Love of Photography

I am truly an artist in many ways. I love decorating, sketching and above all else, photographing the mundane or the unusual, the beautiful and the strange. I also photograph my own listings

I recently completed a college class in beginning photography and thoroughly enjoyed it. I have always been a learn by doing person but felt it was time to understand my camera better so that I could improve my skills.

My desire to become more serious about my camera and my passion began in earnest about a year and a half ago. I was traveling around Australia, New Zealand and Fiji for a month with my husband and found my digital point and shoot camera was just not cutting it. Many times by the time it focused, the subject was long gone. I had an opportunity to shoot a couple of pictures with an SLR Canon 30D and fell in love instantly.

Yes, these cameras are heavy and cumbersome, not something you can slip into your pocket, but what a machine and it is instantly responsive.

Soon after getting back home I ordered the 30D and haven't looked back. It is everything I dreamed it would be and probably more than enough.

My desire to understand and tame this machine led to enrolling in the college class. Boy, what an undertaking. Who would have thought that a beginning photography class could be so demanding! But that is another 'intel' piece.

Do you know what RAW is and Jpeg and Tiff? Do you know what PSD is? These are different types of photo files. Have you ever used Adobe Photoshop CS3? Well let me tell you a little about this.

A point and shoot produces Jpeg files. The pictures are typically crisp and clear (provided the photographer holds the camera still). They usually don't require anything more from the photographer than sending them out to be printed.

It is important to know that these files are compressed and each time they are opened on your computer they are de-compressed and they lose meta-data. That means they become more and more degraded.

Tiff is what you should use to preserve the meta-data in the Jpeg files. When you open Jpeg, convert them to Tiff so that you can open them any number of times, view them and never lose the data. However, if you send them to others via computer the recipient may not be able to open them so you will have to save them as Jpeg’s again send them as Jpeg's.

RAW is a choice that Single Lens Digital Cameras offer. They are much more complicated and they are exactly what they sound like, raw. They have not been compressed or processed by the camera and they appear slightly out of focus because the camera itself has not done any processing, as in Jpeg.

This is where Adobe Photoshop comes in. It's a relatively expensive program priced anywhere from $250 to $600. If you are a college student you can purchase it (with proof of enrollment in a college) for around $250.

The Raw images are not as crisp as Jpeg images and in order to make them all they can be you must open them in Photoshop (or similar programs) and go to work on sharpening, color balancing, sizing, saturation and so on and so on. It is a demanding endeavor but is worth it, IF you like this sort of thing.

I think one of the reasons point and shoot digitals are so popular is because most people are not into creating works of art in the 'digital darkroom'. Not to mention the size of the SLR Digital cameras and the many lenses that you must carry.

The process can be very time consuming but also very satisfying when your efforts result in a masterpiece. But then sometimes, even after working very hard on the photo, it turns out like ....

I have barely touched on photography and the processes but this is probably more than enough to bore you to tears if you have no interest in this. Taking pictures with the point and shoot cameras is great fun and produces some amazing pictures. But if you like to take actions photos, or slow motion waterfalls (the dreamy photos you see of waterfalls) or time lapse photos, or double exposure type photos, the SLR digitals cameras are what you have been missing!