Tips for Natural Looking Portraits

Here's a nice article on portrait photography. The Human Side of Photography - 4 Tips for Natural Looking Portraits:

"The Human Side of Photography - 4 Tips for Natural Looking Portraits

The following post on The Human Side of Photography is by Natalie Norton from natalienortonphoto.com.

Over the years my camera has become an extension of my arm, relate? Of course you do. Those lucky souls like you and I who discover they have a passion for photography quickly find it to be magically intoxicating in every way. We just can’t get enough."

The goal of portrait photography is to capture the likeness of a person or a small group of people, typically in a flattering manner. Like other types of portraiture, the focus of photograph is the person's face, although the entire body and the background may be included. Many people enjoy having professionally made family portraits to hang in their homes, or special portraits to commemorate certain events, such as graduations or weddings.

Worth reading if you're looking to improve your portrait photography.

. List Price: $29.95 Our Price: $18.78 You Save: $ 11.17 (37%) Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers Manufacturer: Amherst Media, Inc.

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100 Photoshop Tutorials for Creating Beautiful Art

Each one starts as a thumbnail that can be hovered over to display more information. A truly great resource.

Visit 100 Photoshop Tutorials for Creating Beautiful Art

One example is this one:

The idea behind this image was fairly simple – the profile of a young woman. I had a reasonably clear picture in my head before I started, the girl’s expression, the art nouveau abstraction of her hair and headwear, and the visual style. I wanted to use blue, since I feel that my art relies a bit too heavily on warm palettes. You can clearly see the influence of some of my favourite artists; Alphonse Mucha, Moebius and Yoshitaka Amano. Blue was created with Adobe Photoshop 7.0, but these techniques can be applied to all the most recent versions. I use a Wacom Graphics tablet.

New Sony Digital SLR - the A200

The new Sony DSLR-A200 digital SLR targets the beginner and advanced amateur photographers with an easy-to-use, affordable as well as feature-rich entry-level digital SLR. The A200 replaces the DSLR-A100 while borrowing the noise reduction and image processing techniques from the more advanced DSLR-A700. It features 10.2-megapixel resolution on an APS-C size CCD image sensor with High ISO noise reduction that takes place in the RAW data stage before image JPEG conversion, providing a high ISO of 3200.

An enhanced Super Steady Shot claims to offer from 2.5-3.5 steps anti-shake performance with all alpha lenses. Since the anti-shake system shifts the CCD to compensate for camera movement, all alpha lenses benefit from anti-shake performance. Compatible lenses encompass all Minolta Maxxum® mount lenses, in addition to Sony a (alpha) lens lineup - including Carl Zeiss® lenses.

Changing lenses in a DSLR can allow dust to enter the camera -- so to keep the CCD imager clean for better pictures, the Sony α (alpha) DSLR-A200 camera utilizes both static-free anti-dust coating on the CCD filter and anti-dust vibration that automatically shakes the CCD to dislodge dust each time the camera is powered off.

The large 2.7-in. LCD monitor is high resolution at 230,000 pixels with the Clear Photo LCD™ design for easy playback viewing. The DSLR-A200 camera’s supplied lithium ion battery offers up to 750 shots per full charge. It supports JPEG and RAW file format. Note that the A200 has a slot for CompactFlash™ Type I/II media cards; an adaptor for Memory Stick Duo™ media cards is sold separately as an accessory.

The Sony α (alpha) DSLR-A200 kit comes with a DT 18-70mm f3.5-5.6 3.9x zoom lens, with a 35mm equivalent focal length of 27-105mm. The DSLR-A200W kit includes the DT 18-70mm lens and a 75–300mm f4.5-5.6 lens.

Great Photoshop Brushes You can Download

The PhotoshopRoadmap has put together a collection of 100 high-resolution brushes for Photoshop that are ripe for the browsing. Some looked more useful than others to me but the quality of the collection is still impressive. The article also provides some choice links to other Photoshop brush resources. Read 100 Awesome High Resolution Photoshop Brushes.

Photoshop Support Brushes

One of the best Photoshop brushes page available. It gathers links to some of the finest brush designers on the web. There you will find some amazing Photoshop brushes sets created exclusively for this site.

Brushes at Obsidian Dawn

Stephanie is a talented artists and a regular contributor to The Photoshop Roadmap. At her site she offers a vast gallery of beautifully designed brushes that you can download for free.

500ml Brushes

Loads and loads of unique and high quality Photoshop brushes. Go there and download them all.

Valhalla Vania Brushes

A great selection of high quality brushes.

Mutsie’s Brushes

An excellent collection of frame brushes of all kind. Lots of creative ideas.

Sage Brushes

A collection of beautiful classy brushes. Some commercial, some for free. .

Brusheezy, Ps Brush, Get Brushes, Ps Brushes, Chez Plumeau, Photoshop Mosaic and The Photoshop Roadmap

Photoshop Brushes directories.

Deviant Art Photoshop Brushes Section

Although I’ve been browsing this site for three days, I wasn’t able to reach the last page of the Photoshop brushes section. Huge Photoshop brushes source. The largest of all sites mentioned in this article.

10,000 Photoshop Brushes Collection from GraphicXtras

If you still believe you need more brushes, take a look at this commercial collection.

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Originally uploaded by RickBlythe.

Sometimes I like to capture images that don't show the whole object. Here is a classic example of a photo that is interesting in its own right even though we cannot tell what it is. The texture of the rust and the interesting shapes are enough. [click the image for a larger version].

For those of you who must know what this is, it's a portion of the base of a fountain (shut off for winter), taken in Hamilton, Canada. Those round globe objects are each about a foot in diameter and the whole think stands about 30 feet high.

I hope this inspires you to get close, to look at the interesting "parts" of the overall, to make a new story from something we see everyday.

Happy photo-taking!

When to use a soft box

Learn how and when to use a soft box in this free video clip on photography

Good Photography Tips

Some Good Photography Tips here shot on location in the Desert of Fire, NV from Rick Sammon Wiley with his Canon Rebel xti-