Since then digital cameras have gotten a lot better. So have the photos they make. The tools available to manage photos have made digital easier than ever, too

But there are still some people who have a negative view of digital photography. So here are the Top 10 myths…exposed:

1. A digital photo is not as good as film.
   Today’s digital cameras produce great-looking photos, even in large print sizes. Film is good and improving, too. But digital easily keeps pace.
2. Digital cameras are big and heavy.
   There are a lot of small, featherweight digital cameras that have loads of features. They create top-quality photos, too.
3. Digital cameras are slow.
   For a long time, digital cameras were slower than their film cousins. Every year, digital cameras get faster.
4. Digital photography is expensive.
   Digital keeps getting cheaper. Someday soon it won’t cost any more than film.
5. It takes too long to transfer pictures to a computer.
   Get a USB or FireWire memory card reader to make quick transfers. The fastest card readers can copy three or four high-resolution JPEG photos to the computer in one second.
6. It’s hard to view and edit digital photos.
   Not any more. For example, Google’s Picasa is free — and it’s surprisingly easy to learn and use.
7. It’s hard to make prints from digital photos.
   Printing digital photos is easy. You can print at home, or on the Internet using an online photo service.
8. Prints from digital photos look bad.
   It is almost impossible to tell the difference between digital prints and traditional film prints.
9. It’s hard to organize and store digital photos.
   Google’s Picasa software lets you organize photos by category: family, friends, school, vacations, and pets. Protect your original photo files — also called digital negatives — by burning a CD and listing its contents on the disk.
10. Digital photography is too much fun.
    Sorry…this one’s true!

Portrait photography is the life blood of its industry. It has been around since the camera was invented and its popularization. It is a challenging type of photography that requires the photographer to have ea good knowledge of lighting and composition techniques as well as the ability to understand human nature. Here are some good tips to get you started on how to set the mood of a portrait.

Portrait photography is not about capturing the physical beauty of a person. The main purpose is to reveal a person’s personality and to create stunning imagery. The reason that many people are interested in portraiture may be that every face has its own supply of unique, ever changing subject matter. I hope these tips help you with your journey into portrait photography.

1. It is extremely important that the photographer spends the time to get to know their subject and get a feel for who they are.

Alex Lee recommends Meeting and Talking with the Client before a Photo Session. ‘As a portrait photographer, I need to know my client, knowing their background, desires, pains, and motivations helps me create distinctive portraits.’

You usually only have a short period of time to get to know your subject and learn their personal style and form of expression. The longer that you have known someone the better their photographs will be. However, if you just walk into a photo session and hope to take great pictures without knowing your subject they will most likely be boring.

2. Alex Lee suggests that a portrait photographer should Give Freedom to Their Subject. ‘I give complete freedom to my client in term of clothing, makeup, and hairstyle. I give suggestions and recommendations, but will leave the decision to the client.’ This will contribute to capturing the essence of a person.

3. Any photographer knows that a subject will never sit still; as well you may not want them to look so posed. It is imperative that you start shooting at the correct time.

PhotographyTips.com helps you to choose When to Begin Taking Pictures ‘Different people have different techniques for doing this, one of which is taking a picture while the subject is planning on smiling and then take another couple while they are recovering. Or another way would be to tell a funny joke where they can’t help but genuinely laugh and smile.’

4. One of important elements in portrait composition is background. Remember that the background must compliment the subject. The subject needs to be separated from the background.

Philip Greenspun has a helpful tip on Creating a Controlled Background ‘You don’t have to build a special room to have a controlled background. There are all kinds of clever portable backdrops and backdrop supports that you can buy or build. If you absolutely cannot control the background, the standard way to cheat is to use a long fast lens, e.g., 300/2.8, that will create a soft background. Fast telephoto lenses have very little depth of field.’

5. Alex Lee recommends Using Wide Aperture and there are two reasons why: ‘I use this to enhance my images, by selecting where I want to focus. I love focusing on the eyes. I like to see the eyes shine. Another benefit of the wide-open aperture is the soft gentle feel of the photograph. The depth of field can be very selective.’

6. Malek Tips believes that Fast Shutter Speed is Vital. ‘Facial expressions can change in an instant, so make sure you can snap quickly before the moment is lost forever’.

7. You must remember to shoot portraits from many different points of view certain angles work nicer than others.

Kodak advises shooting from Eye level. ‘It’s the way we most often look at the world, so it conveys realism. Too low an angle in a close-up exaggerates the size of the nose, mouth, and chin. Too high an angle exaggerates the size of the head compared to the rest of the body.’ Still, Digital Photography

School has a fantastic tip on Photographing People From Different Angles. ‘Experiment with getting down as low as you can or find a way to climb above them and you might just find yourself discovering a new angle on your subject that adds that special something to how they express themselves in an image.’

Just remember the final angle is left up to you.

8. Kodak has a good tip on Subject placement. ‘When a person moves across your camera’s field of view, the final image usually has much more impact when the subject is off-center. Leave the open space in the direction in which the subject is headed. Similarly, if a subject is looking off to the side, it’s best to leave more space in that direction.’

9. MalekTips recommends Considering NOT Filling the Frame. ‘If you are an amateur photographer, or even one experienced with digital photography but not in the possession of an image-stabilizing and leveling device such as a tripod, it is hard to take perfectly straight photos.’

10. Kodak has a good tip on shooting Vertical Portraits. ‘The majority of people pictures are horizontal in format probably because it’s easier to hold a camera horizontally. The horizontal format does work best for most group pictures. However, a vertical image can be very effective for pictures ranging from full-length portraits to tight facial close-ups. The unexpectedness of a vertical format can also give an image added impact.’

11. Many photographers believe that the best pose for a portrait is a natural pose. Others don’t agree so much.

Titus from Photozo has a useful tip on 1-2-3 Rule Regarding the Body, Head and Eye Placement. ‘I frequently see portrait images breaking the 1-2-3 rule regarding the body, head and eye placement. In portraiture you can guarantee your subject a very boring and static image by having the body in the # 1 position, the face in the # 1 position and the eyes also in the # 1 position.’

The most often advised technique to good composition is to use the rule of thirds. There are two aspects to the rule of thirds and understanding how they work and interrelate is not difficult at all.

The basic picture scene will have three major elements of:

* 1 – Foreground
* 2 – Middle-ground
* 3 – Background

These elements are self-explanatory and although they may seem more appropriate for a landscape image, they can still be used and applied to other photos such as portraits or abstracts. Being aware of these three elements and how they should be positioned, isolated and enhanced will provide you with a basis to avoid the typical subject-centered image with a 50/50 split that many novices seem to do in the beginning. Yours truly has several of these types of images hiding away in a shoebox somewhere under the bed.

The middle orientation probably has a lot to do with the central focusing sensor of cameras and people’s tendency to lock focus and then just shoot. I do the Canon Shuffle of locking focus on the subject and then recomposing the scene. If your camera allows you to remove auto focus start from the Shutter Release button, do it! This allows you to control when to AF or not and usually, the Shutter Release becomes an Exposure Lock button when pressed half way. You can focus on one subject yet meter for another, a great feature that more and more companies are copying from Canon.

The rule of thirds that most photographers will tend to think of is the viewfinder grid division into nine sections, as seen here. The central four points of the middle rectangle – outlined in red – represent the key points of the composition and it is at one of these four points that you would place an important subject matter. This concept of the rule of thirds is so prevalent and accepted that some companies are offering cameras with auto focus points at the important grid sections as above.

There seems to be something about the rule of thirds that seems to provide humans with a just-right view of things. The rule of thirds can even be seen in the world of audio in which you have three main audio signals of treble, mid-range, and bass. Harry Pearson of the Absolute Sound Magazine is an advocate of the rule of thirds for speaker placement in which the listener is placed one-third of the way into the room and the so too are the speakers. It is a quick and dirty way of getting acceptable sound but not necessarily the best sound, from a given speaker and room combination.

The advocacy of the rule of thirds is good one to teach learning photographers but it should not be a rule written in stone. For once, you know and recognize the rule of thirds, you will find it everywhere and it holds the danger of being routine and unoriginal as a 50/50 scene split or centered subject. Be bold and experiment for every subject will have a composition that could focus in on it and that may or may not be the rule of thirds. Therefore, while the rule of thirds is a quick and dirty method of getting an acceptable composition, it may not be the best method for your subject.

Richard Martin, a contributor to Canada’s Photo Life magazine. He advises photographers to not become overly tied down to rules otherwise the photographer runs the danger of doing everything the same and never being able grow beyond those restrictions.

I find myself using the rule of thirds quite often but each image is unique and you should try to see the scene from different angles and perspectives. You may find that a rule of thirds composition is not the way to do the shot. Reading through the National Geographic Photography Field Guide can be enlightening thanks to the photographer profiles within the book. Two of the best, Michael Yamashita and William Albert Allard, indicate that they shoot through hundreds of slides in order to get just the right shot to convey the message or idea they have in mind. William Albert Allard considers the film and camera to be a sketch pad for him to try many different ideas and approaches to photography.

The message? Simple, take the rule of thirds composition but do not stop at one or two shots but take many images and thoroughly work the subject if it is worthy enough. Now of course we all do not have National Geographic expense accounts that allow us to shoot hundreds of rolls of film for a trip or outing, so cost can and will be a factor. A digital camera would make the experimentation process much easier to bear.

“No two snowflakes are alike.” It’s a phrase repeated so often that most of us accept it as fact. Though it’s not a scientific idea at all — it was simply a theory posited in 1898 by Wilson Bentley, the very first snowflake photographer, who captured close to 5,000 crystals in his lifetime.

Unlike Bentley, who put snowflakes on slides and attached a bellows camera to a compound microscope, you can use a regular Digital SLR or Digital point-and-shoot. Also, where Bentley posed his flakes on a black background, you can shoot them wherever you see them — “whether they are on wood, or stone, or on you friends shoelace.” If they are on other snow, you can still photograph them by tilting your camera to catch the sunlight on a different flake.

Shooting snowflakes is easy — just follow these tips:
• Get in as close as the camera will let you — usually about 2 inches. Hold the camera steady, and shoot from as many angles as possible.
• Aim for snowflakes that are on surfaces with clean lines and that are positioned at an angle so early morning or late afternoon sunlight can bring out details. And it also helps to find flakes in the ‘twilight zone’ areas of the snow — not in full sun or quite full shadow. This is so the background of the sunlit flake is the cobalt blue shadow that snow has on sunny days.
• Large, soft flakes photograph better than small, bright ones. You can find them at diameters up to 5mm. You need to have a lot of moisture in the air to find snowflakes this large and it needs to be bitter cold.
• Nearly windless days are ideal for snowflake hunting, to up the likelihood of finding crystals intact. Colder temperatures help to keep their little arms from melting off before you can get to them.

I challenge you to find two that are alike. Good luck in your hunting and be warm.