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Destination weddings are exceedingly popular these days because of the many affordable holiday wedding packages available from a legion of travel businesses. For Steve Stevanovich, and others, it’s all about great choice in great places. A wedding in an breath-taking venue such as New York or London, or a soothing wedding experience on a Mexican beach, implies there is something available for everyone.

The various lesser known holiday spots acceptable for destination weddings and such have their own charm. Steve Stevanovich thinks that these destinations offer quality travel chances to individuals who want something out-of-the-ordinary when it comes to travel. An example is Jeju Island in South Korea. This locale provides amazing trips up Mount Ichulbung. It also offers inviting cuisine in the lovely seafood restaurants of great reputation in the region.

Jeju Island also offers their lava caves as an foreign adventure to those pondering destination weddings or other vacations. For those who enjoy day hiking, these caves satisfy the needs of those who want more than a everyday walk up a hill. Jeju Island overflows with cabbage plants. These are the staple of a distinctly Korean dish called kimchi. Steve Stevanovich knows how areas unmatched culinary dishes make a wedding, adventure, or exotic sightseeing vacation even more gratifying.

While a wedding in any locale is fantastic, it is that much nicer when you can relax on a wide beach and stare out at the sea afterward. Wedding planning and the actual wedding day are hectic. Steve Stevanovich know full well that the “unwind time” afterward can be that much better on a spectacular tropical beach.

Santa Fe’s super summers, New York’s hyper nightlife, fun and beach on an tropical faraway beach, these are all places to weigh for destination weddings. Additionally, these locales offer unique opportunities for a horde of other travelers’. The comfort of quality accommodations, sightseeing, and the activities accessible are what holidays are all about. For Steve Stevanovich, this is all part of what makes holiday contemplating that much more pleasurable.

Recently I’ve been getting a lot of questions about clarity. This leads me to the answers about lenses. You know if you do not have a good lens you do not have a good photo- generally.

The reason I say that professional SLR is much better than a prosumer camera or a point and shoot is not because of my desire to look “pro” when I take photos its because of the amount of control you have over the photo. You can control the light so much more; you can control the exposure and the general aspects of the image. And with this freedom comes the choice of getting the clarity via the lens. To gain the ultimate freedom in picture clarity first of all you need to know what lens does what.

Fixed focal length lenses

A fixed focal length lens is a lens that is on most point and shoot and prosumer cameras. They are normally an average wide angle lens. It’s kind of like a “mid range quality” lens. If you then take a zoom lens and compare the two, a fixed focal lens is smaller and often has a larger max aperture. This is good, because they work pretty well in low light situations. These lenses appear clearer than zoom lenses. The only problem here is that your person or subject can appear smaller than you would like unless you move in closer.

Zoom Lenses

And what of a zoom lens? Without going into overly technical details, zoom lenses often have more practical focal lengths for digital photography. They can give you a good angle perspective for filling the frame for example. These lenses are great if you need to take shots closer when it’s impossible to get closer to something.

Optical zooms lenses are the best. My advice to you would be to forget digital zoom altogether. Digital zoom is not a real zoom, in other words it’s not a true representation of what’s there. You’ll just get more noise on your image which can’t really be edited.

The problem with zooms is that they loose light the closer you get. They have lower apertures and this can be difficult in low light conditions. In some situations it’s possible to use the flash and have adequate lighting, but other times you use the zoom because you are far away from the subject and the flash is only effective a few meters away.

There is no general answer to “What lens should I get?” The answer is it depends on what your camera can do and what you want to do yourself. But the more you understand what lenses do what, the better off you are of making an informed decision and get the right lense for the job.

Best wishes,

The basic working of the Digital camera and Film camera is one and the same. Both use the shutter, lens and aperture. The Lens captures the light and then it passes it into the aperture, which controls the light and the shutter opens and closes to control the duration of light, which enters.

The major difference is the technology of capturing the image. Digital camera does not use film to store the image. In digital camera an image sensor is used to capture the image. It is a computer silicon chip. On the surface of this chip there are millions of pixels, which are photosensitive diodes.

The shutter button of the digital camera activates a metering cell, which manages the shutter speed and aperture according to the amount of light coming through the lens. When a person clicks on the camera shutter each and every pixel of the image sensor stores the intensity of the light, which falls on it by gathering an electrical charge. When strong light hits a pixel, it generates high charge and weak light generates low charge.

After the shutter closes charges from every pixel is converted into digital numbers. This series of numbers creates an image on a computer screen.

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Photography make up is slightly different from daily make up applications. Here are some pointers -

Lighting:

• Use natural lighting - for example, near a big window with lights coming in

• If photography is taking place outdoors, do so around 4pm to 5pm, when the sun is about to set. Soft lighting makes a person better

Preparing the face:

• Wash, exfoliate, tone and moisturize your face before applying make up

• Oil control is very important. If you can, use oil free formulated products

• Keep hair away from the face

• To reduce puffy eyes, use Preparation H

Foundation:

• Choose a thicker formulated foundation rather than the sheers ones that are used in daily applications so that all blemishes are covered easily

• Blend foundation from chin to neck so that they are of the same colour

Powder:

• Use lots of it, and reapply between shots, to create a mat finish look

Concealer:

• 2 shades lighter than skin to cover blemishes and dark spots; apply before foundation application

Contouring:

• Contour cheeks and eyes to create a sculpted look

• Use foundation in a shade that is 2 to 3 shades darker than normal skin tone

Eyes:

• Highlight eyebrow bones using light shadow to create lively eyes

• Avoid eyeshadow that is too frosty or shimmery - it’ll appear shiny

• Apply eyeliner with precision

• Use waterproof mascara

• Overall application needs to be than normal make up

Lips:

• Use lipstick and liner of same colour, in a shade darker than natural lip colour

Noelle Wong sees and unveils beauty in people. She is the owner of iN-IMAGE! Inc., a personal image consulting company in Toronto that offers one-on-one consultations and workshops to help people increase their personal presence. For inquiries please contact her at noelle@in-image.com. Visit her website at http://www.in-image.com

The digital photography histogram is a handy tool to ensure your pictures are light and color balanced, and is well worth the effort of learning how to interpret and use it.

Some cameras show the digital photography histogram in real time, allowing you to make adjustments as you go along.

What is a digital photography histogram? A histogram will show if there is enough detail in the shadow, midtone and highlight areas of your image, and importantly, whether or not your picture is overexposed.

The digital photography histogram indicates how the 256 levels of brightness are distributed in an image. Compare it to a horizontal line with 256 positions which represent all levels of brightness from pure black on the left, to pure white on the right.

It consists of a little graph which indicates hills, valleys and spikes of data according to the number of data pixels present for a given level of brightness. If your picture generally has low contrast, the pixels will cluster in the midtone (grey) area of a digital photography histogram.

An image with high contrast will have high stacks of pixels on the opposite ends of the graph, with fewer in the midtone area.

An overexposed image will show a lot of pixel data stacked on the far right side of the graph (lots of white). If you have most data on the left, and a big space to the right of your data, your picture is likely underexposed.

If you are new to the concept of the digital photography histogram, it takes a bit of time to interpret, but you will soon begin to see how the graph relates to your pictures.

For example, the digital photography histogram of an outside picture with a lot of dark sky and little color variation in the rest of the picture, will show a strong spike on the left (dark sky) and a low horizontal bar all the way to the right, indicating little variation in light intensity.

In overexposure you lose data that you can’t get back - even in Photoshop! Many photographers would argue that it is better to underexpose slightly. You can then correct a good deal of underexposure in an imaging program like Photoshop. It lets you distribute the lightness values of pixels more evenly across the spectrum from black to white.

Do you need the digital photography histogram? Many photographers never look at a histogram, but just view the images to check for exposure.

You will find that you are able to analyze your pictures in greater detail, and even to correct them afterwards in an imaging program like Photoshop, once you have mastered the digital photography histogram!

For more information visit Best-Digital-Photography.com

Rika Susan of Article-Alert.com researches, writes, and publishes full-time on the Web. Copyright of this article: 2006 Rika Susan. This article may be reprinted if the resource box and hyperlinks are left intact.

The business of stock photography has drastically changed over the last few years. Ten years ago, selecting photographs for your brochure or newsletter meant spending hours pouring over stock photography catalogs and ordering photo research to find the exact image. When the order came in a giant overnight package, designers would spread transparencies out on the light table, squinting through a magnifying loop to check every detail.

Enter the digital age.

High speed Internet connections. CD’s. Searchable Archives. Royalty-free stock. These elements have changed the face of communication design forever. The quality, quantity, affordability and accessibility of stock imagery have made it the resource of choice for many organizations.

The advantages of instantaneous access to searchable archives of good images are numerous.

• Speed :: We can never have enough of it. Search. Download. Import. It’s remarkable.
• Choice :: Searching “stock photography” on Google delivers 1,470,000 results. You can find pretty much anything out there.
• Price :: While there are free resources, unless you are doing a school report, you may need something slightly more exclusive. Also, many of the free images are only good enough for online display and the selection is very limited. Royalty-free images are reasonably priced, you pay for only the size you’ll use and images can be used as needed with no extra charges.
• Flexibility :: Image selections can be grouped, saved and emailed to others in the review cycle. People in different locations can simultaneously review ideas.
• Archiving :: Some companies even keep a record of your buys that you can re-download whenever you need them. To use this resource effectively, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.
• Plan ahead :: Will you ever need the picture to be printed? The low cost of “low resolution” images can lure you into costly mistakes. Images need to be 300 dpi (dots per inch) at the size they will be printed.
• Low-cost tradeoff :: Pictures are now so affordable, everyone’s buying them. That means your image could show up in your competitor’s brochure. Some projects call for more exclusive imagery.
• Image-enhancement :: When you need something totally unique, such as your product in the shot, it may be more economical to hire a photographer than to have your designer spend countless hours in Photoshop trying to get it just right.
• Availability :: Good images still cost money. While many firms have images on file, don’t expect your designer to have a database full of images right for your project.

When searching on the web, search for “stock photography” rather than doing an image search in Google or another search engine. Google returns all images from the web — including those that are the property of others and not legally usable.

About The Author

Beth Brodovsky is the president and principal of Iris Creative Group, LLC. Brodovsky earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Design from Pratt Institute, New York. Before launching her own firm in 1996, she spent eight years as a corporate Art Director and Graphic Designer, providing a sound foundation in management and organizational standards and structure. Iris Creative specializes in providing marketing and strategic communication services to clients in service industries and small businesses. For more information contact Beth at bsb@iriscreative.com or 610-567-2799.

There is a lot of photography accessories on the market today - some are very useful, but most of them are a waste of money. Here are five of the most important accessories for landscape photography

Tripod: A tripod is important for one main reason, keeping your images sharp. You’ll want to select a small aperture to maximise depth-of-field, so you should be using a shutter speed of less than 1/60 second. It’s impossible to get a sharp image holding your camera in your hand at these slow speeds.

When choosing a tripod pick one made out of carbon fibres, these are light to carry but are sturdy in the ground. Choose a tripod that the legs will spread out far, this will help to optimise the strength of your support.

Filters: A small selection of filters is well worth packing when heading off for a trip. They don’t take up too much space and will definitely add a bit of spice to your images. A polarizing filter should be top of the list, while a few Neutral Density filters will certainly help with tough exposures. A 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 will help with exposure without affecting colour.

Bring a few warm-up filters to help when the light is cool. The 81-series are the best choice, which will give your images an extra bit of life. There’s a large amount of filters on the market today; these are the most important filters for landscape photography.

Correct Film: Fuji Velvia is an obvious choice for me when it comes to shooting landscapes. This is a slide film that is high in saturation and is perfect for capturing the colour of all seasons. It comes in two speeds of ISO 50 and ISO 100.

It’s always handy to have a few rolls of Black and White film in the bag. You never know when you see a scene and know that it’s perfect for B/W. Whichever film you choose, bring plenty of rolls; don’t be caught in the middle of nowhere without film.

If you are shooting with a Digital SLR bring plenty of memory.

Cable Release: If your camera has a connection for a cable release you should buy one. It is a perfect accessory to minimise the risk of camera shake - especially if you are taking long exposures. It doesn’t take up too much room and is extremely light.

Light Meter: All modern day cameras have light meters built into them, but if you are serious about landscape photography it’s advisable to have a hand-held light meter. These are small and of light-weight, and when used correctly are extremely accurate.

These are the most important bits and pieces for your camera bag; other important accessories include spare batteries, a grey card and a few spare lenses.

TJ Tierney. Award winning Irish Landscape photographer. If you are looking for more photo tips visit www.goldenirishlight.com/photographytips.html To view some of his images visit his on line gallery @ www.goldenirishlight.com

It can be hard work locating the perfect field of poppies in front of the perfect view of a Tuscan town. You think it might just be easier to slap in a field of poppies on your computer at home later. Well, these days it is a viable alternative, one much used in the professional photography world, but if you’re going to do it well, there is still a lot of work involved.

This time you are going to need to find two shots: one of the view of your chosen town in Tuscany, ideally with a nicely defined hill curving gently in the foreground, which will be filled with poppies digitally later; the other the poppy field itself in a similar light to your first picture and on a similarly contoured hill or field. A flat field of poppies stuck onto a hill shaped foreground is just going to look like a collage. So no escape from the driving around Tuscany searching for the perfect shot then.

Just as well that it is more of a joy than a punishment to potter along the winding roads between such jewels as Pienza and Montepulciano, San Quirico d’Orcia and Montalcino, you don’t even need the excuse of photography. Get a friend to drive so that you don’t end up in the ditch, craning to get a better view of Monte Amiata, my favourite mountain, or of the towers of Siena in the distance. A detailed map will help you explore the strada bianca (dirt roads), but they are not always completely accurate, so be prepared to head off into the unknown and turn back at a dead end - all part of the adventure. The magic of Tuscany is the unexpected view, a hidden crumbling brick farmhouse with cypress trees, a perfect field of poppies.

You’ve located your shots of your background town and your foreground poppies. Take a lot of permutations of the same shot: different depths of field, different points of focus, different angles, different light situations, and bracket, bracket, bracket your exposures. The beauty of digital is that you don’t have film costs to worry about. Return to the same place at a different time of day to get a different angle of sunlight on your poppies. You need a large choice of shots to play with when you get home to your computer. Once home you can’t re-shoot, you have to work with the material you’ve already collected.

Now, after downloading the images, backing them up on DVD or an external hard drive, you have hours of fun ahead of you, selecting the images to work with and then juxtaposing them perfectly and seamlessly to create the ultimate illusion, that looks effortless. Only you have the satisfaction of knowing how much work went into creating the perfect photograph of Poppies in Tuscany.

Kit Heathcock copyright 2006

Kit Heathcock - worked and travelled in Italy for many years, is passionate about food and loves being a fulltime mother. Co-creator of A Flower Gallery home of original flower pictures and Food and Family!

Advances in the design and capabilities of digital cameras are happening nearly at the speed of thought. Digital cameras are experiencing technological advances as rapidly as PCs did a few years ago. Once marginally acceptable for taking a snapshot or two, the digital camera is forging its way into mainstream amateur and professional photography circles. And it’s no wonder.

Once of the best of the long list of advantages of digital photography is the immediate ability to view the scene through the digital camera’s LCD screen. Even the best TTL focusing doesn’t convey how the scene is going to come out as well as the LCD screen does.

Combine that nifty preview feature with the immediate gratification that comes from the ability to view the shot after it’s been taken, and there are no longer any excuses for coming home from vacation with a pile of lousy photographs.

Then there’s the low cost of film. Wait! Make that the NO cost of film. Sure, digital camera storage devices tend to cost a bit more than your average roll of ASA 1000, but it’s a one-time cost that keeps on giving and giving over and over again. Combine the no film costs with the no film processing costs and you suddenly find yourself being able to afford to shoot anything and everything you see without ending up short of beer money! Surely that’s an advantage all by itself.

Moving right along on the growing list of why you simply MUST own a digital camera, we come to what I like to call the ‘digital darkroom’ which is what the rest of the world likes to call graphics software.

Without having to mix a batch of chemical soup, without having to own a single red light bulb and without having to wait hours for your paper to dry, you can professionally process, morph, annotate, animate, enlarge, compress and remove the dreaded ‘red eye’ from your images with the click of a mouse. Hate how it all came out? No problem. Just click “undo” and start all over again.

Let’s not overlook the convenience of being able to e-mail shots of the kids to grandma. No trips to the Post Office, no ordering double prints at the drug store. You just snap, download to your PC and send the kid’s into cyberspace. While you’re in cyberspace, don’t forget to update your family photo album which you can have hosted for free at any number of the free “look what I did” photo album sites on the Internet.

Probably the best advantage of digital photography is that there is no cost for making mistakes. This allows you to experiment with different f/stops, white balance settings, focal points and lenses without emptying your wallet just to see how bad they turned out.

When there is no cost for making an error, you’re bound to end up taking better photographs as you learn how to take your digital camera to the limits.

The First Communion is first in many ways. It is the first formal event in a young person’s life, the beginning of a life of good character and a milestone in a seven year olds education. The First Communion portrait is especially treasured by the parents, showing the innocence and hope for the future in their young faces.

For these reasons, a natural, happy face takes precedence over creativity in posing. Communion poses are studies in confidence and naturalness. An ideal session starts with a standing full length pose holding the missal and rosary beads. Girls have their weight on the back foot, their front knee slightly bent toward the camera. Boys stand with legs slightly apart facing twenty degrees off center. Several shots from the left and right sides will assure a perfect expression.

While the subject is standing come in for a medium shot cropped just above the knee. Some happier expressions can be included in this variation. Lighting should be soft but modeling, say two and one half to one ratio.

Medium close up poses are the most popular, so concentrate on getting a good selection for the parents to choose from. A posing bench that simulates the altar rail places the hands and elbows comfortably at waist height. Variations include hands on missal, reading missal, looking up, smiling and serious. You should photograph both left and right sides for a good selection.

Girls allow a little more leeway in prop usage. White tulle placed over a bouquet of flowers, a white or brass candlestick with candle in the background or a small, round topped table holding the missal and gloves off to the side and behind the subject are appropriate props. If there is time, a seated pose for the girls can be effective. Boys can stand with their elbows on a raised marble column holding the missal, the other hand in their pocket.

Always check that the tie is centered and the collar fits snugly to the neck in front. If the shirt collar is too loose, place a roll of tissues behind the neck to tighten it up. Make sure the roll is not seen by the camera. Shirt cuffs ideally should show one half inch of white past the sleeve end. If this is impossible, then show no cuff at all. Too long cuffs can be rubber banded under the coat to the correct length. Veils should be checked for equal length on the sides and the crown centered on the head. Gloves look better held in the hand or on a pedestal, never worn. White dresses and accessories are a natural for high key photography. Boys in navy blue suits look better on a medium gray background with the edges darkened.

Some unusual shots can be tried for appreciative customers. A super close up with eyes raised is quite angelic. Place a small light above the lens for a nice catchlight. Profile shots with a candle and rosary are very effective for the more artistic clients. Throughout the session talk to your subject, tell them how nice they look and give them a chance to relax and look confident. At any sign of nervousness, take a break and distract them with conversation on another subject. Remember that expression is nine tenths of a good portrait.

Retired portrait and wedding photographer. Any thoughts?