Black and White Art - How Some Artists Learned To Capture Their Work

Before color photography, there was black and white. And although many people enjoy their colored paintings and photographed art, black and white is still loved by many and continues to be popular for not only the art buyer, but the artists that so creatively capture these shots. Although there is a wide range of photographers and artists that hold a passion for this art, it's nice to get into some of their heads and know where they got started creating the beauty of black and white. Steven Myers, is a native of Washington state and claims that black and white has been a part of his daily life since 1971. He uniquely crafts his black and white art through radiograph images. He has experimented with this type of art form for 25 years; as a radiology technologist. His many years of involvement with traditional landscape photography, made it quite the challenge with radiograph images. Yet, he tries to keep his work as unique as he can. Myers works full time as a radiology tech, and has his own radiology unit for personal use so he can make his own black and white art and creates more than 700 exposures per year. Jamie Cook is from Atlanta, Georgia. He attended Georgia State University majoring in Fine Art and Photography, which is where he began his formal training. He began his career as a professional advertising photographer. Cook created a digitally enhances photography approach. After traveling and capturing shots of his subjects he works closely with digital imaging programs on his computer to enhance his work. He uses a 35 millimeter camera to capture his subjects. He became well known for his photographs in the Southeast region and even got deals with clients who include The Ritz Carlton Hotels and Wrangler Jeans. He is also known for 4 awards he has received from Adweek. Cook continues to use various techniques to show art lovers his on-going passion for photography in black and white. Monte Nagler was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He received a degree in engineering as well as his MBA from The University of Michigan. After working for Ford Motor Company for a short while, he developed an interest in photography. It wasn't until his 30's that he became a renowned black and white photographer. Impressively, Monte only took a few photography classes and even worked with Ansel Adams who became a big inspiration to him and his work. Nagler quickly developed his own creative fine art photography. He believes that photographers should speak through their art "This is what I saw and felt and I'd like to share that!" Monte's has won several awards that can be found in many public as well as private collections. Some of these include Detroit Institute of Arts; The Dayton Art Institute and The Brooklyn Museum. Asisde from his art, he has conducted many of his own classes and seminars and has written 6 photography books. Nagler spends his time traveling to various places looking for his next opportunity to take more beautiful black and white shots. It's nice to explore the minds of photographers and artists that can take a picture and turn it into a work of art that many of us love to obtain and have in our homes. My Art Habit carries a wide range of framed canvas art and custom framed art. Black and white photography, framed botanical birds and insects and abstract art are available. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7304449

Simple Ways to Get the Best Trick Photography Photos From Your Human Subject

So you manage to get someone to pose for you so you can practice taking some trick photography shots, what can you do to get the best pose or photos? The key is to make it fun so the pictures don't turn out like portraits with a forced smile. You'll need ways to relax the subject so the smile, pose, or expression you're looking for is the one you get. Here are two simple ways to improve the quality of their pose. Distract them from the camera One way to loosen them up is to distract them from you and the camera. Get them talking about their favorite subject or let them interact with something or someone. Keep them busy and use it to goad them into getting into the pose you want. Be clear about what you're looking for and create a fun game or challenge for them. Remember that you're holding the camera so always be prepared to let the shutter go off when you sense a great shot coming up. Ask them to do a few practice attempts and catch them off-guard. Capture their personality Capturing the personality of your subject can turn your trick photos from good to great. Take levitation photos as an example. Anyone can do levitation photos by jumping high into the air, but everyone jumps in a different manner. Don't dictate where and how every limb should be when they jump and just let them be. A serious person might jump more rigidly than a free-spirited person with limbs flailing everywhere. Encourage them to let loose and be playful. As a photographer you're not just operating the camera, but also using your charm and grace to keep your subjects comfortable and willing to experiment to help you achieve the shots you want. Treat the process as a conversation between you and your subject and you'll be able to bring out the best of them. Jim blogs about trick photography and special effects techniques that people use to create stunning photographs. You can sign up at his Trick Photography site to receive a free report on the top 10 trick photography ideas for travel photos. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7307632

Showcase Your Favourite Images In Personalised Photo Books

Storing and keeping your favorite photographs used to offer a fairly limited range of options. This was due in no small part to the actual make up of photographs in the days before the widespread take up of digital photography. After the images had been captured on the roll of film it then had to be carefully removed from the camera, ensuring it didn't receive any exposure to light, before being handed over to a specialized laboratory. Once there, the film would be developed as negatives, which would then be used to print the actual photographs in question. Following printing, there was little more that could be done with the images. It was possible to have copies made of particular favorites, but only if the negatives had been kept in absolutely perfect condition, whilst having photographs enlarged was viable up to a certain point, after which it would often result in a breakdown in the quality of the image. Having amassed a collection of images, the question of storage arose, with people often choosing to make do with simply putting their photographs into a tin, or hiding them away in a drawer somewhere, neither of which was an ideal situation. At best, it was feasible to stick them into photo albums but, whilst often treasured, these tended to deteriorate fairly rapidly as time went by. Digital photographs, on the other hand, offer a range of storage options. If you've ever flicked through photo books in the UK and what your favorite images would look like if stored in the same manner, then you merely have to investigate the option of creating photo books online in order to find out just how easy this actually now is. Personalized photo books offer you the chance of storing a selection of your images in a style and up to a standard which has previously only been open to professional photographers. You may have just thrown a big anniversary party for your parents, for example, and wish to collect all of the special images between two luxurious hard covers, or perhaps you've returned from the holiday of a lifetime, and want to showcase the marvelous sight you saw. No matter what the subject matter, you merely need to upload the images to the relevant website and then set about designing your book. At first glance, this may sound daunting, but, in fact, the software has been designed in a way which removes any difficulty present, as well as meaning that absolutely no experience whatsoever is required. You'll be guided, one step at a time, through the process of laying out your pages, selecting the front and back cover and so on, and the resulting photo books will be as dazzling as any you can purchase in retail outlets. If you only wish to utilize one or two special images, then why not use the same simple technology to design photo greeting cards which are utterly unique. Greeting cards such as these, which you've taken the time to design yourself, will stand out vividly against their shop bought counterparts. Actually taking a digital photograph is now merely the start of the adventure. Whether you choose to produce a handful of photo greeting cards, or a shelf's worth of personalised photo books, you'll be creating gifts, keepsakes and mementos which will continue to delight for years to come. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7305363

How Do You Start A Photography Business

The business of photography is something that you really need to approach based on a honest assessment of your abilities, strengths and interests. From there you can then see if there's any kind of market for your planned products or services, and do some proof of concept research to ensure those markets will indeed pay you for your offerings. Then you'll be ready to start planning your business! Unfortunately most photographers come at it from the opposite direction. They have a desire to make money selling their photos but no real understanding or interest in the business processes involved in converting photography to income. They mistakenly believe great photography is all it takes to build a successful business. 1. Start with an honest assessment of your current situation. Photography is extremely competitive simply because it seems like such a dream-job to so many people. Modern digital technology means anyone with basic camera skills can create a good image, so everything thinks they're a great photographer with real prospects, you need to work out what makes you different? What specialised skills do you have that will set you apart from the crowd? What interests and knowledge do you have that you can use to in your work? What subjects & fields do you do your best work with? Do you have a distinct personal style of work that sets you apart? Is you equipment suitable for creating high-res, high quality images? Do you have the skills and software to take an image from your camera and create a commercial quality print-ready file? What business experience do you have? What sales & marketing experience do you have? The idea here is to first of all identify the kinds of products and services you're able to offer, and then assess whether those skills are at a level where people will pay you for them? 2. Is there a market for those products and/or services? It's one thing to know you can produce some amazing work, but it's another to know there are people out there who want to use it. So you really need to put in some time to determine whether or not there is a market for what you do? It doesn't matter how good your work is if you can't find anyone to buy it, and yet many photographers go into business with little more 'market research' than the encouragement of friends and family. "Wow, those photos are good, you should sell them!" So somehow you have to answer the following questions... Are there people who need the kinds of images you like to shoot? Are there people who buy photos of the subjects you shoot? Are there people who will pay you to create specific images for them? Are there people who will pay for your expertise or knowledge? The best approach here is to find other photographers offering similar products and services, and then see how your offerings stack up? (Google is great for this!) Are your subjects similar? Is your technique as strong? Do you present as professionally? If the buyer was to view your portfolio and that of your 'competitor', who would they choose to do the job? Why? If you're serious about making a business of your photography, you need to be totally honest with yourself when you answer these questions. The truth is, you don't necessarily have to be a great photographer to build a success photography business, but your work does need to be at least as good as your competitors. You also need to be clear on what you're offering, who your offering it to, and why they are going to buy. Unfortunately, many photographers -- and many other would-be business owners -- start with little more than a product idea, and rarely take the time to objectively test their idea to see if there's likely to be genuine demand. They build a business based on little more than wishful thinking and wonder why it fails? Fortunately these days it's quite simple to test any idea and assess the likely demand using the search engines and keyword research tools. 3. Proof of concept testing This is where you prove to yourself that there is a real demand for your offerings. In days gone by this would have involved surveys and focus groups, and taken considerable time and money, but these days is super quick and easy. The best place to start is to simply search in Google for other people offering something similar? The volume of search results will give you an indication of the competition, which is a good start. Too many competing results and possibly your idea needs to be more unique. None at all and there mightn't be enough demand for it to be viable. The real test of course is whether people are making money offering those services, and that's easy enough to gauge. For that you look at the AdWords ads, to the right of the search results. In simple terms, lots of ads mean that those photographers are making money offering those services. No ads means there's no money to be made in that market. That probably seems a bit over simplified, but it really is quite simple... People only spend money on ads that make them money, so if no one is paying to advertise a specific service, chances are good it has been tried but didn't work. To be sure though, you should also test your idea in a proper keyword research tool. Google offers a very useful free keyword research tool... you may need to login to a Google Account to access it but it's well worth setting up! https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal The process is quite simple. Once logged in, type a keyword phrase into the tool that represents the product or service you're considering building your business around. It might be the style of photography, the field of work or the subjects you want to focus on. Regardless, once you submit you'll get real-time data back showing you the number of people searching for that phrase -- and similar related phrases -- every month. So the first thing you're looking for is search traffic... proof that people are in fact looking for the services you plan to offer. The next thing to look for is the CPC value. This is the average/approximate price paid by AdWords advertisers to have their ad shown besides the search results. This is a cost-per-click, meaning the advertiser pays this amount for every single visitor they get. So while most general photography terms might be in the $1-2 range, when you start seeing prices higher than that... sometime $5 or more per visitor... you know you're looking at a highly commercial term. And if that is closely related to your business idea, then you also know your concept has merit! Of course this kind of research is all relative and quite subjective, so spend plenty of time on it, test some broad phrases to give yourself a benchmark, and the zoom in on phrases related to your planned business, and see how it stacks up. If you find genuine search volume you know there's interest and if you also people paying to advertise with those phrases, you'll know there's a viable market... and that's a good starting point for building your photography business! 4. Developing Your Business Plan. It's only after you've done all this that you'll be ready to start planning your business, and that's where the real work begins. You need to spend even more time now planning how you're going to market your offerings, transact your sales and deliver your products or services. As a photographer your options are virtually unlimited so it's important that you take your time to get clear on your business model so you can focus on the best options for that and avoid the distraction of trying to do too many things at once. The good news is, by now you know you have the skills, the product or service, you know there's a market for it and you're confident that people will pay you for it, so it should be easier to focus on the specific processes -- sales & marketing, fulfilment and operations -- that will turn your idea into a sustainable business. One final point to keep in mind is, you don't have to be a great photographer to build a successful photography business. In fact, there are many mediocre photographers who do extremely well on the strength of their business skills. There's obviously minimal standards required to ensure customer satisfaction, but you should never assume great photography skills will guarantee you a successful photography business. The truth is, you'll be hard pressed to find a successful photography business run by a great photographer with poor business skills. So when you consider how many talented photographers share the dream of making a business out of their photography, it should be clear that the best way to succeed is to focus on your business skills as much as you do your photography. Matt Brading is a contributor to the GlobalEye Group of stock photo libraries. For more tips & suggestions on the business of selling your photography, be sure to check out their Stock Photography Business blog; http://www.GlobalEyeGroup.com/blog If you'd like to know more about selling photographs online with a complete Photography Business System, you can download a free photography business kit at: Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7305009

Boost Your Knowledge with Photoshop Tutorials

When it comes to digital photography applications then none can beat the features and quality of Adobe Photoshop. Over the years, this software has enjoyed the number one position both in terms of popularity as well as design options when it comes to photo editing. The main functionality of Photoshop is to edit the normal photos to make them look more artistic and stylish, using various kinds of effects such as color lines, color saturation and shadows etc. Even though it is a commonly used application, not everyone has got the desired knowledge when it comes to Photoshop and a lot of people look for various sources of information to gather more knowledge on this application. Well, if you want to learn about the various Photoshop tricks and tips then you should read Photoshop tutorials. A large section of people rely on the use of these tutorials as they help the user to learn many new things about the software. Since these tutorials are comprehensive, you need not look for information from other sources. Photoshop tutorials are aimed at enhancing the knowledge of the user about the various tools and features of this software. You will find plenty so such tutorials online. They are divided into various categories so as to provide a better understanding of the subject. You also need not buy them as many of these tutorials are available for free. Since there are plenty of websites that are offering you free tutorials, you need to find the one that offers you quality and informative content. These tutorials are more beneficial for the beginners such as they help you to learn about the basics of Photoshop like red-eye removal, importance of layers, changing hair colors, retouching picture etc. In order to make the best use of Adobe Photoshop, it is a must that you learn about all the important features of this application, if not all. It has plenty of benefits. It's not only used merely for fun but also can help you in web designing, animation etc. Many web designers make use of Photoshop tutorials for designing the web pages as well as navigation bars. Instead of reading multiple tutorials, you need to focus on just one or two which you feel are informative and easy to read. This way you will be easily able to learn this great application in a slow, gradual and understanding manner. I have been learning and using Photoshop since my high school year. I just love how we can use Photoshop to design and create what we want. So I will write articles about what I know about Photoshop and share with everyone here. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7091378

Boost Your Knowledge with Photoshop Tutorials

When it comes to digital photography applications then none can beat the features and quality of Adobe Photoshop. Over the years, this software has enjoyed the number one position both in terms of popularity as well as design options when it comes to photo editing. The main functionality of Photoshop is to edit the normal photos to make them look more artistic and stylish, using various kinds of effects such as color lines, color saturation and shadows etc. Even though it is a commonly used application, not everyone has got the desired knowledge when it comes to Photoshop and a lot of people look for various sources of information to gather more knowledge on this application. Well, if you want to learn about the various Photoshop tricks and tips then you should read Photoshop tutorials. A large section of people rely on the use of these tutorials as they help the user to learn many new things about the software. Since these tutorials are comprehensive, you need not look for information from other sources. Photoshop tutorials are aimed at enhancing the knowledge of the user about the various tools and features of this software. You will find plenty so such tutorials online. They are divided into various categories so as to provide a better understanding of the subject. You also need not buy them as many of these tutorials are available for free. Since there are plenty of websites that are offering you free tutorials, you need to find the one that offers you quality and informative content. These tutorials are more beneficial for the beginners such as they help you to learn about the basics of Photoshop like red-eye removal, importance of layers, changing hair colors, retouching picture etc. In order to make the best use of Adobe Photoshop, it is a must that you learn about all the important features of this application, if not all. It has plenty of benefits. It's not only used merely for fun but also can help you in web designing, animation etc. Many web designers make use of Photoshop tutorials for designing the web pages as well as navigation bars. Instead of reading multiple tutorials, you need to focus on just one or two which you feel are informative and easy to read. This way you will be easily able to learn this great application in a slow, gradual and understanding manner. I have been learning and using Photoshop since my high school year. I just love how we can use Photoshop to design and create what we want. So I will write articles about what I know about Photoshop and share with everyone here. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7091378

Boost Your Knowledge with Photoshop Tutorials

When it comes to digital photography applications then none can beat the features and quality of Adobe Photoshop. Over the years, this software has enjoyed the number one position both in terms of popularity as well as design options when it comes to photo editing. The main functionality of Photoshop is to edit the normal photos to make them look more artistic and stylish, using various kinds of effects such as color lines, color saturation and shadows etc. Even though it is a commonly used application, not everyone has got the desired knowledge when it comes to Photoshop and a lot of people look for various sources of information to gather more knowledge on this application. Well, if you want to learn about the various Photoshop tricks and tips then you should read Photoshop tutorials. A large section of people rely on the use of these tutorials as they help the user to learn many new things about the software. Since these tutorials are comprehensive, you need not look for information from other sources. Photoshop tutorials are aimed at enhancing the knowledge of the user about the various tools and features of this software. You will find plenty so such tutorials online. They are divided into various categories so as to provide a better understanding of the subject. You also need not buy them as many of these tutorials are available for free. Since there are plenty of websites that are offering you free tutorials, you need to find the one that offers you quality and informative content. These tutorials are more beneficial for the beginners such as they help you to learn about the basics of Photoshop like red-eye removal, importance of layers, changing hair colors, retouching picture etc. In order to make the best use of Adobe Photoshop, it is a must that you learn about all the important features of this application, if not all. It has plenty of benefits. It's not only used merely for fun but also can help you in web designing, animation etc. Many web designers make use of Photoshop tutorials for designing the web pages as well as navigation bars. Instead of reading multiple tutorials, you need to focus on just one or two which you feel are informative and easy to read. This way you will be easily able to learn this great application in a slow, gradual and understanding manner. I have been learning and using Photoshop since my high school year. I just love how we can use Photoshop to design and create what we want. So I will write articles about what I know about Photoshop and share with everyone here. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7091378