Top Photography - Guide to Photography

• Photography Home
• Guide to Photography
• About
• Links
• FREE Photography Guide

When You Need Professional Photography

April 28th, 2009    Subscribe To Our Feed

Professionally done photographs are an affordable art form. They are not only beautiful and accurate portraits of times and subjects you want to remember for the rest of your life, but they are visually stunning. When you want to have a portrait done or want to best sell anything, those are the times you need professional photography.

Professional Portraits

The advantage of professional photography is that they have the expensive equipment you don’t. If you have a beloved black cat, for example, you are quite aware that they are next to impossible to take a decent picture of with the usual 110 or 35mm family camera. All of the soft highlights and peculiar expression of your black cat seems to melt away in a black blob when you try to take a photo. There are just some subjects that need the special lighting and fine-tuned focus that professional photography can give your cat the portrait that they require you to worship.

If you are like me, then you do not exactly look like Marilyn Monroe, even on your best days. I happen to be at that wonder age when I have both wrinkles and pimples. Do you think I stay in the room whenever anyone whips out a camera? Not on your life! But since I am a full time freelance writer, for business purposes I might have to get publicity head shots of myself done. Although I love my family, I wouldn’t trust any of them with this assignment. They are all amateurs. I would get my head shots done in a professional photography studio. They would be able to hide my pimples and show my ghostly complexion off to its best advantage. Since I wear glasses, they would be able to set the lighting up so the glasses don’t have big shiny spots on them that obscure my eyes.

Advertising

If you have nearly anything for sale, a photo done with using the tips of professional photography will interest prospective clients more than a bad photo will. If what you are selling is big enough, like a house, then consider professional photography. If you make a living wheeling and dealing on eBay, then you already know a good photo done the closest way you can approximate professional photography will ignite interest in bidders. If you just lay the item for sale on a scanner, that often leaves a distorted view of the object, with unflattering shadows and washed out colors.

Black And White Best For Portrait Photography

April 27th, 2009    Subscribe To Our Feed

Although there are defiantly very beautiful and unique color portraits, for the best portrayal of your subject, you should consider black and white film for your portrait photography. Black and white film, although only using shades of grey, helps the viewer to focus more on the essence of a subject rather than on what colors are in the portrait. There is a timeless quality to black and white film that takes your subject out of the day that photo was taken and into the world of universal experience.

What About Apples And Oranges?

It is a true argument that comparing black and white film to color film is like comparing apples and oranges. If your artistic inclinations – or the insistence of your clients – lean towards color film in your portrait photography, by all means, listen to your muse and go for color. But if you want you subject to look its best, then black and white can give your portrait photography that crowing touch.

Annie Liebovitz is arguably the best living artist of portrait photography today. And yes, she used color film. She is most famous for her celebrity portraits, especially for the cover of a naked John Lennon curled in a fetal position beside a motherly (and fully clad) Yoko Ono.

For her, she sees her subjects through the way they gesture, the way they use makeup or no makeup, the clothes they choose to wear (or none at all) and the props she brings to them. She can capture the inner essence of a subject with color, but also with her eye for how that subject fits into the world.

The Test Of Time

Consider your cultural memory. Many black and white images dominate the portrait photography studio of the mind. Although color portraits of both Albert Einstein and Adolf Hitler exist, you most likely remembered the black and white portraits first. When you think of World War II, perhaps you think of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. Both color and black and white film exists of the mushroom cloud.

Which one is reproduced more often as it seems to somehow be more chilling – the black and white one. Although the subject is a mushroom cloud and not a face, the black and white image of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima is one of the most unforgettable examples of portrait photography in history. It not only captured the pivotal moment of World War II, but put a face on all of our fears in the years to come.

How to Find the Best Deals on Popular Photography

April 26th, 2009    Subscribe To Our Feed

Photography is popular for a number of different reasons and in a couple of different ways. First you have fans of photography because they take the photos themselves, and then you have the fans that like photography as their home decorations. Either way, popular photography is something that can be found just about anywhere but many times it comes with a hefty price tag.

There are a few ways to find the best deals on popular photography that only require a little legwork on your own behalf. The extra time taken to find good deals on popular photography for your home or to give as gifts is worth it in the long run.

Your Local Artists are Starving

Local artists in your area may not all produce popular photography, but enough of them do that you can find yourself nice pieces of art. Because local artists aren’t as well known as famous artists, their work is usually priced a lot less and they can usually use every penny of it.

So finding the local hotspots where local artists’ popular photography is sold not only will save you money, but you’ll feel good knowing that you’re offering exposure and financial support to a starving artist in your area. They deserve the credit and appreciate every bit they receive.

Artists Abroad Could Probably Eat Too!

By using the Internet, you can find a great number of deals on popular photography from artists overseas and abroad. Because they don’t have as big an audience where they originate, these artists tend to sell their work online at a discount above most others in order to gain recognition as an artist.

Because they’re looking more for exposure at this point instead of making a ton of money, you have the opportunity to gain some excellent popular photography at the fraction of the price it would normally cost for a similar piece.

In fact, purchasing popular photography from unknown artists or artists just starting out is a good business to get into. Doing research in regard to the chance of a particular artist and their popularity in the art world can let you invest early enough in the artist to make a nice profit in the end. This helps support the artist as they get started, in the end enabling you to resell their earlier work for 2-3 times the amount you paid for it.

They Sky’s The Limit With Landscape Photography

April 11th, 2009    Subscribe To Our Feed

Landscape photography has pretty much the same criteria as does landscape painting, only the medium used by the artist is different. Landscape photography is often used for advertising and documentaries as well as fine art photography. You don’t have to be a professional photographer to enjoy taking landscape photography lessons, whether with a professional teacher or with yourself as a teacher.

What’s Your Landscape?

Landscape photography is not limited to just trees and fields, although there are certainly a lot of fine photos of them being taken every day. Landscape is whatever is around you. It doesn’t necessarily have to be beaches or mountains majestic or any of the traditional landscape photography settings. The city may be your landscape. The block you live on may be your landscape. The office you work in, the store you shop in, the lot you park your car in – all of those places are part of your world. It is all your landscape.

Perhaps the minute cracks in the pavement are your landscape. Looking at them very closely, they might look like a miniature city seen from space. Or perhaps your landscape is the entire harbor you grew up at. It might be best to get that view from atop a skyscraper or a in a helicopter. All of these examples capture the landscape of your inner experience and show the outer world what you see.

Traditional Landscape Photography

Most artists do starve if they only work for themselves. Don’t be afraid to take landscape photography to the specifications of others. This will test your creativity in ways you may not have thought possible.

For example, maybe your grandfather wants you to take landscape photography of his fishing hole. It’s not just one section your grandfather wants – it’s the whole area. You would need to get up in a tree or a ladder to get an overview of the fishing hole – the trees, the clouds, the play of shadows on the water, the boats silently hopeful overhead.

You will also need a panoramic lens in traditional landscape photography in order to fit all of what you see on the actual photo. It is best to work with natural light, as that gives a softer and richer look to the images. If the day is heavily cloudy, you could try using a higher speed of film such as 400 or even 1600 rather than the usual 100 or 200 speed used in most 35mm cameras. Only use a flash if you absolutely have to — say, if you have a camera that refused to release the shutter unless the flash is turned on!

Freeing Light And Time: The History Of Photography

April 10th, 2009    Subscribe To Our Feed

The history of photography owes a great debt to bored, bull-headed Europeans who wouldn’t take “it can’t be done” for an answer. The name “photography” was first used in 1839 by Sir John F.W. Hershel, who coined the term from “photos”, meaning “light” and “graphien” meaning “to draw” in Greek. In the 1800’s anything Classical, whether Greek, Roman or Egyptian was considered the height of excellence, hence naming a brand new art form with Greek words.

Who’s To Blame?

In the history of photography, the man who finally got images to fix to film was a Frenchman (wait for it)

Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre.

In 1829, he managed to take the first photograph. As there were no Photomats at the time, he had to develop it himself. It took nearly eight hours to develop one photograph. In ten years, he’d cut that developing time to about a half hour. He humbly named this procedure Daguerreotype, one of the names sometimes still used for photography.

Daguerre used to work in theater painting backdrops. He noticed light could make images on his still wet paint. This was a pivotal moment in the history of photography when someone realized that light could be frozen onto paper. Only Daguerre used sheets of metal to capture the images on.

Photography caught on in a flash. You needn’t wait weeks or months for a formally painted portrait – you could now get one in two weeks or less. The history of photography goes from one sensation to another, making each new twist even more popular than the one before it.

Other Milestones

The metal photographic plates were heavy and costly. Thin sheets of tin were cheaper and worked just as effectively. They were called tintypes and came out in 1856 by Hamilton Smith.

George Eastman discovered that a kind of film used to capture images and sent off to a professional developer could bring photography to the masses. The first film camera came out in 1888. He made a fortune and is still known in the history of photography because of the Eastman Kodak company.

All images were in black and white or sepia and white at this time. Some negatives were hand painted in order to give a color image. All of that changed in the late 1930’s, when a color film was introduced, Kodachrome. And that, as they say, was the history of photography.

Glamour Photography Grows From Celebrity Exposure

April 9th, 2009    Subscribe To Our Feed

There have been many interpretations of glamour photography since the first celebrities were photographed to help boost their career and while initially intended to offer a more attractive look for them, other photographers quickly noticed the trend and tried to make them more glamorous. Pictures of stars in bathing suits heightened the interests of servicemen during the Second World War and with presentations that are more brazen, the photos appearing in men’s magazines were received with negativity and banned.

It was not until 1953 when Hugh Hefner put a new spin on glamour photography by removing the enticing aspect of a female shown wearing very little and went to producing his Playboy magazine with females wearing nothing at all. His first edition with photos of Marilyn Monroe with nothing on but the radio was a breakthrough for glamour photography and other magazines quickly followed suit. Many still were not happy with the appearance of women wearing next to nothing but as time passed, social acceptance changed the way the world viewed the magazines.

Today, glamour photography is considered an art form that allows women to be photographed in appealing poses wearing revealing clothing. While these types of pictures rarely come close to being pornographic in nature, they are meant to enhance the sex appeal of the subject. Many use them as gifts for spouses or boyfriends and others make them part of a want-to-be modeling portfolio.

Everyday People In Extraordinary Surroundings

Many professional photographers, male and female have turned glamour photography into a lucrative full-time profession, often setting up traveling road shows that invite women in for a short session. They supply the clothing and are attended by professional make-up artists and costumers to fit them into sexually appealing clothing and apply appearance-enhancing make-up before the photos are taken.

Typically, the glamour photography session and a photo package are paid for at the time of the session with the pictures being delivered at a later date, usually in the same location of the shoot where customers may have the option of ordering more pictures than originally purchased. In most cases that is the one and only time available to order reprints.

As the attitude towards glamour photography has changed over the years, other photos of models wearing considerably less, or nothing may be considered as art, pornography or soft-core pornography. Regardless of the name, the work may represent the techniques and abilities of the photographer, but it is the end use of the pictures that actually determine their true nature.

« Previous Page — Next Page »

Make Money Online | Top Guide to Photography | Get Fit in 14 Days