PopPhoto Flash

Tip of the Day: How to rescue your photos

If you were in too big of a hurry over the holiday season and delete files from your card unintentionally, don’t panic. Photo Rescue is a great little program, that is reasonably priced and works beautifully if you have not re-formatted your card or used it and written over the files. Three versions of Photo Rescue are available starting at $29 street, and the best part is you can download a trial version which allows you to determine if it will be able to retrieve your files before you buy it. If you can see your files, purchase the program and then move the retrieved files onto your computer.  Disaster averted. 
—Melissa Macatee
Contributing Blogger

Tip of the Day: Take time to get organized

Do you feel like you never have time to take a break?  This is the perfect time of year to stop and regroup especially with regard to your photos and digital files.  As 2009 starts, take a couple of days to go through your digital files stored on your computer or external drive. Use a simple system to sort and catalog them so you can find them again. If you don’t already have a program to help you do this, consider buying one. For Apple users, iPhoto will help you put your photos into albums from your photo library.

If you are an  Adobe Photoshop user Bridge will work, two other programs that help you catergorize and tag photos are Adobe Lightroom and Camera Bits' Photo Mechanic.  Don't forget to burn backups to disk, label and organize your disks too and finally take the time to get prints of your favorite images.  It seems overwhelming but consider it a part of your routine. While you are at it, delete the files you will never want to see again. Take a screen grab and print out the list of everything on a specific drive to help speed up your search when you can’t remember what drive something is on.  If you can take the time to sit down and get this done you will be amazed at how good it feels once you have everything organized.  Moving forward stay organized and you will be way ahead this time next year. 
—Melissa Macatee
Contributing Blogger

Your Photo: Our Critique

Craig Pace submitted this image taken with a Canon 40D, with an exposure of 30 seconds, at f/1.6, ISO 200. Overall this photo has a nice feel to it, good placement of the person against a sky of stars. At closer look, the execution of this photo has caused the person to not be as sharp as the fence. This could be due to the shallow depth of field but is more likely due to the person moving just a tad during the thirty second exposure. Craig put some thought into this and the colors of the sky, the fence and the chair blend together then the stark white shirt stands out in great contrast to the rest of the scene. The light on the foreground is nice and even. The vertical crop allows the viewer to get lost in the stars while the white shirt draws interest back into the frame. 
—Melissa Macatee
Contributing Blogger

This photo gets four stars on the PopPhoto Flash rating system.

The PopPhoto Flash rating system.
*= This part of the camera is called the lens
**= Don’t quit your day job
***= Good, but not yet great
****=So close you can taste it
*****= Yes, a thousand times yes!

Want us to critique your shots? Send 'em to us!

From the PopPhoto Flash Archives

June 14 2007
Tip of the Day: Point and Shoot Insurance

As someone who can’t seem to remember the things that I need at the moment, this article got me thinking. In it, Lifehacker editor Gina Trapani explains how you can use your camera phone to document and then upload pieces of easily forgettable information in your daily life. Things like business cards, serial numbers or even wine labels. This idea appealed to me immensely and I have done this for quite some time with my pocket point-and-shoot.

Being a photographer, I have accumulated an immense amount of equipment that is worth much more than my wife thinks it is, and I use the point & shoot to take pictures of all of my equipment and their serial numbers for insurance purposes. When dealing with your adjuster in case of a fire or theft, simple photographic evidence streamlines your restitution process considerably. This goes for any photo equipment or even home electronics, just snap a quick pic as you acquire the equipment to avoid any headaches later!
—Matthew Panzarino
Contributing Blogger

Your Photo: Our Critique

Kim Siemers submitted this image taken with a Canon Rebel XSi, 1/200 sec, f/4, ISO 100. This is a new camera for Kim and she was shooting on aperture priority. This is a nice start but needs a little work. The positives here are the grass anchoring the left corner and the diagonal walkway out to the boat.  The placement of the boat is also a positive.  The negatives are the post creeping in on the right side of the frame and the messy top of the image. Consider cropping this frame tighter to alleviate the tree branch peeking into the frame top right and on the left of the frame and the post on the right of the frame.  What you will have left is an endless body of water along with the grass and the boat along the dock cleaning the image up and bringing attention back to the scene. The next problem is the exposure. This can be tricky in situations like this, having set the camera to aperture priority, the exposure is set for the whole frame. With all of the light hitting the water, the camera underexposes the boat, which has some detail that would add to the image.  To compensate for this, either adjust the exposure to overexpose the scene possibly blowing out the highlights in the water, or pop a little flash in to light up the foreground, lastly you could take multiple exposures and combine them in post processing allowing for a good exposure of the water, the boat and the foreground.  Of course there will be the people that suggest the boat be a silhouette in this picture which would be fine but the detail in the image would add some nice contrast and interest to this image. 

—Melissa Macatee
Contributing Blogger

This photo gets three stars on the PopPhoto Flash rating system.

The PopPhoto Flash rating system.
*= This part of the camera is called the lens
**= Don’t quit your day job
***= Good, but not yet great
****=So close you can taste it
*****= Yes, a thousand times yes!

Want us to critique your shots? Send 'em to us!

Tip of the Day: What to do with your old camera

If you received a new camera over the holidays, you might be wondering what to do with your old camera body. Here are a couple of  ideas:

1) Have your old camera body or even your point-and-shoot converted to an IR camera, one place to get your IR conversion done is Maxmax. 

2) Get some good karma by giving your trusty old camera on to a high school journalism or yearbook department.

3)  Of course you could always sell your old camera and use the money to buy a new lens.

—Melissa Macatee
Contributing Blogger

Your Photo: Our Critique

This photo was submitted by Ed Ohara taken with Canon Powershot S5 IS at 1/2500sec, f/8, ISO 80. The idea here is worthy, the leaf floating in water the specks of reflection adding texture to the water. Unfortunately the big reflection is very distracting. Consider cropping the white spot out and you will still have an interesting photo. 
—Melissa Macatee
Contributing Blogger

This photo gets two and a half stars on the PopPhoto Flash rating system.

The PopPhoto Flash rating system.
*= This part of the camera is called the lens
**= Don’t quit your day job
***= Good, but not yet great
****=So close you can taste it
*****= Yes, a thousand times yes!

Want us to critique your shots? Send 'em to us!

Today in Photography: January 1

January 1, 1864

On January 1, 1864, Alfred Stieglitz was born in Hoboken, New Jersey. Steiglitz is credited in part for helping photography gain recognition as an acceptable art form alongside sculpture and painting. During he span of his life, he witnessed rapid changes to American society and culture, which he documented with his camera. According to cultural historian Bram Dijkstra, "it was Stieglitz who provided the essential example of the means by which the artist could reach out to a new, more accurate mode of representing the world of experience."

Tip of the Day: Know the Price

With so many photographers making images available online, companies are turning to what they think are people who will gladly give away free usage of their images. Reputable companies have budgets for marketing and advertising, don’t be fooled into giving your image away for free. Photographers index offers a basic usage stock photo calculator to get an idea of what your images are worth and what you should be paid for them.  Take pride in your work as excited as you might be to hand over your images just to see them published, understand you should be compensated properly.

—Melissa Macatee
Contributing Blogger

Your Photo: Our Critique

Tray Murphy submitted this image taken with a Canon Rebel XTi, 1/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400. This photo has some interesting lines and fascinating colors from the lighting and is a nice arcade photo. There is no real interest point in this photo besides the line of lit up clown faces which lead to nothing. To take this shot from a basic photo to a strong photo it needs something more than just a pattern of clown lights. I can see the water from the guns hitting the two clowns that are the brightest, if your intent was to show the actual playing of the game, show me more of the participants. 
—Melissa Macatee
Contributing Blogger

This photo gets two and a half stars on the PopPhoto Flash rating system.

The PopPhoto Flash rating system.
*= This part of the camera is called the lens
**= Don’t quit your day job
***= Good, but not yet great
****=So close you can taste it
*****= Yes, a thousand times yes!

Want us to critique your shots? Send 'em to us!