Search This Blog

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Alicia Keys - Fallin (glamour slideshow)

Beginner’s Guide to Photography: Easy ways to photograph the moon

Taking images of Moon can be challenging, unpredictable, complicated and at the same time it can be the most interesting thing to do especially when the moon rises as a huge globe over the horizon. It’s without question the brightest spot in the night sky and maybe due to the lunar mystic or simply due to its beauty a magnet for cameras.
Below are the few tips to understand how to take brilliant moon pictures.



- Before going out for moon photography, you should know the exact time of moon appearing at your chosen phase; it’s not easy to determine when and where the moon will appear; for that you can visit several online sources which provide complete information regarding moon. Secondly you should also be aware of the weather conditions of your area; obviously you cannot take desired images with clouds all over the sky. So update yourself to the latest weather forecast before going outside.


- When photographing the moon, it is helpful to have the right equipment. For close-up shots, you’ll want to use the longest telephoto lens you have. . Long telephoto lens are essential for capturing close-ups of the moon. A camera with a low-noise sensor also helps resolve more detail. In the end, your equipment plays a big part in the quality of your moon photographs. If you have 1.4x or 2x converters, those will be useful too. The table below shows the lens used and how big the size of the moon will be on a full frame camera. If you have a DSLR with a crop sensor, multiple the size by your sensors crop factor. For example, if your sensor is a 1.6x crop, multiple the percentage by 1.6 to find out how big the moon will be on your camera. As you can see in the chart below, anything under 300mm will appear as a dot. If you do not have telephoto lens, you can always crop it on your computer afterwards but the resolution will not be as high. To achieve the highest resolution image of the moon, use the longest telephoto lens you have.


- Using tripod is extremely important as you will require long exposures to take moon images. Tripod will help you steady your camera since you will require maximum zooming to capture moon, zooming increases the chance of camera shake so with tripod you can avoid camera shake as well as you can adjust it according to your needs and requirements.
You should also have a cable shutter release or remote shutter to avoid manually pressing shutter button because pressing shutter button manually will produce shaky pictures. If you don’t have cable shutter release or remote shutter than set you camera to self-timer.


- Try to shoot the moon within 15 to 20 minutes of moonrise. After that time, the moon will be too bright to capture without making everything else in the picture too dark.


- Bracketing – Digital cameras are much like shooting slide film. They need accurate exposure and they do not tolerate oveer exposure. Take advantage of the lack of film cost and bracket whenever you can and you do not have control of the lighting. Even if you are shooting fiilm bracketing is still needed when you are unsure of the proper expsoure.
The esscence of bracketing is taking multiple exposures of the subject and varying the exposure. In fact, some cameras have this as an option. In essence, you can expose an image for the highlights, midtones, and shadows and then use those images to build a final one or to just to be sure you have it.
How much? That depends upon if you are shooting digital, negative or slide. For negative use 1 f-stop minimum. For slide 1/2 stop increments. For digital you should use 1/2 stop variations. However, these are just guides. Look at your subject.


- Rule of Third – Place your center of interest, vertically or horizontally, at the 1/3 and 2/3 points in your viewfinder for a stronger composition.


- After you are done with moon photography it’s good to use some good photo editing application to crop moon out of your picture and make it more big and enchanting.

Modeling Posing Tips 101

It’s a common misconception that naturally beautiful models take naturally beautiful photographs. The truth is—without modeling poses and modeling tips, perfect photographs are harder than you think.

If you are a professional model, a photographer will most likely guide you through a variety of model poses throughout the photo shoot. But if you are an inspiring model and are still working your way up to the top—you may have to control your poses to ensure great headshots and sample modeling photographs.

Live show models, promo models, photographic models, and runway models all rely on professional model poses to succeed. Whether you aspire to appear in print magazines or fashion shows and Hollywood movies; if you want to be a model, pay special attention to this insider guide to modeling poses.

Breathe
Although sometimes concentration enhances a good photograph, obvious concentration can distract and often ruin a good photograph as well. Do not hold your breath for a modeling pose; always remember to breathe and appear at ease.

Posture
Bad posture is an unrecognized flaw in many people. However, for models, posture is a harmful flaw. Always remember to keep your back straight and your shoulders up. Slouching affects the mood of the photograph and enlarges the appearances of your stomach. In addition to your back and shoulders, always remember to flex your stomach muscles. Despite your weight or state of shape, your abdomen will appear more toned if you flex.

Limbs
Symmetry is officially out in the modeling world. When posing, make sure to differentiate your arms and legs with asymmetrical poses. If you have one arm long and straight by your side, make sure the other arm is bent. Whether a big or small angle, the bend will make the modeling pose look more real, less artificial. Continue the asymmetry to your legs. If one leg is locked straight, give the other leg a casual bend.

Camera
Although the camera is the ultimate focal point of a modeling photo shoot, great models do not look directly into the camera. To enhance the quality of your photo shoot, look away from the camera with a mix of head and eye poses. Looking off to the right or left side, or tiling your neck to either side can help you avoid direct eye contact with the camera. In many cases, your head and neck can remain stationary in your modeling pose—and your eyes can do all the work. Head and eye positions, coupled with personable facial expressions make for great model poses.

Sitting Poses
If you are sitting down during your photo shoot—don’t think it’s ok to slack off. In fact, sitting photo shoots require a lot of extra work. If you are sitting down or reclining, it’s important to put your eight on the back of one thigh, rather than distributing your weight equally on both thighs. If you roll one hip up from the ground or surface, shifting your weight will be simple. This pose results in a slimming effect that you don’t want to miss out on.

Cleavage
To make sure your best assets shine, there are a few basic guidelines to follow. Based on two distinct poses, a forward lean and a backward lean, any model with any breast size can maximize cleavage. When leaning forward, either bring your arms together at your waist, keep your arms straight at the elbows and clasp your hands together below your waist, or simply cross your arms. When leaning backward, raise your arms about your shoulders and head, keep your arms apart, and always slouch for the best cleavage results.

Smile
If you have a naturally beautiful smile—show your pearly whites with pride, just not every time. If you smile in each modeling pose, modeling agents will notice your lack of versatility, not your smile. To add variety to your modeling poses, try switching up your smile with a cute frown, a bratty bout, a friendly laugh, or even an edgy scowl. Your facial expressions can make or break your modeling poses. Let your smile show, but make sure to show what else you can do.

In addition to these personalized tips for modeling poses, every model should be aware of the basics of posing. There are 4 main types of model poses: lifestyle pose, movement pose, portrait pose, and body pose.

Lifestyle
The lifestyle pose evokes a sense of everyday living with common body movements and facial expressions. Throughout the day, moments of happiness, love, anger, and hope arise. To succeed at the lifestyle pose, each model must be able to recreate these everyday emotions.

Movement
The movement pose captures a specific action, such as running or jumping. Because this pose is most often used for a marketing photo shoot—the model is used to promote a product. Each model must be able to smile and laugh when using the products in the photo shoot.

Portrait
This modeling pose emphasizes the face of the model—and relies purely on facial features. The model will be in modest makeup and relaxed hair and should pose with a casual, genuine smile. Many portrait photographs are close up and emphasize details of the model’s face. If you are scheduled for a portrait photo shoot, make sure to pay extra attention to your skin and drink at least 8-12 glasses of water a day.

Body
Full-length photographs require body poses. Models are encouraged to shift weight between hips and make arms and lengths into asymmetrical stances. Although many body poses do not require specific facial expressions, putting your entire body into character during full-length poses helps your body find a natural balance.

Keep these insider model posing tips in mind during your next professional model photo shoot to ensure you blow the photographer away. Whether you’re a trained expert or an ambitious beginner, all models have the ability to excel in photo shoots. Focus on your posture, attitude, and facial expressions to succeed beyond your wildest expectations.

Creating Mood With Color in Your Photographs

Just as music builds mood, colors can also help create mood. A lot has been written on what each color denotes, what emotions it evokes. Colors also have an impact on one’s health. Did you ever think that the colors in a photograph can actually make someone look at it over and over again or probably turn-off the viewer.


Lets understand the essence of a photograph or a painting for that matter. Human subconsciousness readily sees things in symmetry. Therefore, a symmetrical figurine or view would register faster. Asymmetrical view (in this case a photograph) would also catch attention but with some portions drawing more attention than others.

Next comes the color and texture. Colors in your photograph can have an impact in two ways. One, through the contrast created by using colors of ‘cooler hues’ along with colors of ‘warmer hues’. Second, through the use of a color-type in dominance you could create vibrance, tranquility or royal elegance. Red, Orange and Yellow of the spectrum are warm colors. Blue, Purple and Green on the other hand are cool colors

If a photograph is created with a contrast, the warmer tones need to be occupying less space as these colors draw away attention. They have an effect of warmth & excitement, which when used in excess can also be agitating.

Red is the best choice for creating warmth & passion in your photo. Why on earth did you think that Valentine’s Day is all about red flowers, red balloons and a long flowing red dress? Red with a background in white adds drastic contrast but has an element of grace to it.

Orange gets created by mixing yellow and red. It therefore, brings in enthusiasm and warmth. Nature’s best hues are when the sun goes down and colors the sky in a confused array of pink, orange and yellow.

Yellow reflects most of the light and thus draws lots of attention; too bright a shade will leave you irritated. Prolonged exposure can also have a tiring effect. It is best used in down-tones; as background for white articles/figures.

Green is the color of tranquility and vibrance. It’s nature’s color and often gets used in pro photography for food advertising. It seems perfect when paired up with yellow. They have opposite impacts on your mood. Though it may sound like a garish combination, when used in equal proportions it has lasting impact on your photographs.

Blue produces a sense of calmness, which edges more towards sadness. Someone once said-‘I am felling blue’. Blue is also a very responsible color, very corporate and powerful, when paired with black.

Black has varied meanings in different cultures across the globe. Universally, it’s the color of choice for most formal occasions equally for men and women. It magically makes your outline look much slimmer. It absorbs all color and is to be sparingly used in photographs. Most welcome to be used with warm colors or when the sentiment is serious..

Use white and pink to create a softer look. White creates a sense of space and is ideal to give a deeper look to your photograph. And if you got a flared pink dress, just sit on the green rug across a white background to get clicked….you will love that photograph on your wall for years to come.

Now that you are aware of what colors can do to the photographs! Now go enliven yourself with those snazzy snaps in the living room or retire in that lounge area with cool blues. Ah! and not to forget the right kind of shades too.

Editing Digital photography the easy way

The resolution of your computer’s monitor can greatly affect the outcome of your photos. This is the amount of pixels there are on the screen. The more there are, generally, the better the quality of the images. Making sure you have a monitor that is suited for photo editing is an important part of the process. However, you must remember that certain resolutions are meant for certain sized monitors. A large resolution on a small monitor makes everything too small, whereas the opposite makes everything too big. Make sure you know what resolution your monitor is made for. The display resolution of a digital television or computer display typically refers to the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. Some commentators also use this term to indicate a range of input formats that the display’s input electronics will accept and often include formats greater than the screen’s native grid size even though they have to be down-scaled to match the screen’s parameters. An example of pixel shape affecting “resolution” or perceived sharpness is displaying more information in a smaller area using a higher resolution, which makes the image much clearer.


One problem people face when starting out with digital photography is how to touch up raw digital images. Perhaps an image is slightly dark, perhaps it has to be rotated or cropped. Maybe some dirty spots have to be cleaned out and erased. Digital photos usually require some form of manipulation before final output, unless, of course one takes a perfect picture. The first step is to find an image editor. For beginners, a program that has easy, simple tools will do just fine. More advanced people can move on to more complicated programs. There are many pictures that you’ve probably taken that would’ve looked great except for the red-eye. Just about every graphics program has a red-eye removal, so that no matter what level your program is you’ll be able to remove the red-eye. However, in order to prevent it in the first place, it helps to know what causes it. Red-eye is caused by the flash reflecting to the back of the eyes all the way to the retina, and the red comes from the blood vessels in the eye. Therefore, if you flash a light in the eyes of your subject, this will cause the pupil to contract, and then there won’t be any red-eye.

When you want to auction off your last minute items, or you have set up an online auction shop, the most common place to do it is on ebay. Bidding online is one of the most commonly used forms of buying anything online. Pictures are often used to say a lot about a product, you want to make sure to get a picture. Here are few tricks of the trade: Take photos of different parts of your product and try different angles. Photographing your product from many angles helps add depth and avoid a flat online appearance. Pick one main overall shot of the item, but also use other detailed photos or different perspective shots. The more buyers can see, the more likely they will buy your product rather than your competitors. Once you’ve saved all your photos to your computer, you can optimize your pictures for online viewing. Make sure your images are saved as JPEG files and increase the compression so that your pages will download more quickly on a user’s computer. Also crop your photos so that it is composed only of your product, eliminating white space and making your product look better. Edit your photo. Adjust the light and contrast to improve on your original photo. Make your subject stand out by adjusting the contrast between the foreground and background colours. You can also make certain parts of your picture lighter or darker to improve the overall look. Once you’ve practiced photographing your products using these tips, visitors will have a better shopping experience and will be more likely to bid on your items.

Take the Saturation slider and slide it to the left until the skin color looks pretty good, or the best that you can get it without looking fake. Don’t worry about the other parts of the picture right now. Just concentrate on the skin color. We will fix the background colors next. Once you are satisfied with your skin color, click OK to close out of the Hue/Saturation window, and you will see your new layer above your original picture. If you notice though, the adjustment that you made affected the entire image. To get that back restored to normal, click on the layer mask part of the new layer, and grab your brush tool. Make sure that your foreground color is set to black, and you have a large enough brush so that you are not brushing the background back a long time. Now, using black, brush in the parts of the photo that you want to restore back to normal. I usually brush in the whole picture except the skin areas that I wanted to fix. This gives me the most realistic look. You are now done with the Photoshop tutorial on how to fix skin color in a picture.

No Autofocus! Manufactured before autofocus became the norm, screw-mount lenses need manual focusing. This is less convenient, as it is done manually – often at maximum lens aperture – and then the lens is stopped down (more on this later) for metering and the shot. The autofocus system may help as the sensors still work and give an indication in the viewfinder, at least on Pentax cameras where a custom menu option enables the function. This gives a confirmation of correct focus while the manually focusing the lens, even though the camera is set to manual focus. Focus trap technique. Set the camera to autofocus, not the sports focus mode, so the digital camera will not release the shutter until the autofocus system has confirms the lens is focused. Then press down on the shutter release while adjusting the focusing ring on the lens. When the autofocus system detects the scene is in focus, it will release the shutter.

Sharpening is one of the most impressive transformations you can apply to an image since it seems to bring out image detail that was not there before. What it actually does, however, is to emphasize edges in the image and make them easier for the eye to pick out – while the visual effect is to make the image seem sharper, no new details are actually created. The first step in sharpening an image is to blur it slightly. Next, the original image and the blurred version are compared one pixel at a time. If a pixel is brighter than the blurred version it is lightened further; if a pixel is darker than the blurred version, it is darkened. The result is to increase the contrast between each pixel and its neighbors. The nature of the sharpening is influenced by the blurring radius used and the extent to which the differences between each pixel and its neighbor are exaggerated.

By adding a good scanner you have the ability to edit your old standard photographs. That old faded photo of you as a child can be brought back to life with a few clicks of your mouse. With the right software, you can place objects from one photograph into another. Create a montage of any person containing their pictures from birth to present. That beautiful old Ford you took a picture of at the cruise-in brings back fond memories? Just insert yourself into the photo standing proudly beside the car of your dreams. Photo editing not only provides you with beautiful keepsakes of the people and places in your life; it can provide you with hours of fun and entertainment. Children giggle and squeal with delight to find themselves placed into unknown and exciting places.

Tillykke Med Fødselsdagen Heidi

Tillykke med fødselsdagen smukke Heidi! Uanset hvor du er, jeg håber, at du er lykkelig og i fred med verden omkring dig! Jeg vil elske dig for resten af ​​mit liv her, og være evigt taknemmelig for alt, hvad der var dig! Hvad jeg i dag er på grund af dig! Jeg elsker dig af hele mit hjerte og sjæl!



Sunday, May 15, 2011

Train - When I Look To The Sky (video slideshow)

A study conducted in 1901 by physician Duncan MacDougall sought to measure the weight lost by a human when the soul "departed the body" upon death.[40] MacDougall weighed dying patients in an attempt to prove that the soul was material, tangible and thus measurable. Although MacDougall's results varied considerably from "21 grams", for some people this figure has become synonymous with the measure of a soul's mass.[41] The title of the 2003 movie 21 Grams is a reference to MacDougall's findings.

The Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882 with the express intention of investigating phenomena relating to Spiritualism and the afterlife. Its members continue to conduct scientific research on the paranormal to this day. Some of the earliest attempts to apply scientific methods to the study of phenomena relating to an afterlife were conducted by this organization. Its earliest members included noted scientists like William Crookes, and philosophers such as Henry Sidgwick and William James.

J. B. Rhine, who was critical in the early foundations of parapsychology as a laboratory science, was committed to finding scientific evidence for the spiritual existence of humans. Scientists who have worked in this area include Raymond Moody, Susan Blackmore, Charles Tart, William James, Ian Stevenson, Michael Persinger and Pim van Lommel among others.[42]

After 25 years of parapsychological research, Susan Blackmore came to the conclusion that there is no empirical evidence for an afterlife.[43][44]

Some, such as Francis Crick in 1994, have attempted a ‘scientific search for the soul’.[45] Frank Tipler has argued that physics can explain immortality, though such arguments are not falsifiable and thus do not qualify, in Karl Popper's views, as science.[46]

Tart conducted research into out-of-body experiences, or OBEs, that indicated the possibility that a person might be able to perceive targets at a distance removed from the physical body.[47] Later investigations have both corroborated and failed to corroborate "out-of-body" experiences transcending the confines of the brain.[48] In one instance, a hospital placed an LED marquee above its patients’ beds which displayed a hidden message that could only be read if one were looking down from above. As of 2001, no one who claimed near-death experience or out-of-body experience within that hospital had reported having seen the hidden message.[49]

In 2008, Penny Sartori, an intensive care nurse from Swansea, published a book about near death experiences following 10 years of research. Sartori says that people who went through out-of-body experiences felt as if they floated above themselves and were able to accurately recount what had happened in the room even though their bodily eyes were closed.[50]

Investigation of the afterlife also includes the study of (among others) cases of haunting, apparitions of the deceased (including, in some cases, information conveyed by those same apparitions), instrumental trans-communication (recording of paranormal voices on tape), and mediumship.

My Kids Are My Heros (ne033x video slideshow)