We produce photography and videos with Garden Song Studios.  We also produce music.  Along with producing original music for some of the videos that I create, some people have noticed that I also play the trumpet.  The most frequent questions that I have been relates mostly to practice (regardless of instrument) ; i.e., 4 hours per day, how do I improve technique, how do I learn to play, etc.

Learning to play a musical instrument  involves two things; the muscles and the mind.  Two other things are vitally important; desire and patience.  The most scientific way to explain this is listed below.

The quality of your practice is much more important than the quantity. The old saying “practice makes perfect” is only true if the practice itself is perfect. Here are 7 tips to help make your practice more effective and efficient.

Practice motions slowly

The muscular memory of our bodies allows us to physically carry out patterns of motion with little or no conscious involvement. Examples of muscular memory include walking, riding a bicycle, typing, and of course playing a musical instrument.

In order to develop this memory, the muscles require training in the form of repeated conscious guidance from the mind. First the mind must learn the pattern. Then the mind must “teach” the pattern to the muscles.

The mind initially must control all the motions of the muscles. The more controlled and precise the motions, the more quickly the muscles will develop muscle memory.

Slow practice also allows the mind to teach “antagonistic muscles” to relax. Antagonistic muscles are those that move in opposite directions. By relaxing antagonistic muscles you can reduce tension and facilitate faster and easier performance and avoid potential injury.

Practice in small cells

A “practice cell” is simply a finite series of motions. Musical cells can correspond to anything from a few notes to an entire work. When practicing, it is important to practice small cells of just a few notes. Practicing small cells limits the amount of information the muscles have to learn at one time. It also facilitates the mind’s focus and concentration.

Link the end of one cell to the beginning of the next

To help the muscles develop a sense of continuum throughout the piece of music, the last motion in a cell should be the first motion of the following cell.

Practice each cell in bursts

Once the muscles have learned a pattern, they will be capable of executing it without conscious control. Initiate the pattern through a conscious command and allow the muscles to execute it in a burst.

Don’t practice mistakes

For every repetition required to learn a pattern of motion, it takes 7 times the number of repetitions to change the pattern. If in the course of your practice you make an error, stop. Review in your mind the pattern. And further reduce the speed of your motions.

Pause between repetitions

When dealing with repetitive activities, the mind is better able to focus when the repetitions are broken up by short pauses. After two or three repetitions, pause for about 30 seconds to regain focus.

Take frequent breaks and don’t “over-practice”

B.F. Skinner and other experts have found that the mind’s ability to learn drops significantly after prolonged intense concentration. Research shows that studying too long (i.e. more than four hours) can deplete chemicals in the brain necessary for learning. Therefore, it is best to take frequent breaks (a 5 minute break about every 20-25 minutes) and practice no more than 4 hours consecutively.

By applying these techniques, you can dramatically improve the quality of your practice. You’ll be able to use your time more efficiently and increase the effectiveness of your practice.

The first step to getting great digital photo prints, is to make sure you use a good quality digital camera.

Digital photos are gaining popularity over traditional film photos because of the features and convenience associated with the newer technology.  In some cases it’s even more cost effective to print your own photos at home instead of taking them to a developer or sending them in. 

Here are some words of wisdom for making great digital photo prints at home.

There are really 4 key components to a great printed photo: Image, Printer, Ink, Paper.  Each is part interrelated therefore equally important for success. 

The image is the starting point for a good photo.  There are many different camera models out there, but in general, you will need at least 3.2 megapixel picture taking ability.  Some snazzy digital SLR cameras have 8 megapixels or more.  The camera should always be set to the highest resolution while taking the shots just in case you want to make enlargements later on. 

Image transfer is crucial!  Do not just throw the highest pixel image at some paper, you may not be happy with the results. 

Sometimes, too high of a pixel count will create unsightly jagged color transitions in your photo and waste a lot of your ink and time. Too few pixels and the photos will turn out very “grainy”.  It’s usually best to stay within the 200-300 pixels per inch range.

This chart may help you determine your appropriate photo sizes.
Print Size : Good Results (200 ppi) : Excellent Results (300 ppi)
========================================================
4×6 inch … 800 by 1200 px (~1 mpx) ….. 1200 by 1800 px (~2 mpx)
5×7 inch … 1000 by 1400 px (~1.5 mpx) .. 1500 by 2100 px (~3 mpx)
8×10 inch .. 1600 by 2000 px (~3 mpx) …. 2400 by 3000 px (~7 mpx)
11×14 inch . 2200 by 2800 px (~6 mpx) …. 3300 by 4200 px (~14 mpx)
16×20 inch . 3200 by 4000 px (~13 mpx) … 4800 by 6000 px (~29 mpx)

Legend
========
px = Pixels
mpx = Megapixels
ppi = Pixels per inch
(data compiled from PC World.com)
For example, if you had a picture taken with a 1.5 Megapixel digital camera, a 5×7 inch print is probably the largest size print that would work.  Anything larger than a 5×7, may not look good. 

However, if you had a picture taken with a 14 Megapixel camera, you should be able to print out a 11×14 inch print with excellent results (300ppi), or a “good” looking 16×20 inch print at 200 ppi.

In addition to the digital camera image, there are a few other components that go into making good quality digital photos you’ll want to be aware of:  Your printer, the ink cartridges you use, and the quality of the photo paper you use.  Each component factors into your end result.

There are many differences between film and digital photography. To most amateur photographers they do not matter much. They prefer the convenience, ease of use and lower cost of digital cameras and are not going to revert to the film age. However understanding the differences can help taking even better photos and can also help when debating with friends about the future of film.

Following is a list of differences that are important to understand. The differences are listed in no particular order.

The sensor

The most obvious difference between film and digital is the sensor used to take the photo. With film cameras a film sensitive to light is placed behind the lens. When a photo is taken the shutter opens for a predetermined period of time and light hits the film. The result is a photo “printed” on the film. To take a new photo, the film has to be rolled and a fresh “clean” film is place behind the lens. With digital cameras a fixed electronic sensor (sometimes known as CCD) is situated behind the lens. The sensor is built from tiny light sensitive sensors each representing a pixel. When the shutter opens light hits the sensor and each pixel gets its “value”. Put together all the pixels comprise one photo. To take a new photo the photo is saved on a digital media and the CCD is electronically emptied.

What does a different sensor mean?

The main difference is in the Depth of Field. Since digital sensors are smaller in size than a 35mm film the depth of field will be much higher and in fact in most compact digital cameras almost infinite. The result is that blur backgrounds can not be created.

The cost of a photo

Photos taken with a digital camera literally cost nothing. The photos are kept in erasable memory and thus can always be discarded at no cost. Also the photos you would like to keep can be copied to digital media such as a computer’s hard disk. With storage prices going down the cost of saving a photo on disk is practically zero. Film does cost money. With a film camera you have to pay for the roll of film, for developing the negative and for printing the photo. Every time you press the shutter button you spend money.

The capacity

With ever growing storage capacities digital cameras today can hold hundreds and sometimes thousands of photos on a single media. You can always have a few more in your pocket and changing is very fast. The result is that a digital camera has practically infinite capacity. You can shoot as many photos as you want and at the end of the day just dump them on your computer’s disk. Film cameras’ capacity is very limited. A roll of 36 photos can only hold 36 photos. After a roll is used changing to a new roll can take time and is not easy to do in scenarios such as darkness or a harsh environment. For that reason many professional journalists carry a few cameras on them and instead of changing rolls they turn and use another camera just so that they do not miss a shooting opportunity.

The feedback

One of the most important features of the digital camera is instant feedback. Almost all digital cameras include a small LCD screen. Once a photo is shot you can go back and watch it on that screen. The ability to see how the photo looks like results in better photos. If the photo is not good you can take another one. Being able to see the photos on the spot results in an educated decision how to fix a photo or how to better compose it. It takes a lot of the guessing away from photography. With film cameras there is no way to know how the photo on the film will look like when printed.

New shooting angles

With digital cameras you can actually take photos without having your eye glued to the viewfinder. Overhead shots where you raise the camera over your head are much easier to do since you can still see what the camera is shooting by just looking up at its LCD screen.

Correcting photos

With digital cameras photos can be corrected using photo editing software. Some correction abilities are built-in to the cameras but many more are available as software packages for your PC. With film cameras what you get is what you get. After the film is developed it is very hard to make any corrections. Usually if corrections are absolutely needed the negative or the printed photo will be scanned (i.e. converted to digital) corrected and then printed again (in a long and costly process).

Changing conditions

Every roll of film is designed for best results in a specific environment. For example there are indoor and outdoor films or films with different light sensitivity. If conditions change rapidly a film camera user will have to either shoot with the wrong film, change the roll (and usually lose photos that were not used in the current roll) or use another camera with a different film in it. The results of shooting with the wrong film can be distorted colors (reddish photos for example), a grainy photo and more.

With digital cameras the characteristics of the sensor can be changed instantly for each photo taken. With a click of a button the camera can be put in an indoor or outdoor mode, low light, night photography etc. Some cameras will automatically sense the scenario and set the sensor mode accordingly.

The myth of quality

While it is true that film photography has its advantages the claim for superior quality is no longer true. As digital cameras evolved, the quality of high end digital SLR cameras is superb and in many ways even better than film. When considering quality you should also consider the quality in terms of composition and the scenario caught in the photo. With digital cameras’ high capacity, zero photo cost and instant adaptability to changing conditions photographers can produce better compositions and experiment more to get the best photo possible.

Longevity

Digital photos never lose their quality. A digital photo will be identical today and 500 years from now. As long as we remember to refresh the digital media every now and then, and to back it up, our photos can literally last forever and not lose their quality.

In most interiors art photographs are brought in as the finishing touch.  It’s one of the elements that can instantly warm up a space and make it feel like home. Photographs can expand a space both visually and emotionally, give us a window to the world, bring interest and color to the wall spaces, and generally liven up the place. Here’s concise hints how to arrange photographs in a room. In general, photographs should be hung so that the center point of the photograph or grouping is at about eye level for the average person. While this won’t be possible in every situation, it’s a good guideline to keep in mind.

Size and Grouping
• Relate photograph to wall size. Choose smaller pictures for narrow walls and larger works for big wall spaces.
• Relate photograph to furniture size. When hanging a framed photograph over a piece of furniture it should not be longer than the width of the furniture.
• Don’t hang the photographs too close to each other or you will end up with a cluttered look. Don’t hang them too far apart or you’ll lose that unified look.
• Proper use of line can set the mood in a room:
- Strong horizontal lines in photograph, or in the way it is hung, tend to be calming and can give the illusion of width in a narrow room.
- Strong vertical lines in a photograph or in the arrangement on the wall add to the feeling of height in a room.
- Strong diagonal lines either within a photograph itself or in a line of photographs arranged on the wall add drama and excitement.
• Use symmetrical or asymmetrical arrangements of photographs to create either a formal or a casual feeling. Symmetry adds balance and formality to an arrangement and is generally pleasing and calming to the observer.
• A grouping of photographs should be thought of as one unit.
• One large photograph makes a statement and keeps things simple.
• A number of photographs framed in one mat and frame will have more impact.

Themes
• Support your room theme with photographs, repeating the colors, motifs, and style of the room’s interior.
• Landscape photographs visually open up a smaller space. The view of a distant horizon acts as a sort of window.

Color
• Vibrant colors bring excitement to a room, neutral colors are more calming.
• Photographs will have greater impact if matted in a contrasting color to the wall. Choose a dark mat for a light wall and a light mat for a dark wall.

Framing
• Choose frame colors and styles that match the style of your home.
• To harmonize a set of photographs, mat and frame them alike.

Lighting
• Illuminate photographs well. It can be lost unless well lit.
• Depending on a given place, one can use a picture light, track lighting or recessed lighting.

Hanging
• Hang photographs securely. Rate picture hooks for the weight of the framed photograph.

Care of Photographs
• Never hang photograph in direct sunlight: it can fade.
• Never hang photograph above a working fireplace.
• Never hang photograph on an exterior wall without adequate insulation: it can dampen.
• Maintain a constant room temperature and humidity.
• Mat boards and adhesives must be acid-free, otherwise yellowing will occur.

Photo collections – for traditional photographers the phrase conjures thoughts of bound albums and mounds of shoeboxes, stuffed to capacity with 5 x 7 inch pictures. For today’s ever growing ranks of digital photographers however, it brings to mind thoughts of a stamp-sized memory card, a pocket hard drive, or CDs and DVDs. Welcome to the world of digital photography, which is fundamentally changing the way we capture and preserve images.

Digital photography today is a rapidly growing consumer pastime with many advantages versus traditional film-based cameras, including the ability to immediately review, erase, annotate or categorize images, speed and ease of operation, and quality at the high end of the digital photography scale. Although some film cameras can operate without batteries, minus the flash, most consumers are unconcerned with use in wet or poor weather environments and are drawn to digital cameras by all of the advantages that they offer.

Because of this, the entire photography industry is changing to embrace different consumer preferences, including a reduced desire for printed photos. The market for printed photos from film in the United States peaked in 2000 at over 30 billion, and then fell to under 26 billion by 2004. Initially, there were problems with quick-service photography shops “cropping” digital images in order to force them to print properly on the same paper used by film cameras – as more and more people move to digital however, services and products emerge to make it easier to transfer your memories from electronic to tangible.

Some people feel that a picture just isn’t a picture if you can’t put it into a frame (although wireless, internet-enabled miniature LCD ‘picture frames’ ARE available) or store it in a photo album. But many of today’s young people are much more comfortable with technology than their parents and grandparents. It is not uncommon for a college student to feel more secure with electronic images than paper ones.

No one is certain whether digital photography will eventually reduce our demand for photo prints, but it is guaranteed that the way of the future in photography is digital. Additionally, there are far more snapshots being taken than ever before, due to the ease with which they can be reviewed and removed from digital cameras. So whether you’re partial to electronic or shoebox image storage, be ready for photos to get easier, better and cheaper in coming years – and of course, keep smiling.

Photography is one of the beautiful definitions of an art that expresses the picture portrayed. The three components linked with Photography are artist, medium and the art work. The three components are inter-related to each other.

Many people found photography to be a mere reproductive medium and hence the reason photography really struggled for one and half centuries.

Photography is definitely art work, it needs a lot of talent and imagination to portray and expression through a simple portrait. It is an art of recognizing the minutest effects on reaching the heart of the picture. It is not only clicking the photographs, but it is about giving them a sequence a background a picture, liveliness and a medium. A Photograph artist brings the Pictures to life once they are clicked. It is a beautiful art of recognizing the most behavior of nature, person or a situation.

Photography as an art has taken its place and fame in the market today. There are many people around the world who are crazy about Photography. There are people who want to choose these professions because of their artistic interventions. Photography has not diminished rather it has found a way to win hearts of many people.

Photography being an art is also a challenge; it is depicting the true self out of a non-living thing. For example, it brings life the picture that can be so dead. When we think of the simple image of nature, photography can bring those simple images of nature alive by adding colors and definitions to it to make it alive in the eyes of the viewers.

Photography is the best thing, it is the imagination of head and it is the imagination of thoughts. One can get easily engrossed in the line of photography. There are many photographers who spend hours throughout the day, in defining the simple clicks and making them alive.

Adding colors, adding a sense, adding a life to something that is non-living is an art. Photographs of various natural instincts bring to our imagination of photography being a defined art. Many times, Photographs depict a lot about a person, that person themselves are not aware of.

Photography as an art has just been recognized in the recent years, over the year people have accepted the secrets of photography and what it can portray. Photography depicts the known from the unknown; it is an art of going to the depths of understanding the vitality and the nature of any picture.

Photography also is a beautiful art of imagination, it is an art of dream and it is an art of bringing the dream to reality. The major sequence of photography can be seen through various examples given by the photographers of the past.

Keep an eye on the weather

Weather conditions can play a big part in setting the mood of your shot. Rather than waiting for the bright light of the midday sun, a misty morning in a forest can be the perfect time of day for that mood-shot.

Take your time to choose the subject

Take your time to choose the subject, and then spend time walking around the subject looking for the best angle and lighting.

Take your time to set up the shot

Don’t be afraid to take your time to set up your shot. Although it can get a bit frustrating if you have your loved ones tagging along and they’re sitting and waiting impatiently for 20 minutes for you to take a single shot of a piece of driftwood on the beach!

Don’t always choose brightly-coloured subjects

Subjects with muted colours can sometimes produce excellent results. A field of wheat of similar yellow-brown colour can produce striking results when accompanied by a low-sun and long shadows.

Movement diffusion

If you have a camera that allows you to shoot with a manual shutter speed; try slowing the speed and increasing the F-stop. Then move your camera when taking the shot. Some very effective arty-type images can be produced with blur effects.

Overexpose your subject

Not too good to do all the time, but experiment with results by over-exposing the subject.

Try macro photography

Grab a magnifying glass and see if you can focus your camera through the glass onto a small subject. It just may work! And may open up a whole new range of subjects for you!

Shoot through wet glass

Try spraying water onto a window, then take a shot through the window to a subject outside. (wet the outside of the window – not the inside of your home!)

Colour balance

Try balancing colour by having subject and the surrounding detail in similar colours.

Silhouettes

Silhouettes usually have a small range of colours, but can produce some of the most beautiful images. Shooting a silhouette involves having the background brighter then the subject in the foreground.

Experiment with patterns

We’ve all seen those amazing images of the red and orange leaves of maple trees in the fall/autumn. Thousands of leaves – all of a similar shape and colour – but very awe-inspiring and beautiful.

Compliment colours

Two strikingly-different colours can be beautiful too. Picture an image of your girlfriend or wife in a red dress sitting on a field of green grass; or your boyfriend or husband in a red shirt walking through a field of waist-high wheat stalks; complimentary colours that will bring more attention to the subject.

Use a colour filter

If your camera can be fitted with coloured filters – try it. This effect can be made quite easily these days with photo and image-editing software.

Sunrise is better than sunset

Wake up before sunrise one day and go on a photography expedition. If you’ve not done it before you’ll be pleasantly-surprised by the contrasting light and shadows. But remember you’ll only have a very short window of time in which to shoot (usually less than an hour) before the sun rises too high and you lose the light.

Use a flash in daylight

Use your flash during the daytime to fill a close subject with light. This will produce better results where the background is brighter than your subject and the automatic shutter speed on your camera shoots too fast to effectively show the detail of your subject.

For centuries images have been projected onto surfaces. The camera obscura and the camera lucida were used by artists to trace scenes as early as the 16th century. These early cameras did not fix an image in time; they only projected what passed through an opening in the wall of a darkened room onto a surface. In effect, the entire room was turned into a large pinhole camera. Indeed, the phrase camera obscura literally means “darkened room,” and it is after these darkened rooms that all modern cameras have been named.

The first photograph is considered to be an image produced in 1826 by the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce on a polished pewter plate covered with a petroleum derivative called bitumen of Judea. It was produced with a camera, and required an eight hour exposure in bright sunshine. However this process turned out to be a dead end and Niépce began experimenting with silver compounds based on a Johann Heinrich Schultz discovery in 1724 that a silver and chalk mixture darkens when exposed to light.

Niépce, in Chalon-sur-Saône, and the artist Louis Daguerre, in Paris, refined the existing silver process in a partnership. In 1833 Niépce died of a stroke, leaving his notes to Daguerre. While he had no scientific background, Daguerre made two pivotal contributions to the process.

He discovered that by exposing the silver first to iodine vapour, before exposure to light, and then to mercury fumes after the photograph was taken, a latent image could be formed and made visible. By then bathing the plate in a salt bath the image could be fixed.

In 1839 Daguerre announced that he had invented a process using silver on a copper plate called the Daguerreotype. A similar process is still used today for Polaroid’s. The French government bought the patent and immediately made it public domain.

Across the English Channel, William Fox Talbot had earlier discovered another means to fix a silver process image but had kept it secret. After reading about Daguerre’s invention Talbot refined his process, so that it might be fast enough to take photographs of people as Daguerre had done and by 1840 he had invented the calotype process.

He coated paper sheets with silver chloride to create an intermediate negative image. Unlike a daguerreotype a calotype negative could be used to reproduce positive prints, like most chemical films do today. Talbot patented this process which greatly limited its adoption.

He spent the rest of his life in lawsuits defending the patent until he gave up on photography altogether. But later this process was refined by George Eastman and is today the basic technology used by chemical film cameras. Hippolyte Bayard also developed a method of photography but delayed announcing it, and so was not recognized as its inventor.

In the dark room in 1851, Frederick Scott Archer invented the collodion process. It was the process used by Lewis Carroll.

Slovene Janez Puhar invented the technical procedure for making photographs on glass in 1841. The invention was recognized on July 17th 1852 in Paris by the Académie Nationale Agricole, Manufacturière et Commerciale.

The Daguerreotype proved popular in responding to the demand for portraiture emerging from the middle classes during the Industrial Revolution. This demand, that could not be met in volume and in cost by oil painting, may well have been the push for the development of photography.

However daguerreotypes, while beautiful, were fragile and difficult to copy. A single photograph taken in a portrait studio could cost US$1000 in 2006 dollars. Photographers also encouraged chemists to refine the process of making many copies cheaply, which eventually led them back to Talbot’s process. Ultimately, the modern photographic process came about from a series of refinements and improvements in the first 20 years.

In 1884 George Eastman, of Rochester, New York, developed dry gel on paper, or film, to replace the photographic plate so that a photographer no longer needed to carry boxes of plates and toxic chemicals around. In July of 1888 Eastman’s Kodak camera went on the market with the slogan “You press the button, we do the rest”. Now anyone could take a photograph and leave the complex parts of the process to others. Photography became available for the mass-market in 1901 with the introduction of Kodak Brownie.

Since then color film has become standard, as well as automatic focus and automatic exposure. Digital recording of images is becoming increasingly common, as digital cameras allow instant previews on LCD screens and the resolution of top of the range models has exceeded high quality 35mm film while lower resolution models have become affordable. For the enthusiast photographer, processing black and white film little has changed since the introduction of the 35mm film Leica camera in 1925.

Have you ever sat in front of a computer, flipped through multiple store catalogs, or paced through the aisles at your local department store looking for the perfect gift for a friend or family member? If you have then you are not alone. Each day there are multiple individuals who need to purchase a special gift for a birthday, anniversary, or another special occasion.

If you end up purchasing a gift from a department store or a catalog it is likely that the gift you selected isn’t as personalized as you wished it would be. The problem with purchasing a personalized gift is that many individuals are looking in the wrong spot. A personalized photo blanket is a gift that would likely meet your needs; however, it is one that cannot be found in most department stores or store catalogs. Many times the only way to purchase a personalized photo blanket is to find a photo designer online.

Finding a personalized photo blanket designer is easy thanks to the internet. Many individuals who make a living developing personalized photo blankets only advertise their business online. This is why you may have never seen or heard of a personalized photo blanket before. Each photo blanket designer is likely to offer different product features and designs; therefore, you are encouraged to see what each individual has to offer before planning your blanket design.

Personalized photo blankets often come in a large number of different sizes and styles. To determine which size and style you would like to purchase you should first learn what is offered. It is not uncommon for small throw blankets to be offered; however, it is possible for smaller and larger photo blankets to be developed. When purchasing a personalized photo blanket you will also need to know if color blankets are available. Most individuals prefer a black and white blanket; however, both items are popular.

When a personalized photo blanket is purchased it is possible for the blanket to be used; however, many times they are just used as a memento. If you are purchasing a personalized photo blanket for someone that you know you should keep this in mind when making the purchase. There are many photo blanket designers who sell wall hanging kits. This is a great personalized photo blanket accessory for those who will want to preserve the blanket and keep it as clean as possible.

A personalized photo blanket is a great gift for friends and family members. Whether you are ordering a personalized photo blanket with a picture of you and your best friend or a picture of your family there is nothing as meaningful and as personalized as a photo blanket. Why purchase a generic gift when you can offer so much more to the person that you care about?

A good photographer is like a good story teller; conveying all the excitement and atmosphere through his or her images including the little details that really help to color the full story of the day. I also believe politeness and the ability to mix with a broad range of people of all ages is absolutely essential to get the best out of people.  Remember 30 years ago and more, all the most amazing press shots were taken by a very basic camera, all manual and in film!  It takes more than a digital camera to tell the story of your wedding day.

 A good photographer is one who is able to blend into the party, mingling with the guests and putting everyone at ease, while getting the all important shots. As emotions show through clearly in photos, it is the photographer’s job to make the Bride, Groom and Guests feel comfortable in front of the camera. A good photographer is capable of combining advantages of medium format with spontaneity and improvisation, but it requires some effort.

 A good photographer is one who notices things others are oblivious to. A good photographer is an artist, unless he or she is just a good photographer hired to document architecture or horticulture; and even then there’s room for art. What being an artist might mean is too long for this article, but it means something far different from “stenographer of straight, unadulterated reality.”  Perhaps through vision and technical skill the photographer can convey some reality. A good photographer is a good photographer either digital or not.

 A good photographer is an artist in his or her own right. As a matter of fact, I think photographs are critical as references for a good fine art portrait, and I use photographs without apology. A good photographer is not just someone who knows the technicalities of taking pictures. It’s an artist who knows how to take ordinary situations and turn them into photographic masterpieces. A good photographer is worth the few hundred dollars for a photo shoot of your property. Keep in mind that the cost is tax deductible.

 Wedding couples may be overwhelmed when trying to decide how to best share their wedding photographs among friends and families. There are many photo-sharing websites to choose from, but they are often cluttered with overwhelming features, limitations, and fees to confuse the photo sharing beginners. Wedding photos are by nature timeless, but today’s photography techniques can add extra style and meaning to your shots. One of the biggest trends in wedding photography today is capturing the day’s events in a photojournalistic style, also called documentary photography.

 A good photographer is always asking questions and answering them as fast as he or she can press the shutter. In fact, whenever possible, most of the questions are answered before the camera is even brought up to the eye. A good photographer is the master of his or her tool; a great photographer is the master of his or her imagination.