PROTRAITS at your ease.....

When people buy cameras, the main subject is found in home...the portrait, snapshot of mom,father,cousins, babies,friends come to mind...THE MEMORABLE FACES R MADE IN HOME...Shooting is made them to personally view their images.

2)TAKE PICTURE WHEN THE PERSONS ARE at their cool...The mom is tired, whole day and you want a snap....She may protest...taking portrait forcibly make her mood off, and your effort to shoot, mom,dad,brothers,sisters will go waste....If they feel relaxed, get the portrait to remember....The words 'comfortable,relaxed and curiosity on both sides, will relax the mood for a good portrait....AND A SMILE SAY THOUSAND WORDS.

3) NEXT ESSENTIAL is the light....I observed that the children upto 5-6 years get them  photographed rather easily and when grow old many feel inhibited,...They run here and there & give u a good chase for nothing...If u catch them, they will make faces thus destroying the natural look. YES, early morning or late evening light will best help you...On camera flash works well, but renders flat lighting...Flat lighting faces hardly  make a good picture....Better take pictures in shade...that provide better lighting and there is no squizzing eyes as may happen in sunlight....Verandah, the shadow beside a wall give good effect, changing your angle and the modelling light falling on their faces, say half face in shadow and half towards light.

The above picture I took under a cloth tent...no doubt the lighting is flate, but there is goggle with reflection is good enough to make a cropped potrait , as I went closure, and made a fisheye effect of face and the reflection in the goggle....If you have good relations with neighbours, you can approach the children first and including elder after few shots.

PORTRAIT IN BLUE

hnx to Prabirda, Theqca,Shobin.....what I wished and important is that   nobody has said the flicker of random evening light well dressing her hairs and help keeping the face away from the background.....Regarding treatment, suiting to portraits is besides colour & b&w, sepia and when you leave these three, the most preferred is light blue toned portrait...and other colours u can imagine the effect, whether anybody wud like are yellow, red,pink,green only look good in experimenting with some good or photogenic effects.

In commercial photography, even light green tints may have been preferred by few clients....as they wanted the look of a cinema posters, and in bigger size....so the above photograph is one of the themes and out of rut....still I do not say unconventional, as I have faced  thousands of photographs and photographers, as many of you do....yes as my friends said unusual and different...I must thank them again to come out of the local or usuals.

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY--AN OUTLOOK

There are many camerapersons, who cover most on roads and the surrounding life....The life they are nearer every day. There may be busy roads, a secluded place on the road, where a begger is sitting asking the ongoers for a 'rupee'...Oh, not of the old 'paisa'....There was a song on the street in an old film...''O babu, o jaane wale babu, ek paisa de de....' Now even the 'chavanni' (four anna) is withdrawn by the govt....Therefore, minimum is rupee one, and more as u wish. There is rush on the roads and as on date every hour is peak hour with tremendous increase in the vehicles...I saw people -Irani people selling goggles on the road...Beside there was a shoemaker, and a small book seller, with film songs books seller etc...The beggers, The thelas of Kulfi, Pani purri, tea stalls, the groundnut seller....almost everything photogenic and to get photographed was the privilege...Now u cannot put your lens before anybody...there may be shoutings. The Sadhus with elephants ask Rs.100/- for photograph.....There were and are good portraits around with strange faces, to get you an award in photo competition....There is lot to be said on street photography.

2)Street photographer's main criteria is to capture subjects in their candid moods with almost, or may be, some interaction with camera or the cameraperson.

3) There was a definition in London Festival of Street Photography....Pl read---''unposed, unstaged photography which captures, explores or questions contemporary society and the relationships between individuals and their surroundings''.

4) The locations are everywhere when one sets out of his home with his dear camera....yes,yes...there are streets individually (as portrayed in the first photograph below), parks, beaches,malls - malls are just like the street sellers (the candids galore there) and the places you pass through on foot, on bike or may be a four wheeler, there are pictures to capture....As I caught the balloon seller guy, counting money and still sufficient light of evening to wait. for more earning....his grand-father accompaning him (above).....The colours of the baloons will certainly allure children and the parents.

5) The thing, I learnt that where situations are not favourable or people get angry or not in mood to get photographed, please get away from there....But one more imp thing I learnt is to photograph children and then to photograph the situations I may find favourable...since parents are more sensitive to the children, and become friendly easily.......NEXT is to oblige them with one copy of the photograph, the easiest way to intrude....u can understand why I used word 'intrude'...the difficult things made easy.......Please hv your comments (to oblige your potential customers on the streets)...hahaha...Interesting.

Photographic content

thnx Hiral for ur input on Krishna, reg photographic content. Here I disagree  because if photographically speaking, Vimal captured child's simple/naughty expressions, the lighting is good from behind keeping aloof the subject from bg, diffused bg, the placement he tried best with good vertival framing, the images hv sharpness, good perspective (distance from bg), they r good close-ups, the exposure is correct and the images hv stability (to stay longer in memory)....only thing is that they r different in colour cast, which I hv to explore, how cloudy WB rendered unexpectedly lower temperature, though it was morning time & yellow may be pre-dominant both in morning and evening. (photo by Vimal Joshi).

WHITE BALANCE IN D.PHOTOGRAPHY, (2)

In this picture, and the picture on the previous post of my grand son, the white balance was set to Incandescent that is 'bulb' setting, I shot photos in artificial light during night inside, but, just trying the shoot outdoors next day, the blue cast was very much destroying the natural look of daylight photographs. It was also difficult to correct the blue cast in photoshop, though I tried to remove the same, but unable to achieve the result I cud get in Auto mode or set the WB  to clear sun. Therefore, always look at the WB settings when shooting in various light situations, as indoors, under clear sun, Elect.Flash, overcast sky and/or in shade...However I too manage outdoors by setting WB on Auto, but definitely change while taking photographs inside in bulb or fluorescent lighting. A look at the chart below will be able to understand the temperature measurement, how in low temperatures the pic will get yellowish to red effect and in high temperatures the very much evident blue cast. However, it will also help to get some 'special effects' sometimes when u try them by shooting in different lightings with different WB settings on your camera.

Temperature Table

Candle Flame...............1500K

Incandescent..........3000K

Fluorescent........................3700K

Sunlight average/elect.flash...5500K

Overcast sky/clouds....6000-7000K

Shade................8000 K

Technically they are the average measurements, help u understand the warm (low) and cool (high) temperatures, but necessary in Digital cameras to set them as you click in variable lights. For novices Auto will help a lot outdoors and with built in or external flash.

WHITE BALANCE IN D.PHOTOGRAPHY.

1)While taking photographs, the photographer has to face many sources of lighting. And any source is not able to give u correct  rendering of colours in colour photography...The eye is befooled by different colours in the atmosphere, either natural or artificial. We feel them as natural as when we view them...But camera sensor is not accustomed as our eyes are while we try to capture them through the lens of our camera....Colour temperature is an objective measure of the colour of a light source and distributed in different wavelengths. The camera manufacturers have wisely chalked out 'AUTO' white balance to cope up with most of the conditions. However despite this measure, the colours have different temperatures as cool or warm i.e. higher and lower colour temperatures. Light sources with a higher colour temperature will render as blue tinge, while warm colour temperature will render as yellow tinged. Therefore, for the photographers who want correct colour rendering in their pictures, the white balance options are adapted to the temperatures as below (K=i.e.Kelvin method of measuring colour temperatures)...The normal white colour rendering is during direct sunlight as at noon time (not exact morning or evening), so the flash light is well calibrated as a daylight light source which is at 5000K to 5400K...giving u almost all colour rendering as correct untill and unless overwhelmed by other strong light source as halogen lamps, which will give yellow tinge, and this either u have to correct in photoshop or while printing, not hundred percent sure to remove it..this yellow tinge can follow while shooting with slow shutter speeds and there are more powerful halogens around as in marriages.........to follow (2).

EXPOSURE COMPENSATION IN DCAMs.

It is but natural when u take pictures from a camera, the light affects camera sensor...There are three meter settings: Matrix, centre-weighted and spot...Here in this photo ...EVENING FOG..I USED FIRST, which  is responsible for producing natural results in most situations. The camera sensor meters wide area of the frame and sets exposure as per tone distribution, colour & composition.

2) CENTRE-WEIGHTED: Camera sensor reads entire frame but mainly has great weight to centre area.

3) SPOT METERING: CAMERA WILL FOCUS CENTRE POINT. This metering ensures that the subject will be correctly exposed when background is much brighter or darker, as happens in morning and evening shots....Next for example, if photographer shoots from a window inside the room, the centre-weighted and spot meters will focus the area outside where u pointed your camera...However in this case the room's wall will look in silhouette, against the Matrix metering, which reads the whole frame and if more attention is on the inner walls, the outside area will be unsharp....so be careful in such situations...moreover u can try different meter settings avoiding worry at the time of composition whether from a room or outside. The exposure compensation mode is shown as square with + and - icons in it....

4) While shooting outside I keep -1/2 to - one stop down the aperture, avoiding over-exposure in many conditions....if slight under-exposed sometimes, the picture can be set right in PS, just increasing the brightness level....To handle an over-exposed photo is slight difficult losing tones/softer tones in the picture.

IMAGE ROTATION ON LCD HORIZONTALLY/VERTICALLY.

The Digital Cameras now have a auto image rotation feature containing information on camera orientation allowing them to be rotated automatically during playback.....The LCD screen has two designed format, originally it is landscape version, if rotated either side, clockwise or counterclockwise, u can view the picture in vertical mode. This is similar to, when taking a landscape keeping the LCD in that format, as we generally handle the camera and while taking a full figure of a human being, we turn camera to either side vertically giving more space to the subject to obtain a correct and bigger image.

2. The picture beside was taken vertically and viewed both ways. Finally I decided to keep it in landscape format and after cropping a little bit, I posted here, means, practically, I rotated the image on the computer right-way, as is seen here....

3. Even you can view the LCD screen settings turning the camera horizontally to vertical and vice-versa, making it convenient to set the Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO etc in vertical mode as well.

Professional design in compact--NIKON P7000

 Nikon has brought a robust compact professionally designed 10.1 megapixel camera for amateur as well as enthusiasts and a back up for professionals.in Coolpix P7000 which boasts a 28-200mm zoom lens, with lens shift vibration reduction sufficient for maximum occasions because the users can use the external flash facility in f2.8-5.6 lens, constructed with 11 elements in 9 groups including 2 ED elements.......I prefer cameras with optical or electroical viewfinders, which while viewing at eye level give a stability in shooting in slow shutter speeds. P7000 has a tunnel type viewfinder. The camera has CCD sensor and new EXPEED C2 image processing engine. It has Manual, Shutter priority, Aperture priority and P modes, sufficient enough to cover most of the lighting situations and fast speed photography. The shutter speeds range from 60 sec to 1/4000 and the built-in flash covers upto 6.5 meters. One thing is admirable is the 3 in, 921,000 dot LCD monitor with better colour and grainfree image resolution while viewing and zooming in. Picture quality is excellent in JPEG and RAW modes. It can capture HD movies at the best quality of 1280x720 pixels at 24 fps. ISO-from 100-3200 plus Hi (6400).  Metering is as usual: multi, centre-weighted and spot. WB with 6 presets....Cost Rs.29950. Good for Nikon fans and the enthusiasts who start anew.

SELFUPP PHOTOGRAPHY-NIKON'S HOT SHOT COOLPIX S9100

Long zoom range point & shoot...YES THIS CAMERA FROM NIKON is a super-zoomed in a compact design, rather than as in vogue, they come as Prosumer cameras with good hand grip and a design of SLR. But here Nikon has changed the trend housing in this body of approximately 104.8x62.0x34.6mm weighing 214 gms the lens being 18x, i.e. 25-450 mm, wide and telephoto ends. The camera has CMOS sensor offering superior image quality at high ISO settings.

2) What is the MP: The S9100 has 12.1 Megapixel with 1/2.3 inch back illuminated CMOS sensor. It has sensor-shift VR mechanism (VIBRATION REDUCTION), WHICH IS NORMALLY EFFECTIVE IN HIGHER END ZOOMS such as this camera's 18x zoom. The camera has EXPEED C2 (Nikon's) image processing engine, with aperture values from f3.5-5.9 and the lens constructed in 12 elements in 11 groups. In normal mode the focusing is from 50cm to infinity at wide angle and 1.5m to infinity at telephoto end. In macro mode it focuses from 4cm to infinity at wide angle. It has 3 metering modes, matrix, centre-weighted and spot. Shutter speeds from 4 sec to 1/4000 sec. ISO sensitivity ranges from ISO 160 to 3200. The built-n flash has a range of approx. 0.5 to 4.0 m at wide and approx. 1.5 to 2.5 m at telephoto ends.

3) Still images are recorded in JPEG format with image size of 4000x3000 pixels, while video is recorded at 1920x1080 pixels for best quality. The important thing is its 3.0 in, 921000-dot TFT LCD with anti-reflection coating. Many cameras provide only 230000-dot TFT LCD, i.e. with less resolution. It takes a SD card and has built in memory of 74MB. A little bit of mention is that the camera has no manual or priority modes for controlling the exposure. Rather it has Shutter-Aperture combination giving the best results. The battery provided with camera is rechargeable Li-ion EN-EL12.

4) It is good of Nikon that it has provided a good zoom lens in this p&s camera. In MRP of Rs.18,950, it has a good offer for money having 18x optical zoom and good image quality.

CANON'S ENTRY-LEVEL NEW MARVEL

Canon 1100D--cost Rs.32590, with 18-55 IS kit lens. The camera has 12.2 MP . Have facility of sensor cleaning. It is an update of 3 years hence, 1000D As ALL CANONS HAVE,IT HAS CMOS sensor. The camera is capable of recording 720p High Definition Video at 30fps. However, it cannot focus continuously during video shooting. It has maximum ISO 6400, but do not have expendable capacity to double it. It can shoot 3fps in JPEG MODE, WHILE DROPPING in shooting in RAW. It has updated Creative Auto Mode (like 60D), which allows the user to fine tune the final look of the image. In basics, it has DOF preview facility, switching the display on and off, and flash exposure compensation, besides relative different features a Canon has. LCD resolution is 230,000 dots, unlike FEW OTHER MIRRORLESS CAMERAS offering three times this now. It has live-view performance, indispensable in DSLRs. Results at even at ISO 1600 are excellent. However the Camera has noise reduction facility too. The colours are accurate and rich. The 1100D is an excellent performer in the field as well as in image quality...The enthusiasts may go straight for a buy or may wait some price cut.

LIGHTING BY CAMERA MOVEMENT

LIGHTING on festivals through ur camera....Generally people take photographs of lightings on buildings, crackers, streets with their camera clicking at these held in hands,tripod or some steady support. But another technique is to move ur camera facing the series lights on buildings, so they can make a good abstract painting design, preferably having the dark bg. Hold camera in hand shutter set to 4 seconds or as u wish the results, aperture at f8 then moving the camera in different directions..here the camera moves and subject still...experiment and make different designs,with series to be more colourful...Here is what i have done.

SELFUPP PHOTOGRAPHY: Park,Garden, Local outdoors.

1) The photography becomes much valuable, as soon you take up the camera in your hand. Something from within starts poking you tu release the shutter. But how, without facing the camera towards any subject. Is the subject ready, or u have to make movement to catch it as u may catch your beloed? I feel anything before camera at the time of shoot becomes beloved. Yes the full concentration is on the subject thru the lens or the LCD panel. And before releasing shutter, at least I fall in love with it.There are thousands of subjects. I will select some for the reader. In the meantime i wud suggest the enthusiast photoartists to shoot some technically good subject and if necesssary, u can do some retouch on the photoshop. THERE ARE SOME free phostoshop software are available on the net.....I touched the original picture to show the green as lushgreen and the sky purple: both are cool in nature. One more point I mention here that the composition I MADE DIAGONALLY, keeping half part each side.There is a small boundry at left is to attract the eye,whicch shows the boundary starts here.

FRAMING UR PICTURE ELEMENTS.

landscape means ur eyes are moving allaround while in the field. Therefore we often observe changing lighting our habit to capture landscape.Light and shadow are a same part of the natural entity...Their interplay will allow u grand opportunities in landscape photography. The moon i shot was changing fast, next day it will become bigger. Though i hv shot many photograph of full moon and solar eclipse, i thaught it 3rd day moon to be in my camera...it was already dusk...lights were on...however the sky retained the brightness, so without giving longer exposure, i cud shot handheld. My interesting thing was to frame the crescent moon with tree brancnes both sides....it will give delicacy to the picture and calmness that prevails without any gush of wind. and contain ur eyes from leaving the moon. I wonder, whole circle of the moon is caught..it was great happiness for me.u can call it skyscape or moonscape..

TWO PERSON ARMY

I feel the gentle male and female are fighting for divorce. They might have been bored with each other. One wants to be career -oriented and he will not allow her to keep steps outside..therefore they have come on the lake boundary to settle the cause once for all. Their relatives might be watching from the other side and expecting an amicable settlement. Such photographs are not rare...just go out and watch. there may be children, other animals, birds in fighting mood, a goody goody subject for ur camera.Sometimes we have to laugh with our subject, since all the time we are serious, on not getting subjects, camera not working,do not have telephoto lens...wide angle looks more alluring...u cannot take macros, cannot take long distance shots...only have a dslr with kit lens...there r alternatives u can read somewhere in my other posts. USING kit lens with supplementary lenses for macros..having another long focal length lens say 70-300,100-400 etc for longer shots. No doubt three lenses say kit,wide and telephoto make u versatile photographer, having approach normally with any subject without any headache...limited to this i am satisfied.