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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Kodak Moments (a division of Kodak Alaris) has introduced the M1 Order Station, a scalable photo-printing kiosk designed to enable the average consumer to easily print photos from their phone, a USB drive, or an SD card. As demonstrated by Kodak in the video above, the M1 Order Station can be scaled from a small desktop station to a full standing kiosk to meet the needs of different retailers.
Though photo-printing kiosks used to be commonly found in big box and convenience stores, these machines have become scarce amid the rise of digital photography and online printing services. Kodak is aiming to change that with its printing kiosks.
The new M1 Order Station is described as a ‘seamless’ solution featuring the Kodak Moments retail software version 9.0, which presents users with printing options via a 13″ touchscreen. Retailers can pair the station with the Kodak 305 printer countertop enclosure, the 305 print station cabinet, or the 305 printer booster with a print catcher.
In addition to memory cards and USB drives, customers can download the Kodak Moments app to directly print images from a smartphone using WiFi, Bluetooth, or a physical connection cable. The system supports printing 4×6, 5×7, and 6×8 prints, as well as photo cards, collages, and ‘DIY products.’ A brochure fully detailing the M1 Order Station is available here [PDF].
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Imagine yourself at an important job, maybe a big, beautiful wedding by the beach. You open your bag and reach for another lens. It’s windy, and sand is blowing in your eyes, but you power through and switch lenses. As soon as you start shooting again, you review your images and see a tiny little speck on the same spot Continue Reading
The post Capture Moments Clearly: How to Clean Camera Lenses Properly appeared first on Photodoto.
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Facebook is shuttering its image sharing app Moments, the company announced on Thursday. The product, which was announced in June 2015, allows multiple Facebook users to privately share images they’ve taken with the people who are featured in them. The app transforms Facebook’s facial recognition technology into a convenient tool, but few users are actually using the service.
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The premise behind Facebook Moments is simple: many people snap images at a gathering. Those images can be manually shared with other individuals who attended the same event, but there’s a chance someone may miss out on photos they were featured in.
By using its facial recognition tech, Facebook is able to scan the user’s camera roll, identify other Moments users in the images, and issue an alert suggesting the user share those particular images with the other people featured in them. Google Photos offers a similar feature.
Moments was launched as a standalone app, and it’ll be officially shuttered on February 25, according to an email Facebook has sent to users. CNET reports that Facebook Moments’ demise is partly due to a lack of interest from users.
In addition to the email, users were given an alert within the Moments app, and any Facebook user who utilized the service within the last year will see an alert about the closure within the main Facebook app. Facebook Moments will be inaccessible starting on February 25. Users who wish to keep their images can use Facebook’s new ‘Export Your Moments’ tool to save them.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
The post How to Capture Candid Moments This Christmas appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Mat Coker.
Ever since I was a little kid with a 110 camera and little rolls of film, it’s the candid moments I love to capture.
At Christmas, that often meant the expression on someone’s face as they opened a gift. However, over the years I discovered that there is a lot more to Christmas than the excitement of opening gifts.
I’ll show you a few specific ingredients to use if you would like to better capture candid moments this Christmas.
Our living room window is a backdrop for candid moments to happen. Many times I have passed through the living room, only to stop and fumble for my camera to capture something interesting.
Taking candid photos is a fun challenge. You don’t get to direct the scene, and you have to take whatever the moment offers.
The benefit to this is that you really get to see what is going on. Many people complain that they miss out on a group or family experience because they’re always taking pictures. If you focus more on seeing than on clicking, you may find that you’re more in-tune to events than ever before.
“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” – Dorothea Lange
Even though you’re not in control of the scene, you can still make the most of the moments given to you by:
When our kids were young they always napped over the Christmas holidays. The days were packed with activities and they were exhausted by the afternoon. My little girl fell asleep with an LED lantern. I couldn’t help but sneak in for a photo. I pushed my camera to its limits with this low light photo. 56mm, f/1.2, 1/15th, ISO 6400.
This first question I ask about a candid moment is whether it’s an action moment or an emotional moment.
What inspired you to pick up the camera? Are you anticipating a burst of excited emotion? Is somebody about to do something?
Action vs emotion is a quick way to understand the nature of the moment that is about to happen. This becomes more intuitive over time so you won’t have to overthink it.
I consider this to be an action moment. It is about my son playing with his model plane. Action is often about gesture. He is holding the plane precisely, and you can even see by the shape of his mouth that he is making the sound of the airplane. The plane is in focus so we likely look at it first, but then we’re led back to his face. His eyes are looking at the plane, so our focus is brought back to it as well. The more engaged a person is in an action moment, the more interesting the photo will be to you.
This is more of an emotional moment. It’s not a high energy moment like laughter or tears, rather it’s soft and subtle. It’s among my favorite portraits of my daughter. The only thing that indicates Christmas in this photo is the paper crown from her Christmas cracker, a tradition carried on for at least four generations in my family.
There are five main angles from which you can choose:
My favorite angles for candid moments are high-angle because it often makes the scene appear more dramatic, and face-to-face, because it’s such an engaging angle.
This is an action moment. My son was playing with his new helicopter. I went for a low angle because I wanted to be looking up at the helicopter. Normally, we see helicopters in the sky, so let’s go for a more dramatic looking angle. In this action moment, you can even see him lifting his foot for balance. When kids play, they get right into it!
High angles are great for looking over shoulders. Some moments are tough to define as simply action or emotion. Though my son is looking at the pictures in his new book, it’s not exactly what we think of as an action moment. We can’t see his face to detect any emotion. But this photo comes to life in my mind as I think of all the times I read him this book while he was tucked into bed or sitting on my lap. In that sense, I would call it an emotional moment.
I jumped up on the coffee table to get this bird’s eye view angle of my son. He had just tried crawling for the first time and collapsed after using all his energy trying to reach a can a play dough!
Backgrounds can be a distraction in your photo if they are messy or cluttered. But they can also add to the mood or story of your photo.
I try for one of two types of backgrounds:
You can see that the photos above either had a clean and simple background or something more scenic, but not cluttered.
I love this humorous photo of my daughter, but the background is really cluttered and distracting. One thing I could have done while taking the picture is to get closer to her. That way she would appear larger and there would be less background. But another way to deal with a cluttered background is to crop it away!
This face to face angle draws me right into this photo. The background is clean and simple with no distracting elements. I find that black and white often draws out the humanity and emotion of the moment.
Many photographers understand themselves to be creative people. Creative people are often compelled to write.
Take time this Christmas season to write about what is happening in your life. You can write about your kids, your parents, or your traditions. Think of it as a way of preserving some of your family history. Write about the moments of days gone by and the new moments happening around you.
Christmas can be a very difficult season for people who struggle with depression or anxiety. It can be a very sad time of year when you miss loved ones. Many people have found that writing helps you wrestle with and take control of what you’re struggling with.
Inspired by photojournalists, take time to truly reflect this Christmas. Add words to your photos.
As you grab your camera to take candid photos this Christmas, think:
I would be thrilled to see some of your favorite Christmas photos when you post them in the comments below!
The post How to Capture Candid Moments This Christmas appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Mat Coker.
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Kodak has created a new Facebook Messenger chatbot called ‘Kodak Moments’ that tries to get users to buy physical products by digging through and resurfacing their old photos.
The AI algorithm works by searching through the mass of images a user has uploaded to Facebook and suggesting ones that may have been forgotten in hopes the user, when suddenly presented with this fond old memory (or Kodak moment… if you will), will order it as a physical print or photo product like a coffee mug.
Facebook users are given the option of either dismissing the chatbot’s suggested image, requesting other images that contain the same people as the first image, or requesting a print or product containing the selected image. All you have to do to join this ‘fun’ game that tries to sell you things is search for Kodak Moments in the Messenger app.
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Unfortunately, the chatbot—at least in its current iteration—doesn’t support any sort of filtering options, making it impossible to prevent the bot from digging up photos of old memories better left forgotten. Consider yourself warned.
Joining this Messenger chatbot is a new Kodak Moments app (Android | iOS) that goes a bit further. After being given permission, the app will search through a Facebook or Google account and camera roll to find images it thinks users may want to turn into physical products.
The goal behind the new Kodak Moments technology is (obviously) to increase the company’s print sales while reviving the idea of a ‘Kodak Moment’ and helping customers sort through their possibly massive photo albums. We’ll let you decide if the concept is fun, annoying, or maybe a bit traumatizing.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
As photographers, we have a great power. We can capture moments in time that are unique, iconic, emotional and powerful. Photography has the power to change things.
By Bronson ABbott
See some of the ways that photographs have this power:
How do you use your photography in powerful ways? What are you favorite iconic photographs from history and why? Please share in the comments below about how you feel photography is powerful in our lives.
The post The Power of a Photograph – Iconic Moments Captured as Images by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.
What do you think is the one thing that people treasure the most after they have cut their birthday cake, completed a wedding ceremony, or had their first baby? Well, for most photographers, the answer is rather simple. These are the photographs taken by our fancy gadgets capturing those precious shots so that they remain a part of our clients’ Continue Reading
The post Review of Moments Designer appeared first on Photodoto.
Lifestyle photography and the art of everyday photography is about documenting your daily life. This could include capturing your baby’s toothless smile, his/her first steps, the way they hold their hair or twirl their dress, first time they start to read or write, or anything that you would normally run to grab your cell phone to capture.
While smartphone cameras have gotten to be more powerful and expensive over the years; nothing beats the quality and the depth of field you can achieve with wide apertures using your DSLR. The ability to capture raw files and process them, lens interchangeability, and being able to obtain superior images under even low light conditions, are just a few of the benefits. To add, over the decade the price for an entry level DSLR has also come down significantly. So if you own a DSLR (or a mirrorless or high-end compact camera) already, why not use it to capture everyday moments in your daily life?
Here are some tips for you to capture your everyday moments with your camera.
Capturing the details is about focusing on what the subject is actually doing versus photographing the entire subject which can take away from the story the image is trying to tell or convey. It could be something as simple as a kid holding a flower, or the way she touches her hair or smiles, or anything for that matter.
Another key to creating extraordinary images out of the ordinary is to think about composition while considering the detail you are trying to capture. You may be focused on documenting and creating that memory that you can reflect upon. So compose your image such that the subject, in this case, the boy writing, creates stronger and meaningful image while helping you remember the story that occurred.
Another example is the image below.
This was a very simple image where he wanted to show a tiny flower he got from the garden. Again, having my camera right next to me, I quickly adjusted the settings to get the shot. I also tweaked the image a bit during post-processing to accentuate the details.
Children grow up fast and the memories in images and videos of them doing little fun things, their innocence is sometimes all we have to remember and treasure of their childhood.
This was an ordinary everyday moment for us. Having breakfast at the table, eating his favorite snack and just enjoying his moment. I happened to think about a different angle and took this image while he stared up at me. Straight on would have been a perfectly fine image as well, but him looking up gives the viewers something different from the usual.
Here is another image where perspective was a little different.
In this image, I found my little one sitting on the stairs and coloring away. He found that to be his comfortable spot. Using the stair rods as framing I placed my camera in between the pillars and clicked for a unique perspective. This was a very ordinary moment of a 4-year-old coloring. But having my camera on hand and using a different perspective makes this image more unique and extra special.
Perspective can be anything. Utilizing your stairs for shooting through, or having your kid looking up at you while you click to emphasize scale are some commonly used techniques that can give an added boost to your images.
When that fails, use alternate light sources.
The biggest challenge with indoor photography is the availability of light and being able to use your camera under different lighting conditions. The quantity and quality of light change dramatically with different sky conditions. Regardless of the sky, however, try to shoot in the available natural light while keeping your subject close to the window.
Also, consider the time of day while photographing your subjects. In the first image above, I had to increase my ISO to 400 while also trying to keep only certain parts of the image in focus. Something to remember is while a high ISO can help you with many scenarios, it can also produce a certain amount of grain in the images which may or may not be desirable, depending on the look you want.
The bigger challenge with natural light is what do you do at night when there is only artificial light available? One solution is to use a flash and bounce it off the ceiling or wall depending on how much you wish to have in your image. Another way is to actually decrease the available light in your image, use interesting available light sources as a backdrop and accentuate your subject under low lighting conditions for some extra creativity.
In the image above, all the artificial lights in the room were turned off. While he was browsing his iPad, it was the only light source illuminating his face.
In examples below, I used the lighting from the Christmas tree as my light source. I turned all the room lights off and adjusted the exposure a bit during post-processing. Another creative way to use the artificial light is to use backlighting which causes a silhouette.
In other words, use natural light as much as possible. However, when artificial lighting is all you have, use it in the best possible creative way.
Somedays, you just have to wait for a cute moment to happen. While other days, you have to create a scenario to make those adorable moments with your kids occur. In the images above, he just wanted to hang out in his room. I used that as an opportunity to let him jump on the bed, which he loved a lot, and I clicked away to capture the action and movement shots with a high shutter speed.
In the image below, I really wanted a laughing happy image of my kid without him knowing I was shooting. Hence acting natural, while he really didn’t care to do either while being engrossed with his iPad. I kept repeating certain jokes he likes until I got that laughter out of him.
In other words, it is nice to have your camera nearby when a certain moment happens for you to be able to capture it right away. However, you sometimes have to create that moment or place your subject in a place or a scene in order to achieve something you want.
Carrying your camera everywhere you go will ensure that you do not miss out on documenting key moments in your kids’ lives. Can you imagine carrying only your cell phone to your son’s soccer game and ending up with a blurry image?
Documenting and creating a memory book or printing out a family album with images you created that are clean, crisp and not blurry is a special feeling of its own. Having your DSLR with you while learning the basics will help you to document key events in your own life and ensure they remain for generations to come.
In conclusion, just a few simple techniques in understanding composition, lighting, while also applying the above tips will help you create stronger images. Lifestyle photography and the art of capturing the everyday moments using your DSLR instead of your cell phone gives you an extra layer of that creative edge while still documenting moments that you usually would either way.
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The post 5 Tips for Capturing Everyday Moments in Your Family’s Life by Jyotsna Bhamidipati appeared first on Digital Photography School.
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Facebook Moments, a private photo-sharing mobile app, has been updated with support for full-resolution images. Previously, Facebook Moments didn’t store the full-res version of users’ images, and makes it possible now when a user ‘favorites’ an image within 30 days of it being uploaded or shared.
In addition to adding full-res image support, Facebook also now makes it possible to share a Moments photo album with others (regardless of whether they’re on the platform) using a web link. Those who receive the link to the private album can then join it and, if they’d like, add their own images to the collection. The web link can be accessed via the album’s menu by choosing ‘Share link.’
Facebook Moments is available for both iOS and Android.
Via: TechCrunch
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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