Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Snickmom on March 21, 2012 at 5:34pm

There is a lot of reading material out there about taking good pictures, but seems that most of the time we are trying to capture some cuteness while it happens, before the little stinker sees us and stops doing it. There is no way to set up the shot and the lighting and all that, we are just grateful that for ONCE we have a camera handy!  One thing that you can do with that shot before you post it, is to crop out all the distracting stuff. There is also a good discussion about fixing the "camera eye" http://www.mycorgi.com/group/corgiphotographers/forum/topics/redeye...  When you post your picture you can determine how big it will look by using the little box for pixel width. I have put these in at 300 pixels.

Here is the original picture, then cropped, then fix flash in eye, then cropped more.

Permalink Reply by John Wolff on March 22, 2012 at 1:11am

This is a good little tutorial.  They used to say that half of photography was in the darkroom;  nowadays, it's on the computer.

Note: when you crop, many photoeditors have an option like, "Use Rule of Thirds" to show a 3-part grid to aid in composition (divide your scene in thirds, vertically and horizontally, and place the focus of attention at one if the intersections).

Also -- especially if you're going to print it -- photoeditors usually have an option to "constrain proportions" (or something like that).  If you want to print 4x6, choose 2:3.  If you want to print 8x10, choose 4x5.  Note: the digital format is a little wider (vertically) than 2:3.  In a 4x6 print, a little strip at the top and bottom will be lost.  Your camera probably has an option to show a 2:3 frame in the viewfinder.  If you like to print 4x6, use it.

Here's a frame straight off the camera:

Here's the same frame cropped 2:3 for a 4x6 print:

The raw photo is fairly well-composed; Al's face is right at the lower 1/3 intersection.

But if I'd been using the 2:3 frame in the viewfinder, I might have mover back a wee bit, because strips at the top and bottom are lost in the print.