Discusses the basics of digital photography and provides assignments and practical examples for the amateur photographers that make concepts easy to grasp.
Master composition and design to take your photos from okay to wow You already own the most important photography tool—your creative eye. With this book, you’ll learn how classic design and composition principles can be applied to a wide range of photographic situations to create images with impact. Jim Miotke and Kerry Drager, both veteran photographers and experienced instructors, share time-tested design guidelines, composition techniques, even tips on when to break the rules, that will transform the way you make photographs.
From the tiniest ladybug to a towering glacier, from a horse running in a field to a leaf falling slowly from a tree, nature subjects offer some of the greatest challenges and the greatest rewards to photographers. In the BetterPhoto tradition, here’s a complete photo course in a book. Hands-on lessons cover every aspect of digital nature photography, from buying the right camera for close-ups, landscapes, and movement, to understanding how the camera works, to taking great pictures. Author Jim Miotke uses straightforward text and inspiring yet informative photos to show the best ways to approach nature photography. Everything a beginner or intermediate photographer needs to know is here, including a buyer’s guide, full information on camera features, file formats and settings, exposure, low-light photography, filters and white balance, composition and lens choice, creative ideas, manipulating, and printing, along with a glossary and list of useful websites. The Better Photo Guide to Digital Nature Photography helps photographers everywhere get great photos in the great outdoors.
Whether you have a simple point & shoot or a DSLR camera, learning the basics of digital photography can be confusing. With The BetterPhoto Guide to Digital Photography, those mysterious icons, strange jargon, and dizzying array of imaging software and hardware quickly become tools to create great pictures. Illustrated with full-color photos for guidance, this easy, practical, lesson-based workbook gives you a step-by-step tutorial in getting bright, crisp, beautiful pictures from your digital camera every time. "Assignments" at the end of each chapter give you the opportunity to go out and test your new skills in real life. Learn about exposure, file formats and quality settings, low-light photography, digital filters and white balance, composition and lens choice, manipulating images, printing, and much more, all in a handy, bring-along format. Everyone who wants to create great photos needs The BetterPhoto Guide to Digital Photography!
Absolutely anyone can take better photos! If you can press a button, you can take great pictures. It’s as simple as that. In BetterPhoto Basics, Jim Miotke, founder of the popular online photography school BetterPhoto.com, shares tips and tricks to improve your photos right away, no matter what camera you’re using. Too busy to read a book? No problem—flip to any page for an instant tip to use right away! Learn to compose knockout shots, make the most of indoor and outdoor light, and photograph twenty popular subjects, from sunsets and flowers to a family portrait. Those who want to go further get tips on controlling exposure and the secrets behind ten advanced creative techniques. And everyone will appreciate Jim’s breakdown of easy fixes to make in Photoshop. No matter what your level of experience, you’ll be amazed how easy it is to start taking photos like the pros.
Photography has been the business and the passion of LIFE since the original weekly magazine's inception in 1936, and it continues to be the business and passion of LIFE Books and LIFE.com in the new millennium. But photography has surely changed during these many decades. The rigs and gear of old have given way-first slowly, then all at once-to sleek miracle machines that process pixels and have made the darkroom obsolete. The casual photog puts eye to lens, sets everything on auto and captures a photograph that is . . . perfectly fine. One of LIFE's master shooters-in fact, the final in the long line of distinguished LIFE staff photographers-was Joe McNally, and he has always believed that with a little preparation and care, with a dash of enthusiasm and daring added to the equation, anyone can make a better photo-anyone can turn a "keeper" into a treasure. This was true in days of yore, and it's true in the digital age. Your marvelous new camera, fresh from its box, can indeed perform splendid feats. Joe explains in this book how to take best advantage of what it was designed to do, and also when it is wise to outthink your camera or push your camera-to go for the gold, to create that indelible family memory that you will have blown up as large as the technology will allow, and that will hang on the wall forevermore. As the storied LIFE photographer and photo editor John Loengard points out in his eloquent foreword to this volume, there are cameras and there are cameras, and they've always been able to do tricks. And then there is photography. Other guides may give you the one, two, three of producing a reasonably well exposed shot, but Joe McNally and the editors of LIFE can give you that, and then can show you how to make a picture. In a detailed, friendly, conversational, anecdotal, sometimes rollicking way, that's what they do in these pages. Prepare to click.
A practical reference for amateur photography enthusiasts explains lighting fundamentals and how to understand and utilize natural, flash and reflector lighting for stronger and more compelling photographs in a variety of settings. By the author of The BetterPhoto Guide to Digital Photography. Original.
Suddenly, anyone with a cell phone is a photographer. This book takes the basics of digital photography and makes them the tools for creative, interesting, and artistic picture-taking. Illuminating the most popular of 4-H projects, Daniel Johnson instructs beginners in the basics of composition, lighting, and the use of flashes--among other fundamentals of capturing a picture that’s more than just “flash.” With step-by-step, illustrated directions, along with spectacular examples, this book is the perfect starting point for 4-H’rs taking up digital photography--and for anyone who wants to learn how to take superior digital pictures.
Collects photography exercises that can be completed with any type of camera, including tutorials that focus on such topics as reflections, backlighting, tension, portraiture, and shadows.
Start taking pictures that are just as cute as they are! Part of the popular BetterPhoto series, this book shows photographers how to get great shots of children of all ages, under any conditions, and with any subject. Learn how to use light, composition, and exposure to help improve photographs, how to capture a moving target and how to develop rapport with even the shyest or most rambunctious child.