Annie Leibovitz Shoots Celebs as Disney Characters

From Anthony Luke’s blog we find this…..

There are many more pictures from this series to see here

Cameras vs the human eye

I was teaching the first session of our Understanding Your DSLR Camera last night and in encouraging the students to explore their subjects and not to just take a picture from their standing position set me thinking about the difference between the human eye and a camera. Why can’t we just point a camera and capture what we see, how hard can it be? I am often told by those new to photography that what their cameras reproduce is not what they see so why is that. Doing a bit of research I found my way back to the ever excellent Cambridge in Colour website. This has to be the most technically correct site on photography, the detail and explanations are precise as a very precise thing, say an atomic clock….Here is a short bit of what is explained, go here for the full detail with pictures and diagrams, it is interesting

Portrait of Dennis Stock by Andreas Feininger

Our eyes are able to look around a scene and dynamically adjust based on subject matter, whereas cameras capture a single still image. This trait accounts for many of our commonly understood advantages over cameras. For example, our eyes can compensate as we focus on regions of varying brightness, can look around to encompass a broader angle of view, or can alternately focus on objects at a variety of distances…….

Our central angle of view — around 40-60° — is what most impacts our perception. Subjectively, this would correspond with the angle over which you could recall objects without moving your eyes. Incidentally, this is close to a 50 mm “normal” focal length lens on a full frame camera (43 mm to be precise), or a 27 mm focal length on a camera with a 1.6X crop factor. Although this doesn’t reproduce the full angle of view at which we see, it does correspond well with what we perceive as having the best trade-off between different types of distortion:…….

Most current digital cameras have 5-20 megapixels, which is often cited as falling far short of our own visual system. This is based on the fact that at 20/20 vision, the human eye is able to resolve the equivalent of a 52 megapixel camera (assuming a 60° angle of view)……

Taking the above into account, a single glance by our eyes is therefore only capable of perceiving detail comparable to a 5-15 megapixel camera….

Overall, most of the advantages of our visual system stem from the fact that our mind is able to intelligently interpret the information from our eyes, whereas with a camera, all we have is the raw image. Even so, current digital cameras fare surprisingly well, and surpass our own eyes for several visual capabilities. The real winner is the photographer who is able to intelligently assemble multiple camera images — thereby surpassing even our own mental image.  Go here for the full article on Cambridge in Colour

14 Ways to Improve Your Photography in a Few Days

This article by Chase Guttman,  an award-winning travel photographer, whose love for travel and adventure has allowed him to photograph his experiences in over 40 countries, on the Lightstalking website is on the button, I don’t think I can disagree with any of his points.

Some might argue the point that photography is an art form.  Training your eye to see the world and translating your perspective visually takes time and patience. Yet, there’s also technique involved in creating arresting images. There are ways to quickly improve your photography and impact your creative vision. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

Here are just a couple of the points Chase makes

1. Read The Manual. Resist the impulse to cavalierly toss your manual in the trash as it holds a plethora of knowledge. For savvy shooters, manuals are the holy grail of photography books. They teach us the functions, capabilities and basics of our most important piece of equipment. The camera manual should be the bible for your gear. I recommend placing it in your camera bag. It will be worth the extra weight.

You could take our Understanding Your Digital SLR Course which would also help

3. Lighting Lessons in a Flash. Beginners seem to misunderstand the magic of a flash.  Keep in mind that most flashes illuminate only about ten feet in front of you. Furthermore, there are two main ways to optimally use flash — flash fill and bounce flash. In flash fill, you use the light source to attempt to fill the shadows created by natural lighting sources such as the midday sun. Bounce flash on the other hand is when the flash’s light is bounced off a wall or surface so it lights an indoor room evenly. To take better pictures, try to diffuse your flash by either aiming the light away from the subject or by using gels to minimize the light’s strength. Harsh or strong light isn’t kind on a subject’s face. Additionally, if the light isn’t diffused you may experience flash blow out, where your subject is a pitch white color and there’s a lack of highlights in your image. For maximum creativity and flexibility purchase an external flash.

We completely agree with this and have a course designed specifically to help people make better use of flash in their photography, here is a link to that course

©Keith Barnes 2012

Chase has more great advice on getting better at photography go here to see the rest

Full details of our course schedule can be found here

Click Here: 14 Ways to Improve Your Photography in a Few Days