Mom's Little Corner: June 2009

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Explore Your Blog Corner

When I start to make a blog, every single day my mind won't stop thinking how to optimize my blogs and get into the best part of traffic. I am very envy to my friend's blog who got a lot of traffic and have full of ideas making his blog perfect. He even helped me to revise one of my blog's lay-out to make more appealing and interesting. Done perfect!
But back of my mind, how he can get those ideas--lay-outs, widgets, counters, etc. I am new in blogging so I have no enough idea how to compose everything on it.

So I explore...explore...explore...until I found this very informative and useful website.
http://www.bloggertricks.com. I followed all the links, start doing and that's it. I enjoyed every topics that she had. I start to learn and make fun! And as the progress of my site, I've found increase of my website traffic. Thank you Kranthi for your SUPER HERO blog contents.

This is the most helpful topic of Kranthi that took me in heaven...
Submitting your blog to Blog directories

Other related topics:

How To Photograph People when Traveling

Sometimes traveling from different places captures good subject to the photographer. It develops to be imaginative in different angles they seen. Here's are few tips on how to photograph people when traveling.

Choose your Background - I’ve already talked about making shots contextual but one great way to do this is to think about what’s in the background behind the people you’re photographing. Ideally you want something that’s not too distracting but that adds to the context of the place you’re shooting in. Another technique for shooting shots of people that ignores the ‘contextual’ rule is to find a brightly lit position with a dark background. This can really help the face you’re shooting to pop out and capture the viewer’s attention.
Fill your Frame - This means either getting in nice and close to the person or having and using a good zoom lens.
Go for natural (un-posed shots) - While sometimes the posed shots can work quite well they can also lack a certain authenticity. Photograph your subject doing something from their normal daily life. At work, in a marketplace, at home, feeding their child, crossing the street etc.
Add another subject - Adding a second person into an image takes a photo into a different place. No long is the shot just about a person and their environment but it somehow becomes relational. The viewer of the photo begins to wonder about the relationship and a new layer is added to your shot.
Photograph a variety of people - Quite often it’s the shots of people dressed in national costume that tend to attract photographers when traveling. While these shots can be very effective I wonder if they are always really representative of a culture. Quite often these people have dressed up especially for a show or tourist attraction and the majority of people in that country look quite different. Mix up the types, gender and ages of people that you take photos of and you can end up with a very effective collage of faces of a country.
Arrange an extended photo shoot - This goes against the nature of most travel photography which is usually very fast and spontaneous - but on one or two occasions when I’ve traveled I’ve had opportunity to sit with a person for a longer period of time and photograph them in a more extended manner. This enables your photographs to take a on a story telling nature and can lead to some wonderful sequences of shots using different photographic techniques, lenses and situations to shoot in.
Get Candid - keep your camera to the eye for taking those spontaneous shots between the more posed ones. It’s amazing what images that you can find when the person isn’t ‘ready’ for you to shoot (or just after you’ve taken a shot). These shots often include people interacting with others or expressing true emotion. I find setting my camera to continuous shooting mode (where it will shoot burts of frames quickly) often leads to some wonderful candid shots.
Lens Choice - I’m a big believer in that virtually any lens can take a good portrait shot if you work to it’s strengths. Having said that, some lenses do tend to lend themselves to great portraits. I find that a focal length between 50mm and 135mm is a good range to work with. Going for wide angle lenses can also produce interesting shots but you will often find that they do distort your subject’s face a little (sometimes this is very effective). Choosing a longer focal length can be useful for putting your subjects a little more at ease.

Find related topics/links: How to take good travel photos

Monday, June 22, 2009

Candid Wedding Photography: A Perfect Way to Capture Real Moments

Nowadays, people are much excited for their photos captured in candid shots. They said, it is more real, creative, fun and captured the real moments of the event. In wedding photography, couple's often prefer candid even to formal groups. But how would the professional photographers will capture this in a perfect and fast way of shooting their own cameras?

The term "candid" is often misunderstood. True candids, which are taken without the knowledge of those being featured, can be successful at weddings, but it is difficult to always achieve a decent picture of everyone in this style when so many people are together. The way around this is to arrange people first and then shoot candidly as they chat together. This will take a lot of the formality out of picture, and it will give people something to do rather than looking at the camera.

TIPS: Candid pictures are much more easily achieved by using a 35mm camera and zoom lens so that you can stand a long way from your subjects and take pictures which they will not probably noticing you are taking.

To take candid pictures you have to have a good eye for detail and good reactions to shoot at the right moment. There are two distinct approaches to candids. One is to hide and shoot from a distance and the other is the in-your-face approach. If you decide the distant method is more your style you'll need a camera with a long lens (telephoto). All lenses are measured by their focal length. If you have a 35mm SLR or compact camera and use a lens with a focal length longer than 50mm its classed as a telephoto.

Below are a number of tips to help photographers improve their ‘candid’ photography. Please note that these tips are not about taking sneaky, voyeuristic or true paparazzi shots (ie photographing people without their permission) but rather about how to add a more candid feel to the shots you take of people that you know.

Here's The 11 Tips for Better Candid Photography