High School Senior Portraits – A Parents Guide

Article by Karl Peschel

Way Back When…

A good high school senior portrait is a precious memory. Back in the late seventies when I was graduating high school everyone was forced to go to the contracted studio. All the guys wore the same style tux with a ruffled shirt and bow tie. All the gals wore a simple black dress and held a single rose.

These weren’t senior portraits. They were mug shots. Eeeeewwww!

Today’s Progressive View

Today’s high school senior portraits are much different. Schools may still have a contract photographer, but many allow more casual portraits to be submitted for inclusion in the yearbook. You can hire a professional photographer or shoot them yourself. If you’re inclined to do it yourself read on.

You’ll want to check with your child’s school and get specific instructions for image submission. There will be certain rules on image size, posing, clothing allowed, or other restrictions. Knowing this beforehand is important.

Please Talk to Your Kids First

The first thing you need to do is talk to your high school senior. They may have certain ideas about their picture. They may want that formal portrait only a professional studio can provide.

If they’re willing to let Mom or Dad do the portrait be sure to discuss every aspect with them. You may want to shoot a certain style of portrait, but make sure you shoot it their way too. Relaxed portraits with their guitar, sporting equipment, new car or other personal item makes for a memorable photo. These type photos won’t generally be allowed in the yearbook, but make great gifts for family and friends.

Location

Look around your house and your yard. You may have the perfect spot for a portrait. Be sure to watch for clutter in the background. Move furniture or other items in order to create that perfect setting.

If your child has a favorite local park or garden consider going there. Don’t go in the middle of the day when the light is harsh. Light from straight above causes dark ‘raccoon eyes’. Early morning or late in the day is better. The light casts more pleasing shadows and gives a warmer more golden glow to your photos.

If midday is your only option you can place your child in the shade under a tree or building roof line. Change your White Balance setting to Shade or your photos will turn out excessively blue. Using a simple reflector or your flash will help fill in shadows and help make the colors pop.

Equipment

Generally speaking, a P&S camera won’t give you the best results. A digital SLR with a slight telephoto lens and external flash will provide optimum results. Using a telephoto between 70mm and 105mm will help separate your subject from the background.

An external flash will help fill in shadows when shooting outdoors or potentially provide all the light if shooting indoors. Bounce the light from your flash off the ceiling or side wall for softer more pleasing light. You may want to shoot a practice session if you are trying new techniques with your camera and flash.

About the Author

Karl Peschel runs TeachMeToShoot.com, a website for people who want to learn about digital cameras and digital photography techniques. Karl loves to teach people about photography and can explain things in plain English instead of techno babble. You can learn digital photography without having a Computer Science degree!

Valentine For Boyfriend

Article by Lanie Dills

Valentine For Boyfriend? Ladies, this has traditionally been your day to be wooed all over again. You want your man to show you that he still cares. You want to be treated special, to be shown that the spark is still there. You want him to do something beyond the ordinary don’t you?

Why not do the same for him this year? Use these creative “Valentine For Boyfriend” ideas to arouse his passions in a way no other woman can. Bring back that special spark. Twist him around your little finger. Stir and direct the power within him. Yes, attract him, soothe him, inspire him. Feed dreams into his very soul, and know that he will cherish you for it.

Finally, let him feel what he has always secretly wondered about. You can make him feel the warmth of real connection, the kind he has always known is possible, and the kind that builds to real fulfillment.

1. Romantic letters – Be creative; leave romantic letters, notes, or poetry all over the house, car, garage, and office. Tape one to the bathroom mirror, the windshield of his car, put one in his briefcase or wallet. Sneak into his office and put one in his desk drawer. The idea is to leave one of your personal love letters, bits of poetry, or just one of your very special love notes everywhere he looks on this Valentines Day.

2. The gift of understanding and connection – Realize that he deserves to feel the warmth of real connection…the kind that leads to real fulfillment. Learn how to use your bodily movements to hook into your boyfriend’s feelings; how to use unusual gestures and phrases to grab him where it counts; how his feelings really work; how to open up and make use of the world of his fantasies; how to connect with him more deeply than anyone else ever has; how to get him to share his actual thoughts; how to get him to do what you want; and how to ignite his drive and ambition. Just imagine melting, tingling, glowing being fully alive in a deeper way than ever before. Become the Tigress that rouses the Lion.

3. Plan a short, romantic getaway. Transform the bedroom into paradise. Use fresh flowers, scented candles, rose petals, and of course soft music. Bring along champagne and a bar set, and get coffee in exotic flavors with personalized coffee mugs.

4. Prepare a special dinner beforehand at a friend’s or family member’s house. When you arrive home, tell your guy to jump in the shower so you can go out and celebrate. Slip a homemade card under the door (the bathroom or bedroom where he is getting ready) with a cute saying, such as “Love is big, Love is tall, Look for me in the hall.” Leave a card taped to the wall outside of the room with a rose and directions to go to the fridge. In the fridge, you’ll have placed another card and special chocolates, and directions of where to find you. You’ll be on the balcony or dining room with your surprise dinner.

5. Have a a friend tape you with a movie camera. Talk about how much you love your boyfriend or husband, talk about all the good memories you’ve had, and all of your plans for the future. Order take-out and set up a table in the living room to watch your “special private” movie.

Lanie Dills is the creator of the Squidoo lens, Valentine For Boyfriend. If you enjoyed these 5 “Valentine For Boyfriend” ideas, why not get 5 more, including the one Valentine idea that will endear him to you forever? Grab all these hot ideas right here: Valentine For Boyfriend.

About the Author

Lanie Dills is the creator of the Squidoo lens, Valentine For Boyfriend. If you enjoyed these 5 “Valentine For Boyfriend” ideas, why not get 5 more, including the one Valentine idea that will endear him to you forever? Grab all these hot ideas right here: Valentine For Boyfriend

www.takapaka.pl – Kubek Obiektyw to gadżet idealny dla każdego miłośnika fotografii! Muzyka: Scott Mclean – “Big White Limousine”

I just got my Canon 70-200mm Thermos Coffee Mug. I’ve been waiting for this for almost two months now. It is a special edition cup that was given out by Canon Canada during the Vancouver Winter Olympics. They became so popular some Canon retailers started getting some to sell to customers. So The Camera Store in Calgary put me on a waiting list – and it’s finally arrived. Website: www.meadorsmusings.com Twitter www.twitter.com
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Photography – How To Sell Your Photographs

Article by Stephen Carter

Selling your photographs to make a little extra side money is an appealing idea. But how realistic is it? As it turns out, quite realistic, provided that you are not hoping to get rich doing it.

Let me say right off the bat that if you are hoping to get into photography and live off the proceeds of your image licensing royalties, that’s a whole different ball game. Like every other artist in the world, you will need an extraordinary game plan and the requisite talent to bring it off. I cannot help you with that.

But if you are already taking pictures on a regular basis, and at least a fraction of them are very good, then it makes sense to consider licensing them. Like I said, you are unlikely to get rich doing this, but you might earn enough money each year to outfit with a new high-end camera body, or that lens you fantasize about but which you otherwise would never go so far as to buy.

So why is it not possible to get rich selling your photos?

It is simply a matter of numbers. Most of the popular online image exchanges – the ones that will allow anyone capable of creating quality photos to upload their material and license it out – sell images for about a dollar a piece, and of that they will pay you perhaps 25 cents (maybe 50 cents if you are really lucky). If you are thinking that this is a pretty poor deal for the photographer, you are right. But this does seem to be par for the course, so there may be some operational expenses to running an image exchange that are not immediately obvious. Either way, that’s the current reality of the business.

So let’s consider the numbers again. The reason that images typically sell for a dollar is that the buyers are webmasters looking for low resolution filler images for their web properties. They will happily fork over one or two dollars for an image, but would frown at paying five dollars. You may get hundreds of people willing to pay you a dollar for an image before you can find a couple willing to pay five dollars for a high resolution version that could be printed on a coffee mug. You will find even fewer buyers – magazine and book picture editors, and the like – who are prepared to pay twenty dollars for the highest available resolution version.

So you will make your money from the masses, and at 25 cents a pop you will need 4000 licensed instances of your images before the image exchange will cut your first check for 00. You might manage this by uploading 100 images that average 40 downloads, or you might upload just 4 mind-blowing images that average 1000 downloads a piece. It will come as no surprise that most people make their money by creating as many good photographs as they can. They do not rely on their ability to generate that rare master photo that everybody must have.

Most of the online image exchanges will reject your images if they do not meet the high standards that the exchange has set for itself. So be smart and peruse the exchanges to get an idea of the quality that is required. Your images, in addition to being captivating enough to make people want to download them, also need to be technically perfect. High resolution images with imperceptible noise levels and perfect color balancing are the minimum technical requirements. Get used to shooting at ISO 100, even for low-light shots that require a tripod, mirror lock up and cable release.

The editors of each exchange will have their own standards, of course, and what gets rejected at one site may be accepted elsewhere. So don’t give up immediately if you have a door slammed in your face. Van Gogh could not convince anyone to buy even one of his paintings in the course of his own lifetime. That did not mean his pictures were worthless. But picture editors might not see where you are coming from if they do not recognize the market that you are targeting. For this reason, it pays to figure out beforehand what is selling well before you submit your first portfolio. After that you are likely to meet less resistance if you veer off in a slightly different direction.

It is also a good idea to specialize the themes of your photography. If you take particularly good landscape shots, and build a body of landscape images, your clients will be impressed by your body of work when they are selecting that first image of yours, and they will likely seek you out again when they require a similar image.

Other online image exchanges that operate in a fashion similar to iStockPhoto include Fotolia, ShutterStock, and DreamsTime. All are worth checking out. They are free to join and take a commission on your licensed images.

Another tack you can take, if you don’t like the idea of licensing your images so cheaply, is to go with an online photographic service that allows you to set your own pricing. These are a little harder to find. One such site is PhotoStockPlus which targets event photographers. If you photograph weddings, parties, special occasions, then you are their primary demographic.

PhotoStockPlus offers a subscription service and gives you your own little e-commerce store where you can sell plain photographic prints, as well as have them emblazoned across, for example, a T-shirt, a coffee mug, or a mouse pad. The idea is that you add a markup on top of the wholesale price that PhotoStockPlus charges for supplying these items with your images on them, and that markup is passed onto your clients. All you do is upload the photos, set the markups, and then point people toward the site. The rest is hands-off. The cost of the service to you is reasonable, with rates that start at less than /month.

Regardless of the route you take to monetize your photography, actually doing something about it makes a lot of sense. You can either let your best images sit on your PC year after year, where they will likely get lost in the course of time, or you can put them out into the world where they will have a chance to earn you both a little fame and some recurring income.

To help you select a suitable digital camera to get started with, I have put together an article for you about how to find the right Beginner Digital Camera.

Whether you need a simple point-and-shoot model, or a more complex digital SLR model, you will find the answers, and greatly discounted digital camera offers, at http://www.bestdigitalcameradiscounts.com/

About the Author

Stephen Carter is a web developer and creator of the review script Review Foundry. His interest in photography spans decades.

Solution to abstract blue puzzle


Image by sylvar
With a bit more backlighting from opened mini-blinds, light bounced off the spindle of CDs behind my computer and into the back side of this translucent plastic mug.

Mug slide


Image by tfangel
Took my IR converted XTi out but with a holga lens, not the easiest to focus, to say the least, especially with an IR camera. Clarus – Glee Club of Adderdale Second trip to the Chippewa Valley Renaissance Faire, much better temps, so i could stay longer.

www.festfun.com

WEBSITE TepeTepe.com BLOG HugoTepe.com TWEETS Twitter.com Twitter.com FACEBOOK Facebook.com MYSPACE Myspace.com
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Consumer Electronics FAQ

Article by cesfaq

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Amstrad DRX400 SkyDigiBox Stuck contained by Standby,?Anyone know what do do when an Amstrad DRX400 gets stuck within standby? the red light have gone dimmer than usual, ive tried turning it off for a daytime or so with no luck. Cheers!

Nikon FM2N @ Starbucks Centre Point, Singapore


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