Taking Better Pictures (Part I)
Taking Better Photos
Part 1
Composing Photos:
No reckless shooting of innocent civilians. Take aim, compose the shot and FIRE!
pictures
Taking Better People Pictures
Taking Better People Pictures:
Taking pictures of people should involve more than just pointing the camera in a person's general direction and pressing the shutter button.
Here are a few ideas and styles for taking great pictures of people.
Remember the rule of thirds.
As a general rule place your subject in 1/3 of the photograph.
<<— Notice how Allen's face is not centered in the photograph. This takes the viewer through the photograph and around the subject.
Giving Photos a Professional Look
Giving Photos a Professional Look
Have you ever wondered what makes professional photos look so. . . umm. . . professional?
The following tips will help you create photos that look like you know what you are doing!
Taking Better Pictures:
There are several links in the group archives giving tips on composition. Here are some other helpful tips.
Use the color wheel.
Organizing and Viewing Digital Photos
Organizing and Viewing Your
Digital Photos
The key to organizing your digital photos is sorting them from the beginning.
I begin by saving a folder to my desktop called "Camera pix," but it can be named anything. Inside this folder, I put a folder for each month. Inside each of those folders I make new folders as I need. For example, In my Camera Pix folder for last year I had a folder called December. Inside my December folder I have three other folders, "POL" for Parade of lights, Christmas, and "Misc."
Organizing and Backing Up Photos
Getting organized:
The best way to get your photos organized is to start with a system that works for you.
My system is to create a single folder for all my digital photos on my hard drive. Inside that folder, called "Digital Pictures," I place a sub-folder for each month of the year. In each month's folder I may place more folders for each activity held during that month.
For example: Digital Photos –> April –> Easter –> Grandmas
I then place the digital pictures into their respective folders.
File Management: Why is it so hard to figure out?
As I have mentioned before on the show and in these articles, I teach the local basic computer classes for the Parks and Rec. department. I teach the classes as a four-part series in which I dedicate an entire two hour session to file management.
Teaching the concept of how your computer organizes information is a huge struggle for me. I don't think it is because if my teaching technique or the inability of my students to comprehend the topic.
The reason that file management is so difficult to teach and comprehend is that it isn't sexy, it isn't tangible and it is isn't universal in it's use. By the latter, I mean that each person can apply the concept differently.
Solving email problems
When you are having trouble receiving or sending email, here are a few tips to help keep the mail flowing.
- Never assume the problem is on your end. If you were sending email perfectly a few hours earlier or even yesterday, DO NOT CHANGE ANY SETTINGS on your computer. Instead, shut the computer off and try again. If nothing still, shut off the computer and wait until the next day. When you have tried these two steps and still have a problem, then call your email provider to ask what may be happening.
- If you are receiving email, but are unable to send, check to make sure that your email didn't get stuck in the Outbox. Sometimes we mistype an address and that will stall the email.
- If you use dial-up and get disconnected from the Internet every time you check email with Outlook Express, click Tools –> Options from the menus. Click the Connection tab and uncheck the box that says "hang up after sending and receiving.
- Attached pictures are too big when viewing/printing. Use this tip .
- You receive a Red X where a picture should be. Read our Red X tip here .
- Again for dial-up users especially, if you get the same email over and over, and no new ones come through, it usually means a 'stuck' email. This occurs when an email is too large to come through quickly and you disconnect before it finishes downloading the email. In this situation, learn to use your email service's web mail function so you can view your email on the web based interface. Then delete any email that is more than 1000 kilobytes (1 megabyte). Or you can read the message via the web based interface.
When it’s gone, it’s gone
Adam eluded to a trend that he has noticed about failing computers and hard drives lately. Indeed, I have seen the same epidemic. My question to you is, do you really know what the hard drive is and what its function is?
Some computer users point to the box that sits on their desk or floor and call it a hard drive. Others know that it stores data. I think few understand how important and valuable the hard drive really is and why we spend so much time writing and talking about backup. The hard drive, in desktop computers, is roughly the size of a VCR tape. It is a mechanical piece of equipment that has motors, gears and bearings…none of which is made to last forever. Thus the reason for backup.
Control is Key
I can usually get a 'wow' from many computer users when I show them how to use the Ctrl (Control) key on the keyboard. In combination with other keys it can do fantastic tricks like copy (Ctrl+C), print (Ctrl+P), or save files (Ctrl+S) to name a few. Combine the Ctrl key with a mouse click and you truly get magic. Hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on documents, email, pictures or other multiple to select multiple at a time.
No longer do you have to be relegated to deleting files one at a time or emailing pictures one at time. Use Ctrl+Click to select or highlight multiple options at the same time.
I am sensing a theme here
I am sensing a theme with my work lately. Late last week I had to tell a client that their entire hard drive had crashed and nothing was salvageable.
Today I taught some computer classes for the local Parks and Rec. I enjoy teaching these classes because I get to tell people about the importance of things like backup and broadband Internet.
After that class my first client had just bought a new computer and she needed me to transfer data. She had replaced her old computer because it kept locking up and giving her errors.
As I transferred her important files I discovered what had been causing the problems. Her hard drive was nearly dead and many of her files were gone completely.