Many artists depict themselves in one or more self portraits during their careers. These portraits do more than simply show us what the artists look like. They often reveal the artists’ personalities, interests, and life styles. In this activity, you will be drawing your own self portrait and in the process reveal something about yourself.
Materials: a pencil, a large sheet of paper, and a mirror.
Getting Started: To begin, take a close look at your face in the mirror. Look for unique details such as the shape of your nose, the shape of your eyes, and the shapes made by your hair.
Notice that your eyes are midway between the top of your head and the bottom of your chin. Next, look at the contours of your face. Take your finger and follow along the edges of your face. If you press slightly, you’ll feel the bone structure that makes your face unique.
The Activity: To start your drawing, it is a good idea to work outwards from the center of your face. Start with your nose. Work slowly, keeping your eye focused on the contours of your face in the mirror. Look down at your paper as little as possible.
Rather than only drawing yourself, include something in your picture that will tell others about who you are, what you like to do, or where you live. When you’ve finished, pin your drawing up and stand back from it. Are you satisfied with the result? If so, sign and date your drawing at the bottom. If not, try another one. You’ll get better with practice.
You can also download your self guide on drawing portraits app. Get the best iphone app for fitness and app for working out! This fitness app explores functional fitness and training at its best. Discover how to allow the body to train it was designed to move – get fitter, faster and stronger!
We used to see postings in different places everyday. They are posted to function as warnings, reminders, notice, directions and others. Some of these postings are so funny that they can be one of your collections. Try capturing some of them and see the beauty of original postings as they tickle your soul to laughter.
The main theme this time, to get your boredom away, is to carry your camera and search for wall posts that are humorous. By chance, you can compile them in one album after printing them. Do this if you want original collection of funny photos of “tremendous” postings.
Not only found in your locality, but some can be found in Facebook accounts done by your friend or their friends. You can do screenshots and email them to somebody you wanted to share your laughter. Make sure you are protecting some names to avoid conflicts.
Some postings are made with lots of grammatical and spelling errors and some are too short that you need to break your head in order to understand. Some are found on jeeps, parking areas, comfort rooms, restaurants, fences and others. If reading them is funny, sharing them to others can be more funny.
Humor can be found anywhere even if they are not verbally stated. By reading funny postings, you will learn a single humor. The more you collect pictures of funny postings, the more you are relaxing your mind. It is a humorous way of getting out from stress and one advantageous point is they are all free.
Bored? Why not get your old family album and detach all the pictures and let the scanner do the work? This will help you preserve those old photos. Having a soft copy of those photos is more creative than pasting them in albums. When days go by, you can print those old pictures and arrange them in another album.
Old pictures are worth keeping but the components of the photo paper might not last as expected. Those memorable days printed in old photographic papers are no can still be a part of your old collection. Some older photographic papers have unique surfaces that are no longer produced. In this connection, certain photographic periodicals contain actual prints rather than graphic reproductions.
Take the innovation of using your scanner to preserve those old pictures of yours. This can be used for future reference specially on reunions and family gatherings. You can bring back the memories by keeping old photos in your closet with soft copies of them. Just in case you want to reproduce some then the availability of copies are ready.
The picture settings can be changed which is more artistic as you go over and use some applications and softwares. It is always funny when you see those pictures when you were once a little child giving up the biggest smile with one tooth which you were proud of for the camera to capture. Old fashioned clothes and hair styles are also good to look at as they evolve and simply come back in trends today. A single picture can be a trace of historical tracks of the days of your life.
You can compile old class pictures too. You will add flavor to your collection if you will send those old scanned pictures to your childhood classmates. This will somehow make your bonding closer even throughout the distance. Pictures are the best evidence on how your life before differs from the life you are enjoying today. Gather all the old pictures now! Scan them, print them and enjoy!
By building your own photography website to showcase your work and your services, you handle all these problems in one fell swoop.
Digital photography offers you the ability to share your work with the world. Many magazines and newspapers will only take submissions in .jpeg or .gif formats. The days of negatives, proof sheets, and slides are over. Though you may still choose to offer 35 millimeter prints or other specialty photo services, digital photography is where the money is in the industry.
Lucky for you! Digital photographs take less than a minute to upload to your web host. At variable qualities, you can showcase the different styles of photography at which you are proficient. Other things you can do with your photography site include:
- List hours and services and prices. If you are only available to work at night and on weekends, list this on your site. Also, list different services that you provide including wedding photography, baby and pregnancy pictures, family portraits, student photos, pet photography, and more. Listing prices is not a requirement, but something that is highly recommended. Offering a variety of packages with the option to customize will help potential customers know right away whether or not they can afford your services.
- Special deals or discounts. Monthly discounts or special deals for first time customers, discounts for repeat customers or multiple packages can also be displayed on your photography website. They may also be a good ‘time clock’ incentive if they are updated frequently and set to change within a week or less.
- Offer a subscription service. Another option you may consider is offering a subscription service for your photography through your site. Many need stock photography for their websites, brochures, flyers, et cetera. Some may even need these on a regular basis. Offering one time downloads and a subscription service with a wide net of types of photography may be one way to increase your sales revenue while shooting whatever you like and increasing your portfolio.
- Order prints. Opt for a shopping cart on your site and allow those who may have just stopped by to check you out to purchase a print for download instantly.
- Commission order forms. For customized orders or packages or to set up special shoots, you can design an order form for your photography website that will allow them to be as specific as they like about what exactly it is that they’re looking for.
- Offer photographic services. List and define your services in detail. Some may not even realize that they are looking for the exact photographic service that only you can provide.
- Contact info. Include everything that a potential customer may need: email address, land line, cell phone, studio address.
- Part of the community. Connect to the rest of the photography community by offering a link page: photo supply sites, framers, videographers, et cetera.
- Be creative. Show your diversity, talent, and imagination. Inspire your clients to inspire you.
While personal wealth can come and go, real family values and personal histories can be preserved forever!
Iris Wagner, leading expert on the subject of legacy preservation has seen a recent trend in wealthy families expressing their desire to preserve their stories and values for posterity.
Ms Wagner is Founder and CEO of Memoirs Productions, a company that specializes in producing broadcast-quality legacy videos. Noticing the jump in interest in her company over the last two years, she claims that the current economic downturn has created a desire by her high-net-worth clientele to digitally record their life stories and capture their values, beliefs and life wisdom as legacies. Families are realizing that while personal wealth can come and go, real family values and personal histories can be preserved for next generations through digital media.
In a 2005 study Allianz Life Insurance discovered that non-financial leave-behinds such as ethics, morality, faith, and life stories are ten times more important to both boomers and elders with children than the financial aspect of a legacy transfer.
“The national survey found that for the overwhelming majority, legacy transfer has to do with deeper, more emotional issues,” said Ken Dychtwald, President of market research consultants Age Wage. “An inheritance focuses primarily on the money, but a true legacy also includes memories, lessons and values that are taught to their children over a lifetime.”
While anyone can write a journal, a letter, or produce a personal video, Memoirs Productions offers a service and expertise that is a cut above the rest. “We craft broadcast-quality A&E ™- style DVD productions,” explains Ms Wagner. “Our exceptional and avant-garde service of producing biographies and ethical wills on DVD provides a solution to older generations’ dilemma of how best to apply their values on personal development, relationship choices, commercial instincts and financial management.”
In 2008 Memoirs Productions received the RayLign Award given to an individual or organization that exemplifies a professional commitment and unbounded enthusiasm for perpetuating family well-being through generations.
Upon presenting the award, Gregory T. Rogers, RayLign’s Founder and President said, “The Memoirs experience is also enhanced by Iris’ personal touch that comes through with unmatched energy and enthusiasm.”
Memoirs Productions is an award-winning firm that creates broadcast-quality productions for Fortune 100 clients and highly successful “rags to riches” entrepreneurs with great stories to preserve.
Documentaries are shot all over North America and post-production editing is done in Montreal, Canada by a highly qualified team of professionals for some of the best families that care about legacy preservation.
For further information please contact:
Iris Wagner, Founder & CEO
Memoirs Productions
Toll free: 866-481-9303
Email: Iris(dot)Wagner(at)MemoirsProductions(dot)com http://www.MemoirsProductions.com/
The new Alamy Photo Collection app for iPad showcases stunning pictures from the world’s largest independent photo agency.
Alamy’s CEO, James West says “The Alamy Photo Collection app is beautifully simple – it’s free, it looks great, it’s updated every day, and it brings the Alamy brand to an exciting new device for a global audience of photography enthusiasts.”
About Alamy: Alamy (http://www.alamy.com) connects thousands of designers, marketing departments, news desks, and publishers with some of the best professional and amateur photographers around. Alamy’s revolutionary approach to the stock photography business means 60% of each sale is paid to the content owner and 89% of company profit goes to medical research.
Have you ever wanted to find a way to bring extra money into your household–yet don’t have a lot of time to spend on a full-time endeavor?
The solution is as close as the digital camera sitting there in a drawer. The following suggestions are only a few of the many ways you can make money in your spare time with your camera.
* Pet photos - Most owners won’t struggle to take a photograph with their pet all by themselves. You can be the one who makes it easy on them. Not only can you charge for the service and your time, but you can offer the photograph in it’s digital form or as a print that you can mail to them later – either created by your own photo printer or by a photo processing service.
*Graduations – preschool, high school, or college graduations offer dozens, if not hundreds of opportunities to capture a significant moment in someone’s life. If the family members of the graduate aren’t located in as good a location or don’t have as good a camera as yourself – you’ll have even greater opportunity at getting the shots they couldn’t.
*Holiday Family Postcards – offer your services to families that want their picture taken and put on a postcard that they can send to their extended family and friends.
*Photo Novelty Items – take photographs of people that want the pictures of themselves of their loved ones imprinted on coffee mugs, mouse pads, key chains, tee-shirts, and other items.
*Newborn photo service – parents of newborns are some of the busiest people in the world. Advertise your services on an on-call basis so that you can take informal snapshots for the growing family either before they leave the hospital, or after they get home.
The sight of early morning snow, the shimmering frost in the trees, your sister falling off in your snow filled front yard and your stunning snow angel, don’t you ever wish you could just capture that moment right away and place them in your computer desktop?
Right, sounds easy but for an amateur photographer this may sound too challenging and laborious.
But thanks to the dawn of digital photography and winter photography need not be exclusive to the professional anymore.
You have to remember a few pointers though. Winter shooting can be tricky as majority of the landscape is white and the background is bright.
When shooting a snow filled area, the brightness of the snow may often cause your digital camera to somewhat underexpose the scene, thus making the snow to look gray.
To correct this, you might have to increase your exposure compensation so the whiteness of the snow can be appropriately captured.
The time of the day you took the picture can also have an effect in your image. So if you want cooler shots shoot closer to midday but if you want warmer shoots, shoot early in the morning or late in the afternoon.
Although traditional photography belief tells us that using flash outdoor is not necessary but if you are shooting a winter photograph, using a flash can bring out details and highlights that might not be captured without it.
However, if you are shooting close shots avoid using flash as much as possible as the reflection can greatly reduce any detail in your photo.
With the flexibility of processing available with digital cameras, you have better choices when in comes to choosing the finished format of your photograph. There is really nothing to lose to trying winter photography.
You might even be surprised with the images that you captured. Once you have become accustomed to winter photography and have been familiar with the different techniques, you will find that winter is one of the best times of the year to go out there, take photos and make use of your digital camera.
You will be surprised to see that the final results are worth the hassle. Want more tips? Here are 15 useful tips for you to take even better photos!
1. Keep an eye on the weather
Weather conditions can play a big part in setting the mood of your shot. Rather than waiting for the bright light of the midday sun, a misty morning in a forest can be the perfect time of day for that mood-shot.
2. Take your time to choose the subject
Take your time to choose the subject, then spend time walking around the subject looking for the best angle and lighting.
3. Take your time to set up the shot
Don’t be afraid to take your time to set up your shot. Although it can get a bit frustrating if you have your loved ones tagging along and they’re sitting and waiting impatiently for 20 minutes for you to take a single shot of a piece of driftwood on the beach!
4. Don’t always choose brightly-coloured subjects
Subjects with muted colours can sometimes produce excellent results. A field of wheat of similar yellow-brown colour can produce striking results when accompanied by a low-sun and long shadows.
5. Movement diffusion
If you have a camera that allows you to shoot with a manual shutter speed – try slowing the speed and increasing the F-stop. Then move your camera when taking the shot. Some very effective arty-type images can be produced with blur effects.
6. Overexpose your subject
Not too good to do all the time, but experiment with results by over-exposing the subject.
7. Try macro photography
Grab a magnifying glass and see if you can focus your camera through the glass onto a small subject. It just may work! And may open up a whole new range of subjects for you!
8. Shoot through wet glass
Try spraying water onto a window, then take a shot through the window to a subject outside. (wet the outside of the window – not the inside of your home!)
9. Colour balance
Try balancing colour by having subject and the surrounding detail in similar colours.
10. Silhouettes
Silhouettes usually have a small range of colours, but can produce some of the most beautiful images. Shooting a silhouette involves having the background brighter then the subject in the foreground.
11. Experiment with patterns
We’ve all seen those amazing images of the red and orange leaves of maple trees in the fall or autumn. Thousands of leaves – all of a similar shape and colour – but very awe-inspiring and beautiful.
12. Compliment colours
Two strikingly-different colours can be beautiful too. Picture an image of your girlfriend or wife in a red dress sitting on a field of green grass. Or your boyfriend or husband in a red shirt walking through a field of waist-high wheat stalks. Complimentary colours that will bring more attention to the subject.
13. Use a colour filter
If your camera can be fitted with coloured filters – try your hand. Although this effect can be made quite easily these days with photo and image-editing software.
14. Sunrise is better than sunset
Wake up before sunrise one day and go on a photography expedition. If you’ve not done it before you’ll be pleasantly-surprised by the contrasting light and shadows. But remember you’ll only have a very short window of time in which to shoot (usually less than an hour) before the sun rises too high and you lose the light.
15. Use a flash in daylight
Use your flash during the daytime to fill a close subject with light. This will produce better results where the background is brighter than your subject and the automatic shutter speed on your camera shoots too fast to effectively show the detail of your subject.
When it comes to the internet and the advancements of modern technology, the revenue generating options are truly unlimited. One way that many people are finding great success as entrepreneurs is through the use of their digital cameras and photo printers.
Whether you use your digital knowledge to enter photo contests using images taken with your digital camera or choose to start an online auction business, the use of a both camera and photo printer are essential.
With entrepreneurship in mind, the following five tips may help to get you started on the road to success using nothing more than your digital camera and photo printer.
1) Start an eBay business and use your digital camera to take pictures for inclusion in your auctions. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much money will it be worth for your auction? After all, would you buy something without seeing it?
- Become an amateur photographer using your digital camera and print out the images using a realistic photo printer, which can use either black or color ink.
- Create personalized calendars by taking a photo with your digital camera, incorporating it into a calendar creation program and print them out using a photo printer. These are extremely popular at craft shows and flea markets.
- Take photos using your digital camera and incorporate them into a program that manipulates photos. You can even take two photos and merge them together. For instance, take a photo of two sunflowers and another of your two best friends. Download the images from your digital camera onto the computer and manipulate them so that the faces of your two best friends are inside of the sunflowers. Print this photo using your photo printer and use it as an example of your new digital imagery business. These, too, are extremely popular at craft shows.
- Using nothing more than a digital camera and quality photo printer, you can work in the publishing industry. Several years ago, a national magazine cover featuring a well-known celebrity was created with nothing more than a personal photo printer. The magazine office was unable to make an e-mailed image work, so they enlisted the help of a writer who enlarged the photo and printed it out using a color photo printer. The print was then mailed to the magazine’s office, who then used the image as their full-color cover picture.
When purchasing any type of electronics, including digital cameras and photo printers, always pay close attention to the warranty and make sure that you are buying a quality name in technology.
Depending on your intended use, you may want to select a digital camera with a high pixel count and a photo printer capable of producing high DPI (dots per inch) images. Both will allow for better quality and more realistic photo creations.