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No, silly! We’re not blowing up pictures, we’re blowing out pictures! This is probably one of the easiest things to do in a shot, simply because you only have to adjust one setting

See that button just above the menu/set button in this picture?

Every camera should have a button with that little black and white logo on it somewhere. That’s the exposure compensation button. What it does is let you lighten and darken your picture to get the best colour balance. The positive end of the scale makes the picture lighter, and the negative end, darker. (+/- EV)

All it takes is turning it up to around 1.5+ EV on my camera to turn a normal picture into something striking…

Good luck, and remember: if you take a cool picture and you really want to show it off, go ahead and post it in out Flickr group!

I know this is what you’ve all been waiting for… an actual photography contest where you could win a prize! (albeit a small one). There will be four contests in all, encompassing the skills you have learned as students of the Perspective series. The winner each week will be announced prior to the next week’s challenge being posted. The winning photos will be chosen according to originality, following the challenge objectives and overall awesomeness!

Instructions:

1. Make a Flickr/Yahoo! account here. If you have one already, please don’t feel pressured to make a new one ; )
2. You’ll need to first upload the picture to your Flickr account, and then add the picture to the group pool. Here’s the page; it’s pretty self-explanatory.
3. Head on over to the YAA Perspective Photography page. Feel free to become a member if you want, but it’s not necessary for the next step.
4. You are allowed to upload 3 pictures per week to the pool, so try to pick your favourites. RULE: IT MUST BE YOUR OWN PHOTO. We have ways of checking.

When a winner is chosen for that week, I will directly message your Flickr account asking for a code and your email; this code will be included at the end of the contest posting on Youth Are Awesome, so that only YAA readers are getting the prizes, and the email is so that I can send you an awesome iTunes song. Or, if you’re not an iPod person, a song from Puretracks.

The winners will also be featured in the next week’s post! SO… Let’s get started!

Week 1 Challenge:

A macro photo. Pretty simple, but there are so many places you readers could take this. Please try to keep the editing to a minimum. If you need a refresher, I touched on macro photography in Perspective Pt. 2: The Basics. Good luck, and happy shooting!

Keyword: Analog

This week in our Perspective series, we’re going to try to do the opposite of last week! Don’t remember what that was? Click here!

Instead of taking pictures really fast, we’re going to take them very slowly. The main use for this is most likely night shots, but I has many uses. With a little practice, you’ll be creating masterpieces like these:

Neat, eh?

The technique to a long exposure is astoundingly easy, and yet it yields such beautiful results! Here it goes:

1. Make sure it’s dark out
2. Set up a tripod or stable surface on which to put your camera.
3. Go to either Full Manual of Shutter Priority mode on your camera
4. Take a picture with a 1 second shutter.
5. If it’s too dark, go up to 2 seconds, and on and on, etc.
6. Make sure that you’re not touching your camera when the shot is taken; set a timer before the shot.
7. Experiment and have fun with it!

Happy Spring Break!   – The Gentleman Scholar

Hey folks! This week in YAA’s Perspective series, we’re going to stop time.  Yeah, that’s right!  All we need is a camera and a little bit of ingenuity.  :)

To explain the project to you, it’s pretty simple. We’re going to take a picture of a falling drop of water so fast that there’s no blur in the picture, and it seems like it’s just floating there!

A quick heads up and warning before we start: Remember, electronics and water don’t mix. Camera + a nice bath = BAD. Please be careful if you decide to try this!

Ready? Ready!

Equipment you’ll need:

• Camera. You’ll need to be able to set the ISO and Shutter speed manually. The ISO will have to go up to about 400 and the shutter speed to 1/2000ths of a second
• Tripod, or some other crazy camera support device of you own imagining.
• A piece of white, letter sized paper
• A paper towel or two
• A sink
• LOTS of lights!

Step 1: Make a cheap flash diffuser (more…)

Welcome back to Perspective! Not that you’ve got all those confusing settings on your camera all worked out, it’s time to put them to work!

As counterintuitive as it may sound, taking something away from a picture is not always a bad thing.  Today, we’re taking away the colour.  Yes, all of it.  Black and white photography can be quite dramatic (such as the famously powerful and disturbing photo after the jump from the Vietnam War taken by photographer Nick Ut, which won him a Pulitzer Prize), and many great and renowned pictures were taken in this colour-less format.  Take a look:

(more…)

Last week, we figured out which camera is right for you. Whether or not you went and splurged on a brand-new Nikon D3X ($14000!!!) or you’re sticking with your family’s  age-old Holga, you’re now probably wondering what to do with this piece of equipment in your hands. First you have to look for the power button… Well, we hope we don’t have to teach you that

Assuming the reason you’re reading this column is because you want to learn how to take good pictures, we’ll try to stay away from using the “Auto” or “Scene” functions on your camera. The first things you then need to learn are the many settings which affect how a picture will turn out. The three main settings are:

ISO: Determines how sensitive the image sensor is. In film cameras, you had to choose your film depending on what kind of shots you were planning to take. If you were into sports photography, you would buy film with a high ISO. If  you wanted to go out during a sunny day and take pictures of the landscape, you would then get film with a lower ISO.  Really, the only difference in the film was it’s chemical content, each one formulated to react to light differently. Nowadays, ISO changes the gain of the image sensor, or CCD, meaning it tells the camera how much of the picture to guess at. This doesn’t mean someone will be missing a head in your next group photo, but it does mean that if you set the ISO high enoughm you’ll see little flecks of colour that don’t belong. This is where the camera guessed.

To use the ISO: If you’re taking a picture out in the sun or somewhere bright, you can leave the ISO pretty low, near 100 or so. If you’re taking a picture in a dark place, you should raise the ISO so that the picture is brighter. Be warned, however: If you go too high, the picture will be grainy, looking like it’s covered with coloured sand. Test it out first.

Aperture: Have you ever seen an iPhone take a picture? It looks something like this:

That’s not actually a shutter, the way Apple uses it, but the aperture of your camera. It doesn’t snap open and closed when you take a picture, nor does it “click.”  It actually stays stationary until you tell it to change, aka when you’re setting up for a shot. It controls the amount of light that gets to the CCD by widening or tightening, exactly like your iris. Also, it changes your depth of field, meaning how much of the picture is in focus. (more…)

“Perspective:” A new YAA column from the Gentleman Scholar – Check back every week for new entries!

Photography, cinematography, and all things related are the specialty here!  I’ve seen that many of the people I know are into photography, and you might have, too.  If your interest is piqued, and you think this might be for you, or you just want to know more, read on!

This week: your tool of the (photography) trade and more importantly, how to choose the right on for you.

When choosing a camera, there are many, many criteria to choose from, and it all depends on what you’re shooting. As a quick evaluator of what you might need, feel free to take this quiz:

Help me choose a camera!  Answer with what YOU would do, not necessarily what you think a pro would do.

Question 1: When you take picture do you…?

a) Hold the camera in the general direction you’re shooting, close your eyes and pray for the best.

b) Put the camera down on a hard surface so it doesn’t shake, and try and frame your shot nicely.

c) Wait around all day for the shot to appear, making sure you have your ISO and exposure dialed well in advance.

Question 2: When you hear the phrase “white balance” do you think…?

a) Balance? Like on a teeter-totter? (more…)