Using Gimp

Here's one of my recent photos of mannequins hands. I played with it in Gimp by copying a layer flipping it then playing with the opacity and masks just like you would in Photoshop.

History of Photography

It's always great to go back into history to see how far we've come. Here's a great site that outlines the history of photography and lists outstanding photos through the ages.

You'll find other great resources on photography on the National Geographic Website.

Check out this site for more on colour calibration of monitors.

Colour Management

Students are always asking me why the colours on the monitor never match their prints no matter if they're printed at home on their printer or at a commercial processing shop. This is all to do with calibration and colour management. Here is great video explaining colour management. The comments also provide great tips on colour management and calibration.

Episode 28, Intro to Color Management from Jim Talkington on Vimeo.

Beauty can come from the ugliest of things

Here's a photo I took a while ago. Its an image of dirty water with mold growing on a bucket outside. Yak! But by turning up the hue/saturation and playing with curves in Photoshop I got this mysterious beautiful photo. Try taking photos of subjects you wouldn't normally and play with them in Photoshop to see what you can create. Beauty can come from the ugliest of things.

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New Free Online Image Editor

Try this new free fantastic image/photo editor called Picnik. First download your photos from your web cam, web site, computer, Flickr, Facebook etc...It lets you correct, crop, resize and even lets you control levels and curves . Add shapes, text, frames and use filter effects aka Photoshop and save in jpg, pdf and tiff file formats, email or upload back to Flickr, Facebook, Myspace etc... Find out more by clicking on this links.

Histograms

What are they and how do you use them? Histograms give you a visual representation of your exposure in terms of your shadows, mid-tones and highlights. These are useful when taking your photo and in post production (such as in PhotoShop Levels.) Watch this video to understand histograms further or follow this link.

Aperture and Depth of Field

Understanding how aperture controls depth of field and how this in turn can be affected by shutter speed and ISO is the basis of mastering photography. The video below explains the idea.


Here another short video explaining this concept. Try this link for even more information!

Light Trails

These are photos from a recent class exercise.We used long shutters speed emphasizing light trails. Click here for more information.

The Rule of Thirds

The Rule of Thirds.

Here one of the most basic but effective rules fo balanced composition as discussed in class. Here a great link that explains this idea further.