RSS
 

Posts Tagged ‘memories’

A More Lively Way to Capture Your Memories & Experiences

19 Dec

The post A More Lively Way to Capture Your Memories & Experiences appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darren Rowse.

Deal 8 dPS Holiday Deals

Day 8 of dPS Holiday Deals brings you 60% off this Photography Concentrate guide to help you “Capture Your Memories with Awesome Video”

Save 60% now

Remember those disappointing photos that fail to capture the experiences, fun and excitement you had? Avoid missed opportunities by using your camera’s video mode. 

As a photographer, you love capturing stories, beautiful moments, and slices of life.

Guess what? Video can do all of those things … very, very well. 

Video gives you an entirely new dimension: time. 

And with time you get: movement, gesture, expression, interaction … 

And here’s the kicker: you’ll find more and more situations when video can do those things even better than photography!

As soon as you download the Shoot Awesome Videos tutorial, you will discover how video is perfect for photographers and instantly be able to get stunning videos out of your camera (You’ll see results within 3 hours!)

Shoot Awesome Video

Save 60% and get the guides and video tutorials now for only $ 39 USD (usually $ 97)

Check it out before the next deal arrives in less than 24 hours.

PS – You can still grab yesterday’s deal – The Decoding Lightroom video course for just $ 49, save $ 80. Check it out here.

The post A More Lively Way to Capture Your Memories & Experiences appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darren Rowse.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on A More Lively Way to Capture Your Memories & Experiences

Posted in Photography

 

Google Photos adds Instagram Stories-style Memories feature, now offers canvas prints

13 Sep

Google Photos is expanding its feature set and has launched Memories, a slideshow feature that works in a similar way as Instagram stories. Memories is designed to highlight special events, such as birthdays, trips and holidays, and let you remember those special moments without having to sift through stacks of duplicate images.

Photos and videos from previous years will be pinned to the top of your gallery for you to browse. Google uses machine learning to curate your Memories and pick the best shots out of many similar ones. Certain people or time periods can be blocked in case you´d rather not be reminded of them, and you can also deactivate the feature completely.

Memories can also be shared with people who appear in them and others. Google says that in the coming months it will make this process even easier. Shared photos will be added to an ongoing, private conversation which should make it easier to keep count of the images you have shared with each other.

In addition, you can now search for text that appears in photographs or screenshots via the standard search function. This could be useful for those who store recipes or other text documents in image format in Google Photos.

U.S. users can now also order both standard photo prints and canvas prints directly from the app. Individual photo prints can be ordered directly through Google Photos and are available to pick up from your local CVS Pharmacy or Walmart that same day at over 11,000 locations. Canvas prints are available in 8x8in, 12x14in, and 16x20in formats and prices start at $ 19.99. The app suggests the best photos to print and the canvas prints will be delivered straight to your home.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
Comments Off on Google Photos adds Instagram Stories-style Memories feature, now offers canvas prints

Posted in Uncategorized

 

Preserving Your Digital Memories

11 Oct

Preserving your digital memories

Photography is now more accessible than ever. You can document your life on the go with just a tap on a smartphone screen or a quick snap on a digital camera.

Whether it’s treasured photos of your children, your latest holiday snaps or pictures from a wedding, the advent of smartphone photography has made it incredibly easy to capture the moments that matter to you.

But have you ever wondered what would happen to your precious photos if the technology failed or there was a data loss? It’s no longer the norm to print photos. More and more of our photos are stored only digitally on phones and computers. And while our technology usually works fine, one tech catastrophe can wipe out your entire photo collection if you haven’t taken the right precautions.

Mark Lord Photography has put together the following series of infographics that look the changing nature of photography, along with some helpful tips on how to make sure your photos are safe for years to come. Let’s take a look.

We Are Taking More Photos than Ever Before

We're taking more photos than ever before

The rise of smartphones has contributed to an exponential growth in the number of photos being taken. In 1990, around 57 billion photos were taken. While this number rose significantly to 86 billion in 2000, growth skyrocketed in the new millenium when smartphones and affordable digital cameras were introduced to the market.

In 2010, 380 billion photos were snapped. And by 2017 this number rose to 1.2 trillion – a 1295% percent increase in just seven years. Amazingly, we now take more photos in just two minutes than were taken throughout the entirety of the 1800s, when photography first emerged.

Technology Has Transformed Photography

The way we take photos has changed drastically

Cameras were once an expensive luxury, but the widespread availability of advanced smartphones with increasingly powerful cameras has changed that. It’s incredibly easy to take out your phone and get a quick snap. So it’s no surprise that 85% of all photos are now taken on phones, with more traditional digital cameras only being used 10% of the time.

This may be part of the problem. You usually need to develop the photos from a camera, or at least upload them to your computer and sort them. But with phones it’s tempting to just leave your photos there, collecting virtual dust.

But Photography Hasn’t Changed Completely

Everyone is a little more casual with photos today. You can take photos whenever you like, so people are naturally taking more photos than ever before.

But it doesn’t mean we’ve stopped taking photos of things we care about. In 1960, 55% of all photos taken were of babies. And today 67% of parents still photograph their children weekly.

Technology hasn’t completely changed what we want to photograph. Most photographs taken are still of families, friends, and special events. Despite the fact everyone’s supposedly gone selfie mad, only 32% of participants in a survey had taken one in the past two months, whereas 77% had taken pictures of friends and family.

Photo Storage in the Digital Age

It's a digital age

With digital storage getting cheaper and better all the time, people have ditched printing photos in favor of storing them digitally – on computers and phones, and in the cloud. In a recent survey, 69% of participants said they’d #most likely keep their pictures stored on phones and computers. This is compared to a measly 7% who reported that what they’d most likely do is print them off, and just 6% who said they regularly posted photos on social media.

It seems this will continue to be the case. Older people tend to have more framed photos and albums around the home, while the number falls off for the younger generation. People over 55 have on average eight photo albums and 11 framed photos, whereas those aged 24-34 have just four albums and seven framed photos. This generational divide will probably become more pronounced as time goes on.

Are Your Memories Safe?

Print photos are on the decrease

Printing photos is clearly on the decrease. In an ideal world, the lack of physical copies wouldn’t be an issue. But technology isn’t immune to failure or human error. Nearly a third of people have already lost important videos and photos after losing a smartphone, and 113 phones are lost or stolen every minute around the world. Data loss poses a constant threat to your photo collections, which is why it’s vital to back them up – ideally in multiple places.

 

Tips on Preserving Your Memories

Make sure your important memories will last

Wondering what you can do to ensure your photos are preserved for posterity? Here are some top tips for keeping photos safe long beyond the life of your smartphone.

  • Have a professional photoshoot: If you’re tired of taking your own photos, consider having some professional photos taken. You’ll get some lovely photos that you can treasure for a lifetime.
  • Go old school: Print might not be as popular as it once was. But printing your most important photos is a good way to ensure you have got a physical backup if everything goes wrong with your data situation.
  • Keep multiple backups: For the photos you care about the most, keep multiple backups – one on your phone, one in the cloud, and a physical print. This gives you several safeguards against catastrophic data loss.
  • Make sure someone in your family knows how to access important photos: Sixteen percent of people believe that in 50 years their children and grandchildren won’t be able to access photos on computers, phones and social media. Giving your family instructions on how to find sentimental photos will save you and them a lot of stress.

We hope you enjoyed this series of infographics. Feel free to leave a comment below, or share this post with your friends.

The post Preserving Your Digital Memories appeared first on Digital Photography School.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on Preserving Your Digital Memories

Posted in Photography

 

Apple’s auto-generated Memories videos are still kind of weird in iOS 11

23 Sep

Starting with iOS 10, Apple has been scanning iPhone users’ photo libraries and automatically creating nostalgic videos it calls Memories. They’re basically slideshows of what it deems to be meaningful photos and videos from your collection, set to music, and arranged around a theme. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and sometimes you’ll remember that time you took a picture of the frozen pizza baking directions.

iOS 11, released to the general public yesterday, brought some updates to Memories. They’re now portrait-format friendly, and more Memories will be automatically created around a wider range of subjects and themes. But if my first Memory video after downloading iOS 11 is any indication, Apple hasn’t gotten much smarter about what photos to include.

An interesting photo for Instagram, but not a moment I wanted to reminisce about months later. It’s hard for a computer to know the difference.

Though it does a few things well – it generally picks up on the fact that I like nice photos of my boyfriend and me – Apple’s algorithm makes some pretty weird choices. My latest Memory, titled “Best of the last 2 months,” opens on an image of a discarded Craisins box on a bed of grass. I thought it was an interesting photo for Instagram, but not a moment I wanted to reminisce about months later. It’s hard for a computer to know the difference.

The misses are all much funnier because of the slightly dramatic treatment: panning, gentle transitions and music give the impression of something that’s been carefully curated to invoke nostalgia. It’s all very serious, and works very well for a post-hike selfie with a majestic backdrop. It’s downright laughable when it’s a photo of some acne-treating serum I took a picture of to send to my sister.

Ah, how I cherished this moment.

To be completely fair, Memories videos are meant to be customized and edited by the human viewing them. The algorithm gets you to a starting point, and it’s up to you to take out the shots that don’t work. And it’s a little bit narcissistic, but it’s kind of fun to watch a slideshow of your best moments over the past few months.

With new iterations, Apple’s subject recognition and photo-picking algorithm will no doubt get smarter, and the automatic videos will get better. Hopefully it’ll learn to ignore the kind of shots that are taken for utilitarian purposes, but it’s already pretty good with some stuff – it correctly identified photos of my boyfriend and put together a slideshow of images of him from baseball games and vacations. More of that please, Apple, and less reminders of my life with acne-prone skin.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
Comments Off on Apple’s auto-generated Memories videos are still kind of weird in iOS 11

Posted in Uncategorized

 

Rebuilding Memories: Meticulous Miniatures by Iraqi Immigrant Ali Alamedy

01 Jul

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

Born in Karbala during the Iraq-Iran War while his father was imprisioned by Saddam Hussein as a dissident, Ali Alamedy turned to books as a means of escape, wishing he could transport himself into the fictional settings between the pages. Later, as an adult, he began to bring those scenes to life – along with places from his own memories, and recreations of places that only exist in his imagination – in finely rendered miniature. In Arabic, the word ‘miniature’ translates to ‘a small painting on paper,’ so he didn’t find out about the existence of dioramas outside of his own art until he started searching for these words in English on the internet.

“When a budding artist has a burning desire to create a vignette, they don’t let the lack of building materials stop them,” he writes on Bored Panda. “This was exactly what happened to me when I started to make miniatures. I used any resource I could scrounge: aluminum foil, paper clips, plastic rods, foam board, coffee for weathering, anything that held possibilities.”

He began posting his work on Facebook, attracting fans all over the world, and his work has grown more and more meticulous. His largest project to date is the 1900s photo studio he built in honor of an old photographer. He spent 9 months building more than 100 miniature objects from scratch based on historical photographs of real studios, which, he notes, was a particular challenge due to the fact that all the photos were in black and white.

“The hardest part was how to recall the spirit of such a place in a small scale,” he says.

The New York Times gets a deeper look into both Alamedy’s work and his past in a new video, and you can see lots more detailed images on his Instagram.

Share on Facebook





[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]


WebUrbanist

 
Comments Off on Rebuilding Memories: Meticulous Miniatures by Iraqi Immigrant Ali Alamedy

Posted in Creativity

 

Priceless memories come at a price with Lexar’s new $1700 512GB CFast card

04 Feb

Memory manufacturer Lexar has announced it will double the capacity of its 3500x CFast memory card this quarter taking the storage capability to a massive 512GB. The Lexar Professional 3500x CFast 2.0 card will offer write speeds of up to 445MB/s, but will cost an equally impressive $ 1699.99/£1732.99. The company says that the card is designed to be used by movie makers, especially those using memory-intensive techniques such as super-high frame rates for slow motion footage and those shooting in 4K resolution and in Raw formats.

The card will obviously record stills as well as video, but the attraction is the length of uninterrupted footage that can be recorded. Stills photographers are likely to be better off buying smaller versions of the card which cost less per GB. At $ 675 the 256GB version is less than half the price for half the capacity, though buying 16 32GB cards works out more expensive and the write speed is slower.

The new card has a maximum read speed of 525MB/s, so allows users to copy data from it to another drive very quickly. Lexar supplies a ‘lifetime’ copy of its Image Rescue recovery software that it claims can bring back data even from corrupted cards, as well as a limited lifetime warranty and technical support.

For more information see the Lexar website.

Press release

Lexar Delivers Industry-Leading Capacity with 512GB Professional 3500x CFast 2.0 Card

Doubled Capacity Allows Cinematographers, Filmmakers, and Content Creators to Capture Highest-Quality 4K Video and Beyond

Key Messages:

  • 512GB Lexar Professional 3500x CFast 2.0 card provides read transfer speeds up to 525MB/s and write speeds up to 445MB/s*1
  • Captures highest-quality 4K video and beyond with next-generation, cinema-grade video cameras
  • Provides high-speed file transfer that dramatically accelerates workflow
  • Also coming soon, 512GB Lexar Professional 3600x CFast 2.0 card optimised for ARRI® cameras*2

Lexar, a leading global brand of flash memory products, today announced doubled capacity for the Lexar® Professional 3500x CFast™ 2.0 memory card, providing the capacity and speed thresholds needed for cinematographers, filmmakers, and content creators to capture the highest-quality 4K and ProRes video and RAW photos. The new 512GB capacity card is designed to address the exacting demands of today’s top content innovators. The Lexar Professional 3600x CFast 2.0 card line, specifically optimised for ARRI® cameras2, will also double in capacity to 512GB in the first half of 2017.

“As professional imaging technology continues to advance, it’s crucial that memory storage formats keep pace with ever-evolving data needs,” said Jennifer Lee, senior director of product marketing, Lexar. “When shooting 200 FPS on a high-end, production-level camera, it’s easy to fill up an entire 256GB card with content in just 17 minutes.*3 Comparatively, the new Professional 512GB 3500x CFast 2.0 card can capture up to more than twice that time. It’s essential that professional content creators shooting in bandwidth-heavy applications such as RAW, 4K, burst-mode, time-lapse, and beyond have access to increasingly higher capacities and faster transfer speeds like those offered by the new 512GB Professional 3500x CFast 2.0 card.”

The 512GB Professional 3500x CFast 2.0 card provides write speeds up to 445MB/s, for professionals to capture lots of footage and keep shooting. From the first take through to post-production, content innovators will have the speed and space needed to capture the highest cinema-quality video for their next masterpiece and quickly power through post-production with read transfer speeds up to 525MB/s.*1

The Lexar Professional 3500x CFast 2.0 card includes a lifetime copy of Image Rescue® software to recover most photo and select video files, even if they’ve been erased or the card has been corrupted.*4 The card is also backed by expert technical support and a limited lifetime warranty. The new card capacity will be available in Q1 of 2017 with an MSRP of £1,732.99. The Lexar Professional 3500x CFast 2.0 card line is also available in 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities. In addition, the Professional 3600x CFast 2.0 card line is available in 128GB and 256GB capacities. All Lexar products undergo extensive testing in the Lexar Quality Labs to validate performance, quality, compatibility, and reliability with more than 1,200 digital devices. To determine which CFast card is compatible with your preferred camera, please visit www.lexar.com/cfastcompatibility. For more information about Lexar products, visit www.lexar.com.

*1 Up to 525MB/s read transfer, write speeds lower. Speeds based on internal testing. Actual performance may vary. x=150KB/s.
*2 For a complete list of compatible cameras, go to www.lexar.com/cfastcompatibility
*3 Based on 256GB capacity shooting 2K @200fps. Actual minutes will vary depending on camera/device model, format resolution and compression, usable capacity, and bundled software.
*4 Image or other data recovery is not 100% guaranteed

Actual usable memory capacity may vary. 1GB equals 1 billion bytes.

Limited lifetime warranty is limited to 10 years from purchase in Germany.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
Comments Off on Priceless memories come at a price with Lexar’s new $1700 512GB CFast card

Posted in Uncategorized

 

Touchable Memories: 12 3D-Printed Aids for the Disabled

30 Oct

[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

3D Printing Disabled Touchable Memories 1

Increasingly affordable and accessible, 3D printing is enabling the creation of everything from simple straw holders to prosthetic hands for people with disabilities, whose quality of life can be greatly enhanced with a little technology. These 12 creations help the blind visualize memories, allow kids with muscular dystrophy to play video games, and even restore brain function after devastating accidents.

Touchable Memories: Tactile Photos for the Visually Impaired

3D Printing Disabled Touchable Memories 2

An affordable home printer called the Buccaneer can be used in conjunction with ‘Touchable Memories,’ a software by Pirate3D, to turn photographs into tactile 3D-printed objects. The project allows people who have lost their eyesight or been blind from birth to visualize the memories that were photographed, whether in relief form or as freestanding sculptures.

‘Magic Arms’ Exoskeleton

3D Printed Disabilities Exoskeleton

A little girl suffering from a rare congenital disorder that limits her ability to use her arms now has a ‘magic’ exoskeleton that aids her movement and enables her to lift objects. A team at the duPont Hospital for Children created a wearable 3D-printed plastic jacket that’s lightweight enough to be used by small children. Heavier, larger versions of the robotic exoskeleton are hard to use and expensive to replace as the children grow, but using 3D printing means it’s as simple as adjusting the dimensions on the 3D model and printing a new one.

Q-Ramp Modular Access System for Wheelchairs

q-ramp

Most cities aren’t exactly built with wheelchairs in mind, but for a few ramps here and there. Raul Krauthausen of Berlin, who uses a wheelchair full-time due to a genetic bone disorder, had trouble getting around Berlin on his own. Having purchased a 3D printer just for fun, he started envisioning how he could use it to improve his quality of life. The result is a portable, printable wheelchair ramp that’s easy to carry on the back of his chair. Krauthausen put the design up on Thingiverse so others can print their own.

Custom Game Controllers

3D Printing Disabilities Game Controller

Conditions like muscular dystrophy can weaken the muscles to the point that even using a game controller is too tiring. Tinkerer Caleb Kraft noted that the special controllers marketed to the disabled were grossly overpriced, and decided to come up with his own solution. His 3D-printed creation is not exactly robust enough for most of today’s more complex games, but it allows a child to play Minecraft.

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Touchable Memories 12 3d Printed Aids For The Disabled

Share on Facebook





[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]


WebUrbanist

 
Comments Off on Touchable Memories: 12 3D-Printed Aids for the Disabled

Posted in Creativity

 

Finding the Balance: Capturing Memories Versus Making Memories

27 Oct

CM3

I am more than a little obsessed with capturing and preserving memories for my family. We have a photo wall that’s regularly updated. We print photo books, both from Instagram and of photos from my “real” camera. My girls know that twice a year, we go out to a field nearby our house, and I do a mini photo session with them. I’m the type of person who easily had 5,000 photos in the first year after my daughter was born, and that’s just what I decided to keep. So whenever I see a mom taking photos of her kids at the park, or a dad taking pictures at his son’s soccer game, I want to run over and give them a high five. I want to tell them that I think they are awesome, and that capturing those memories for their family is something priceless. They’re images that will be pulled out during graduation parties, played on wedding slideshows, and – God forbid – treasured after the loss of a loved one. It’s important work, and it is work that I feel absolutely passionate about.

But there’s a catch. If you’re anything like me, it can be easy to become so focused on capturing memories for our family and of our kids that we can sometimes tend to forget to be part of making memories WITH our family. It can be hard to find a balance, so here are a few tips that I have picked up along the way that can help you find that sweet spot of capturing those important moments, while also being present for them as well.

1. Do a dry run

CM

Halloween is coming up later this month, and my oldest daughter Lizzy wants to be Merida (from Pixar’s Brave). I absolutely want a non-phone photo of her all dressed-up in her costume. This is non-negotiable. But, I know that on the day of Halloween Lizzy will be excited (and probably a little hopped up on sugar), and trying to have a little photo session with her on that day would probably be fighting a losing battle. So, we did a dry run. We do this every year, and it works out so well for us because I can take a few photos of her to stick in the scrapbook in a no-pressure environment, and then on Halloween night, I can leave the camera at home and just be present with my family. We all get a good outcome, and in my book that’s a win. Does it really matter that the photo was taken the weekend before the event? Not to me in this instance, because the memory that I’m actually interested in capturing was the fact that at age four-and-a-half, Lizzy thought that Merida was the coolest of all the princesses, and that she wants to be strong, independent, and brave just like Merida is.

This tip is SO easy, but it has made such a big difference for our family, and it isn’t just for Halloween – this same idea would work for any occasion in which you want a photo of your kids either in a special outfit or with a particular person, opposed to during an event. For example, doing a dry run would be a good fit for capturing your daughter in her ballet outfit, taking a photo of your kids with Mom for Mother’s Day, or even to catch your kiddos in their Christmas pajamas.  As a bonus, doing a dry run lets us know if there are any costume or clothing  issues (dress is too itchy, shoes too tight, needing six cans of red hairspray instead of one) that need to be addressed before the big day as well.

2. Make good use of your camera’s creative modes

CM5

I have several friends who are currently learning how to shoot in manual. One of them was told by her mentor that the creative modes on her camera are cheating and that she should quit using them cold turkey and shoot in full manual, all the time, if she wants to be a real photographer. When she told me all this, I audibly groaned.

Here’s the deal – learning to shoot in manual is awesome and worthwhile. But as far as I’m concerned, if trying to shoot in full manual means that you spend all of your daughter’s soccer game (or birthday party) behind the camera trying to figure out appropriate settings rather than participating in the event itself, that’s a bummer. In my opinion, you would have been better off to stick your camera in Program mode or any other creative mode that you are very familiar with, take a few photos you love, and then be able to set the camera down and enjoy the rest of the time with your family. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t play around with settings or experiment at all, I’m simply saying that at special events like birthdays, weddings (in which you are not the official hired photographer), anniversaries, once-in-a-lifetime vacations, and graduations are the types of events where it is just as important to be a part of making the memories with your family as it is to be capturing those memories. If using one of your camera’s creative modes can help you in that way, go for it!

3. Don’t feel the need to photograph everything

CM2

Such an easy thing to say, and such a difficult thing to put into practice! The reality is that I don’t need to photograph all three times my daughter will go to the pumpkin patch this month between school field trips, family, and friends. The reality is that I don’t need to photograph every time my kids go out to the backyard to play. Sometimes, pulling out the camera while they play is an awesome time for me to practice and play around, but it can also really frustrate my kids if I do it too often (EVEN if I’m not asking them to, “Look here and say cheese!”).

So, for my sanity and theirs, whenever my gut instinct is to grab my camera, I try to stop and ask myself when the last time I photographed this particular event or activity was. If it has been less than a month, that’s a good cue for me to pause and consider whether or not I really need to bring the camera along that day. I really encourage all you moms and dads out there to choose a similar pause point for your family – maybe it’s weekly, maybe it’s monthly, but however frequent it is, it gives you and your kids some built in grace.

4. Get IN the picture sometimes

This is the only photo with me in it from my daughter's first birthday. It's a little blurry, but it went in the album nonetheless, and it's one of my daughter's favorite photos from the day.

This is the only photo with me in it from my daughter’s first birthday. It’s a little blurry, but it went in the album nonetheless, and it’s one of my daughter’s favorite photos from the day.

If you’re the photographer of the family, chances are that there are a lot fewer photos of you in the family album than there are of anyone else. I think this is something that we ALL struggle with. Or maybe you’ve even tried to pass the camera off to someone else and have been disappointed by the blurry, too light, too dark, weirdly cropped results. I get it, and I’ve been there.

One thing that I’ve noticed is that if I’m quickly handing the camera off to a friend or family member that isn’t familiar with photography, I get the best result if I pass the camera off in AV mode, with the aperture set at least at the number of people that will be in the photo, and the center focal point selected. So, if there will be four people in the photo, make sure the aperture is set to at least f/4 when you hand it over. I usually have my 50mm lens on my camera, so if I hand the camera over in Program mode, there’s a chance that it will elect to shoot at f/1.8 or f/2.2, which would probably not yield the best results for a photo of four or five people. If you’re shooting with a kit lens that isn’t capable of shooting that wide open, it may be just as beneficial to pass off the camera in Program mode. This is just one simple thing that will help yield better results when passing the camera to someone else, but trust me when I say that when it comes to family photos, the important thing is that you’re there, not that you’re well composed and perfectly in focus.

Do you struggle with the balance between capturing memories and making them? Do you have any other tips you’d like to share?

The post Finding the Balance: Capturing Memories Versus Making Memories by Meredith Clark appeared first on Digital Photography School.


Digital Photography School

 
Comments Off on Finding the Balance: Capturing Memories Versus Making Memories

Posted in Photography

 

Picture Pumpkins: Give Your Halloween Memories a Gourdy Glow

21 Oct
Extra photos for bloggers: 1, 2, 3

We’ve all been there.

You’ve braved the pumpkin’s innards and spent hours etching its Titian-hued flesh.

Then, the neighbor’s cat dashes by the window (or was that a ghost?) and suddenly you’ve lopped the smirk right off of Jack O. Lantern’s face.

It’s time to defy the exacting standards of our annual October undertaking and replace them with a more photo-realistic (because we’re using a real picture!) and totally classy (because we’re framing it!) pumpkin.

It’s a gourd revolution!

Make a Simple Picture Pumpkin

WHY IT’S COOL

Our pumpkin art isn’t merely more simple than the traditional Jack O’Lantern. It looks fantastic, too!

By day, the frame makes your pumpkin look like a doyenne of decor. By night? The flickering light from the faux-candle makes the photo dance around like a still from an old-timey movie, which is both cool and a little creepy.

Just how we like our All Hallows’ Eve decor.

INGREDIENTS:

  • A pumpkin with one relatively flat side
  • Your favorite seasonal photo
  • Tracing paper
  • Tape
  • A printer
  • A knife or pumpkin-carving tools
  • A flat frame (we found one at on the unfinished-wood aisle at our local craft store)
  • 2 Nails
  • A hammer
  • A flameless candle (safety first!)

STEP 1: PICTURE PERFECT

Dig through your mom’s albums for a Halloween photo of yore.

Bonus points if it involves: a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle; a Renaissance poet; DJ Jazzy Jeff and/or the Fresh Prince; or all of the above.

Scan your photo and edit as needed. We found that over-saturating a bit really help the final product pop.

STEP 2: ENTER THE PRINTER

Tape your tracing paper to a piece of printer paper to make it sturdy enough to run through the printer.

Print the picture, then set it aside to dry.

STEP 3: GET GRUESOME

Slice off the top of your gourd and pull out its guts. Don’t forget to make a notch in the lid so it goes back on easy-peasy in the dark.

(Never carved a pumpkin? Our girl MStew shows you how it’s done.)

STEP 4: YOU CUT A HOLE IN THE … PUMPKIN

Grab a buddy to hold the frame in place on the pumpkin’s relatively flat side. Use your carving tools to mark your cutting lines; you’ll want the hole in the pumpkin to be just a bit larger than the frame’s photo opening.

Complete the carving and pop out the excess pumpkin.

STEP 5: GET ATTACHED

Trim the photo, tape it to the frame, and then nail the frame into place. We recommend a nice scroll-y frame so you don’t have to nail through the wood.

STEP 6: LIGHT IT UP

Wait until dark. Insert a flameless candle and gasp with delight. (Or lug the pumpkin to the darkest part of the basement and bask in your handiwork’s glory right away!)

TAKING IT FURTHER

  • Don’t toss all of those innards! Save the pumpkin seeds and roast ‘em up.
  • Dig up a bunch of photos to create a multi-pumpkin trip down memory lane!
  • Amp up the spooky: Put a ghost in your pic!

Related posts:

  1. Photojojo’s Guide to Scary Photo Pumpkins Live in NYC or San Francisco? Come to our Photo…
  2. Glow-in-the-Dark Photograms: Turn Your Photos into Spooky Glow-in-the-Dark Wonders Extra photos for bloggers: 1, 2, 3 All Hallow’s Eve:…
  3. Turn an Etch-a-Sketch into a Kitschy Picture Frame in Just a Few Minutes With just two dials and some aluminum powder, George Vlosich…


Photojojo

 
Comments Off on Picture Pumpkins: Give Your Halloween Memories a Gourdy Glow

Posted in Equipment

 

When disaster strikes, photo editors can help save memories

22 May

TS520x0~cms_posts_8882903403_Screen_Shot_2013-05-21_at_11.13.25_AM.png

When homes are damaged, often the most important items cannot be replaced. For victims of fire, floods and other natural disasters, family photos are among the worst things to lose. Operation Photo Rescue brings together victims with professional photo editors to turn damaged images back into clear memories. Learn more on connect.dpreview.com.

 

News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
Comments Off on When disaster strikes, photo editors can help save memories

Posted in Uncategorized