Twitter Etiquette

On Oct 25, I was on Twitter and there were several friends that had retweeted my posts and mentioned me in posts. This is pretty normal activity and very much appreciated.

I had responded to several of my tweeps with the following “@TheirName Looking 4 FB LIKES http://on.fb.me/tHDyjx #photography”

Later that afternoon I went on twitter to this message “You'll receive FB likes if you write interesting news, good jokes etc. not by begging”

At first I thought ok, people are entitled to their opinions. I am ok with that. I responded with, “@whoeverheis Thx for your input. I am not trying to beg. And yes, you are right in your thoughts. I am recovering from a brain injury n trying”

To all of my Twitter followers, if I offended you by my post about looking for Facebook Likes I apologize. For the five people that liked my facebook page after my post, thanks so much.

For the Twitter follower that gave me his advice, I guess I did not live up to his standards. Oh well, life goes on.

If I was wrong in my Twitter etiquette I would really like to know so I correct my action. Feel free to leave a comment.

Enjoy Life,
Take Pictures!

Write a Photo Journal

Scanning Negatives Project - from Roll 5

By January of 1979 I already had just over a year in the Navy. I had my camera with me and I began reading some books and magazines on the topic of photography. I had finished school at Great Lakes and I was off to Rota, Spain to board the USS Seattle where I would spend the rest of my active duty.

During my travels to Rota, Spain I had taken several pictures of the trip. The photo above is the USS Seattle AOE-3 coming into port. I stood on the pier and watched her come in, I also took several pictures. This ship was pretty big, actually the biggest ship I had seen to date back then. I ended up learning that the AOE’s in the Navy were the second largest ship next to the aircraft carriers.

I remember standing there starring at the ship and wondering how I would ever find my way around it. Knowing I would be boarding her soon I returned to the barracks to finish packing for the next venture.

Now looking at the photo from a photography perspective I see that I did not have the camera level when I took the photo. In those film days I didn’t have the luxury of a balance meter as seen in some of the DSLR cameras of today. Also, the camera was a bit heavier than a DSLR.

Still, I was limited to a 50mm lens on the camera. I took the time to take several pictures and wait to the point where I got a pretty good idea of the size of the ship by taking this shot of the port side.

The picture was also taken with pretty good sunlight. Had the ship had the sun behind it I now know that I would have had to over expose the shot and or take some bracketed pictures in order to select the best image for use.

I was later pleased because of the photos I had taken of the ship pulling into port, one of my photos ended up published in the ships cruise book, which is similar to a school yearbook.

If I would make any recommendations about photography I would say this, keep a journal of your photography. I have been fortunate to be able to share my photos and tell some stories of them as I present them, a journal would have provided me with more to talk about.

Enjoy Life, Take Pictures!


BTW ... On Twitter I am @TMSphotos ... I am always willing to connect with photographers.  You are also welcome to follow my Blog here. I try to share knowledge, information and experience of my photography.

Moonset Chicagoland

Shooting the moon, or in other words, photographing the moon can be a bit challenging. The problem is trying to capture the detail of the moon and the actual color of the sky. Actually I am not sure that it can be done without some very high priced equipment that I don’t want to invest in at this time.

The pictures in this article were taken on Wednesday, October 12, 2011. While sitting outside in the early morning enjoying my coffee I noticed the moon was full. My wife told me the full moon was very picturesque. I stared at it for quite a while and I wasn't really ready to take any pictures but then suddenly I felt it was time to take some pictures.

I have a Pentax DSLR camera but I don’t have the new and automatic 55-300 zoom lens. What I do have is a manual 80 – 200 zoom along with a 2x multiplier. When using manual equipment on my Pentax camera I set the time exposure to B (for longer exposures) and M (for camera controlled time exposure) and my autofocus to manual. Initially I set the F-stop to F/8 and began to take some test shots. After a few shots I also decided to adjust and bracket my f-stop also.


So I started snapping away as usual. The difficulty in photographing the moon is that it is a very bright light normally with a dark background. This morning however the sun was rising as I took these photos. So the sky along with the moon had a very interesting effect. Even with the camera in a manual mode and bracketing a number of photographs the camera cannot capture accurately the colors of the sky and moon together, hence the photograph above. What I do not care for is that even though the sky color is closely accurate, there is no detail of the moon as you will see in the following photos.

In the four photos above I was able to capture some of the detail of the moon but by metering on the detail of the moon I lost the color of the sky. The sky in these photos is darker in color than the actual color I photographed.

Here are some additional images ...

In these two images the sky color and the tree greens are average to good but the brightness of the light of the moon washes out the details of the moon.

Then finally ...

This image I cropped using the camera function, then I used PhotoShop to edit and used the Auto Contrast and Auto Levels functions to generate the image seen.

Enjoy Life! Take Pictures!  


BTW ... On Twitter I am @TMSphotos ... I am always willing to connect with photographers. You are also welcome to follow my Blog here. I try to share knowledge, information and experience of my photography.

Framing Subjects in Your Photo Part 2

Scanning Negatives Project - from Roll 4

This is a photo taken at the custom auto show at the Chicago Amphitheater in 1979. This was a pretty cool car for the time and the photo is ok but could have been much better. Unfortunately the rear of the car was cut off from the frame. Because of this I can not even crop or edit in photoshop to make the image better. So what can be learned from this image?

Off the top of my head I believe there are several things that could be learned for example, event photography, framing and practice. Let's take some time to look at these items.

Event photography can be challenging just by itself, at auto, motorcycle, dog shows etc., there are a lot of things going on but more than that, there are a lot of people that can get in your way and vice versa. On top of this there are different types of cameras that people will be using. Typically the photographers using DSLR and film cameras with zoom lenses have more flexibility than others. Indoor events have even more challenges in regards to lighting and the use of flash photography.

Framing, composition and lighting are very important considerations. Getting your subjects framed properly is fairly important and capturing the entire subject is pretty much mandatory. Composition of the subject is being aware of the the surroundings and getting into position to take the best photo. At events this can be more difficult the larger the crowds are. Lighting for the more advanced photographer is normally managed effectively. For the beginner, especially those with compact digital cameras lighting can be more of a struggle. The most important thing for me to stress here is the fact that built in camera flashes have major limitations. The primary limitation is the available distance of the flash for adequate lighting of the subject.

Enjoy Life! Take Pictures!

BTW ... On Twitter I am @TMSphotos ... I am always willing to connect with photographers.  You are also welcome to follow my Blog here. I try to share knowledge, information and experience of my photography.

Why I Never Shoot in Soft Focus

A photographers ability to take great pictures has never been easier than it is with the technology available today. From many of the point and shoot digital cameras to the high end DSLR's, you have many filters readily available for you to use. Today I want to review the use of the soft focus filter when taking pictures.

Keep in mind that my history and experience has been primarily with film cameras. Over the years I have used soft focus filters for weddings and children photography. So one of my filters in my camera bag was the soft focus filter.

Even though I had a soft focus filter I really didn't need one. I could have had any soft focusing effects I desired applied at the photo lab.

Now today's cameras bring photographers these abilities to soft focus with built in digital filters. That is a kewl feature but there are options we should consider before we choose to take pictures in the soft focus mode of our camera.

Here are some of the questions we should consider asking ...

1) Can the camera apply the soft focus effect after taking the original picture?

2) Can the soft focus effect be applied with computer software?

3) Have you ever taken a soft focus picture you wish was a regular focus picture?

4) What soft photo options are available?

Now I currently shoot with a Pentax K7 and I am very pleased with it. Some of the filters allow me to take a photo and set the image to base parameter, then I can save it and/or apply a different type of filter. The soft focus filter does not allow me this option.

So here is an image I shot some time ago without any filters applied.

Now using the soft focus filter built into the camera I used the same image and applied it to create the image below.

Now this was the maximum soft focus I could apply with the cameras soft focus post production capability.

The image below was created using the original image and applying a photoshop filter.

The photoshop filter allows for more of a soft focus effect than the camera filter and can be tuned per your specific liking.

Personally, I would never use the soft focus capability of the camera to take pictures at all. In my case, once a picture is taken in soft focus there is no recourse in post production to return to the crispness of a picture taken without the filter.

As you know the topic today was about the soft focus filter function of a camera. As with most digital cameras that offer filter capabilities, it is important for you, the photographer, to understand the abilities of the filter effects. Take time to learn these abilities. Take pictures with different effects and tinker with the capabilities of your camera. It helped me learn more, I hope it helps you learn more also.


Enjoy Life! Take Pictures!


BTW ... On Twitter I am @TMSphotos ... I am always willing to connect with photographers.  You are also welcome to follow my Blog here. I try to share knowledge, information and experience of my photography.

Framing Subjects in Your Photo

Scanning Negatives Project - from Roll 3

From my third roll of film, here is an example of a common mistake made by many beginning photographers. Yup, I am even guilty of it. By looking at this image I can tell where the center of my lens is focused and instead of moving around to get the subjects to fill the frame, I took the picture you see here. Look at all that useless space around the two subjects! I certainly new nothing about composing a picture when I started. 

Since I was using a fixed 50mm lens what I should have done was moved in closer to the subjects, focused on the edge of their faces and then moved the camera so that the subjects filled the frame of the camera better. 

Using Photoshop I have created an example of what a better image would have been. See below.

From a typical photographers point of view this is a better photo of the two subjects. This is a more pleasant photo to be shared with others and for printed memories. Notice that the focus is on the subjects and filling the frame with the two subjects.

With the digital cameras available today they make it so much easier to frame your subjects better in the display or viewfinder. But there are still things to take into consideration in regards to framing your subjects for digital display and for prints. That is a subject I will discuss further in a another article.

For now though, the next time you go to take a picture take a look around your subjects and ask yourself, do I really want that in the final picture? If not, take the picture anyway and then try to look for a better shot and take that too. It’s digital, you don’t need to care anymore if you take a picture you don’t like!

For DSLR users many of them have a cropping function built into the camera, I know mine does and I use it often. There are limitations to zooming and cropping and you need to make yourself aware of them. I suggest taking test shots and playing around with it, learn the limitations especially with the high ISO ranges.

Tip for Compact Digital Cameras - before making your purchase make sure that you test the zoom feature of the camera. I have noticed some of them have almost fixed points when it comes to zoom which means that once you have it where you want it it makes an adjustment to a fixed point determined by the camera. You don’t want that (at least I don’t want that), you want to zoom in on your subjects and have the lens stop in that position so you get the picture you want.

My next request is that you share what you learn about taking better pictures. If someone can learn from my mistakes and help a friend or relative take better pictures go for it! 

Enjoy Life! Take Pictures!

BTW ... On Twitter I am @TMSphotos ... I am always willing to connect with photographers. You are also welcome to follow my Blog here. I try to share knowledge, information and experience of my photography.

Photography Concerns With Young Adults

I don’t know about you but when I grew up life was very different than it is for the youth of today. I look at the technology today and compare it to what I had in my teen years and I am amazed. Even more so, I am unnerved, concerned and sometimes frightened.

Actually, to some degree or another we are all concerned with technology and we should be. But my focus today is on the subject of young adult photography and the internet. Before I go into details, let me ask you to take a moment and think about something. Look back on your years as a teenager and think of one or two dangerous or stupid things that you did that were really dumb things to do now that you think about it.

I am not going to share with you some of the stupid things I did but I’ll tell you this, I would never do them again and I darn sure don’t want my teenagers doing them. Now let’s fast forward to the here and now. There are cameras everywhere, portable cameras, security cameras, traffic cameras and children, teens and adults with cameras on their phones.

As with any technology there is a list of the good and bad things about it. For most of us who are photographers we usually are in the state of mind to capture and share photography moments with others. Our young adults on the other hand, may become subject to the malice of others on the web. This is a subject that we need to be prepared to discuss with the youth of today and tomorrow.

My story today is one that was shared with me by a close friend of mine, if it can happen with his children it can happen with yours. My friend has a teenage daughter who is in high school, she has one of those phones that also takes pretty high quality images. It was summer break and this young girl and her friend were hanging out together at her home, just having some fun girl time.

The parents are fine with this because both young girls get along well together and usually stay out of trouble. On this particular day however, they decided to have fun with the camera phone. Like most girls they make their silly girl faces and take their pictures and post them on facebook.  These are typical things to do until the dad sees pictures of the girls kissing each other on the cheek.

Now normally this would not be a problem, but because some people tend to be vicious and spread rumours this could be a problem. The father was angry with what he saw not because what they were doing was wrong, it was because these girls could really set themselves up for harassment from friends and more importantly, from enemies.

So the dad decided to do something a bit different with this situation. After everyone had dinner he called the two young girls to his computer and told them he wanted to talk to them about something. He pulled up his daughters facebook page and went to her recent photos, he told them he was not mad at them but he was very concerned about what he was seeing.

He proceeded to show the girls how the image could be downloaded and reposted to another website. He explained to them that things could be said about them on facebook and other websites that just are not true. He had a discussion with them telling them that even though what they were doing was for fun and it was innocent, he told them that there are perverts on the internet that spend hours online looking for pictures like these so they can do bad things with them. Things like photoshop their heads on to the bodies of unclothed women to create something that they did not do, and then post those pics on the web.

Then he explained how the photos could be tagged to show up in web searches. The dad told them, on their own time to go to Google, click on images, search on the key words “lesbians kissing,” then change the setting from “safe search moderate” to “off” and see what the results are.

The dad went on to say that just because you have a lot of friends on facebook the most important thing to remember is that the internet is not always your friend. As you both continue to learn and grow in this cruel world you need to make sure that you do not become subject to the harm of others because of what was innocent fun in the beginning.The dad did not even ask, he just looked at the girls for a moment. They looked at each other and each said, “we should delete those pictures!”

Now this is just one example of things that could go wrong with cell phone cameras. Unfortunately there are way too many bad stories of children who end up in bad situations because of internet predators or any number of the evil doers of this world. It is good to teach our children how to take a good photo. It is good for them to be able to capture memories for their future. It is good for children to have fun with photography.

It is important that we teach our children of the dangers of technology also. Don't let our children become statistics to the dark side of the internet. Spend time with them, teach them, help them. Be there friend on facebook and in life, but first and foremost, be their parent.