus. Register as a business.<br>

My simple advice is <strong>"Girl, go for it". </strong></p>

<p> </p>

<p>Me, I charge $45 an hour for everything, but then I have no real overheads or large expenses.</p>

<p>One method to determine what to charge is;<br>

what you want to earn for the year divided by the number of weeks you work divided by the billable hours per week.<br>

Example: $100,000 per year * 48 weeks(4 weeks off for your vacation) * 30 billable hours = $69.4 per hour.</p>

<p>Of course you will need to have the thirty billable hours every week for the year so you have to decide which hours are billable to begin with. </p>

 

<p>Hi Shaun<br>

Not been able to find the article yet. Still looking. <br>

The upshot of the article was to set up as if you were going to take a portrait of a person with a dark/black background. Same lighting and angle of lights as portraits. There was only one photo in the article but it was very striking and dramatic. </p>

<p>A thing to consider is a method of shooting birds. I think I saw it in National Geographic. The method was very effective and was to use the same setup as one would use for portraits of people with dark background.</p>

<p>Babies, not a problem. Both my grand children have logged more hours traveling than me. My grandson has been around the world at age 1. Grand daughter is a regular commuter between Perth, Sydney and Bendigo, several trips this year and only 1 1/2 years old. Life's too short to make excuses not to live it. ;-}</p>

<p>Hi Michelle<br>

A lot of words on the subject, are you confused yet? There is another solution to trying to sort out the meaning of all those words. The method I ended up using to work out f stops was the old tried and true "Suck it and see method". In other words I took a series of photos with the range of apertures my lens had at set lighting levels. Printed the result on 4x6 paper and pinned them to the wall for a quick reference. You will be amazed at how soon you come to terms with settings and stop looking at your prompts. Happy shooting.</p>

<p>As you are a Brit why not just bite the bullet and spend two years in Bendigo, Australia and do the diploma of visual arts. The course has a very good teaching team and an excellent photography component. You won't look back and you will have had an adventure as well as a great education.</p>

<p>When I was doing visual arts at college the Rembrandt effect, in photography, was the lighting, when lite from the side one side of the face was in shadow except for a triangle of light highlighting the eye. See photo.<br /> As for an oil painting effect for photos nearly all good and a lot of bad imaging software offer filters for such effects. <br /> <br />Saw a book awhile back that was very good. I belive the title was "Digital Photo Art".</p><div></div>

<p>If you're desperate one solution that might work is to get a 5000m roll of light wire and take a wind or two around the receiver at one end and roll the wire out to the camera and take a wind or two around the transmitter. An old trick to improve the reception ferrite rod aerial radios. If you need it often put the wire on a fishing reel.</p>

<p>The main thing that makes a camera a professional camera is the ability of the person using it.</p>

<p>Hi<br>

I'm not going to tell you that iMac is better than PC. I will tell you why I use Mac.<br>

Years ago I was looking at lap tops, my first computer, I had a choice of 3 PCs and 1 Mac. Now because I live on solar I wanted an Auto Adapter that would allow me to run the lap top straight off my 12volt system rather than from my inverter.<br>

I rang the 3 dealers in the PC range and 1 Mac dealer asking "If I buy this computer can I get an auto adapter?"<br>

The answers were;<br>

PC dealer 1) What's that?<br>

PC dealer 2) Why would you want to do that?<br>

PC dealer 3) Never heard of that.<br>

Mac dealer) We have 2 in stock when do you want it?<br>

Guess what I bought. In my experience over the years since then I have come to the conclusion that Macs are sold by people who know what they are talking about and PCs are sold buy salesmen who are only there in between real jobs. Maybe I just fussy.</p>

<p><strong>RTFM:</strong><br>

<strong><br /></strong>Read The Fantastic* Manual<br>

*may be other "f" words that work as well</p>

<p>It really is a silly question and quite helpful as well when taken in conjunction with your question.</p>

<p><em><strong>Has any of you experienced the pictures rotating and zooming in and out? brush palette opening on it's own? and brush painting before even touching the pad with the pen with photoshop?</strong></em><br>

<em><strong> </strong></em><br>

You see there are two points in your question.<br>

1) touch turned on<br>

2) using the pen<br>

My experience is if you want to use the "pen" with "touch" turned on then you must use the pen without touching the tablet surface. Using the pen whilst resting your hand on the tablet surface produces conflicting data to the tablet. <em><strong><br /></strong></em><br>

To test if this is indeed your problem simply try using the pen by holding it near the top and and applying the tip to the pad to see if it works as a pen without causing your described symptoms. <br>

If it works as a pen with no problems then try the pen with your hand resting on the tablet surface. <br>

Silly question, simple test. <br>

If using the pen with touch is turned on whilst touching the surface produces your problem, well, there's your problem. Oh, and don't forget to RTFM esp. the touch section.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Silly question, Do you have touch enabled? If so turn it off.</p>

<p>I use up to four Youngnuo speed lights (YN560-II) with wireless triggers. Cheap, yes and if one breaks a replacement is still cheap.</p>