Between camera phones and the World Wide Web, technology truly has revolutionized the way that everyday people deal with their pictures. Of course, technology can be a bit over rated, and it can be rather out of control at times but online photo albums are one of the more positive aspects of the rapidly advancing nature of technology.

Where Can I Get An Online Photo Album?

You can get access to online photo albums on a free or paid basis at various sites throughout the internet. Depending on how many pictures you want to share, what your connection is like, your particular preferences and a number of other things chances are that you can find a free online photo album site that fits your needs.

Is Building an Online Photo Album Hard to Do?

Building an online photo album is not a difficult thing to do. As a matter of fact, it is much easier to build a web based photo album to share with friends and family than to put hours and hours and money into fancy acid-free paper with the other alternative, and that is scrap booking. There is no replacement for real photographs and actual storage methods, but as far as showing off pictures and bragging to friends and family, online photo albums are the most surefire way to get it done. All you have to do is browse for pictures on your personal computer and upload them onto the site. From there, you can organize the pictures into sub-albums and edit them. You even have the option of making some folders private and others public, so anybody with the proper URLs can access your photographs. With private albums, there is a password required to get into the folder, but most sites give you the option of sending out an automated email with the URL and password information in it.

For this reason, many intimate family moments are in the kind of album that is kept private and password protected. On the other hand, family reunion pictures or even an artistic portfolio are probably photographs that you would want to make public to other internet browsers. Building an online photo album is all a matter of pointing and clicking. The shooting part of the deal was done before the online photo album even entered the picture, and the picture taking is the hardest part of all.

Allowing Others Access to Your Pictures

The advantage to having an online photo album as opposed to a traditional one is that you can show your pictures off to anybody with an internet connection. This gives Grandma almost instant access to ballet recital pictures, even if she lives clear across the United States of America, as is so often the case. These albums even allow people to leave comments n the pictures, telling what they think or writing about the memory behind the picture; this is just one of the newer and more pleasant features of online photo albums.

If you are the type who likes to take and show off a lot of pictures, save yourself a lot of money and your friends and family a lot of time. Set up an online photo album to show off all of your precious moments to anybody with an internet connection.

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Taking a really good digital photo of someone face can be very impressive. Accomplishing such high quality with face photos is hard. There are many things to consider such as shooting angle, lighting conditions, flash usage and background handling. Here are some tips and ideas to help you achieve better face photos.

Following is a list of things to consider when taking such face digital photos. As always it is better to experiment and try out the concepts described here in order to get a better grasp of why they are important and how they can be used to your benefit.

The right background: A face photo is as the name says all about the person face. You would like the digital photo viewer to focus on the face. By choosing the wrong background you might draw the viewer attention to other objects rather than the person face. The right background on the other hand can focus the view attention on the person face and at the same time also emphasize some of the face characteristics. It is best to pick a neutral background that does not attract attention. A soft solid color background for example is much better than a busy street background. It is also good practice to avoid having people or other moving or interesting objects in the background.

Blurring the background: you can use another technique in order to make sure that the person face stands out in the photo. This technique involves blurring the background. By blurring the background you send a message to the viewer that the background is not important and you emphasize the face as the only in-focus object in the photo. Blurring the background can be achieved by taking a photo using a shallow depth of field. Shallow depth of field is accomplished by using a zoom lens and shooting from a short distance or by setting a wide aperture. If your camera does not allow you to blur the photo by setting a shallow depth of field (it is hard to achieve such a depth of field with low-end pocket cameras) you can always blur the background later on using photo processing software on your computer.

The eyes are the center: focusing on the person face is best achieved by actually focusing on the person eyes. The eye are the most important part of the person face in the photo and usually express the most emotions and human touch. Try to play around with the person looking straight to the camera or sideways focusing on some other object. A smile is also recommended unless you are specifically looking for a face that does not smile in order to send some message to the viewer.

Lighting: capturing the face skin color is mostly a matter of using the right lighting. The best lighting is natural lighting. Taking face photos outdoors during the day is good practice in order to capture the skin color and warmth. When using outdoors natural light position the person in a way that the sun light hits it from the side. Do not take face photo with the sun behind the person or right in front as these will result in shadings or overexposure respectively. With lighting coming from the side some shades might appear on the person face, to compensate for these simply use a soft fill-in flash. If you must shoot indoors and use artificial lighting try to use indirect light sources such as bounce flash or lights that illuminate the room instead of directly shining on the person.

Ziv Haparnas is a technology veteran and writes about practical technology and science issues. This article can be reprinted and used as long as the resource box including the backlink is included. You can find more information about photo album printing and photography in general on http://www.printrates.com - a site dedicated to photo printing.

Did you know you are a member of the largest stock photo agency in the world? Photobuyers have quickly learned to check this “agency” out first – before turning to any other stock photo agency.

When buyers seek a specific-content, hard-to-find image, they know not to turn to Getty, Corbis, Jupiter, et al. These agencies do a great job serving up generic and standard pictures, but for real-life specific action and location images, buyers know to go to this other “agency.”

While the familiar large stock agencies have been laboring to keyword their images for access to Internet searches, they’re woefully behind the precision and extensive nature of the keywording being done by many independent photographers.

Getty, Corbis, Jupiter, et al have not been keeping up. And none of them is the largest stock agency in the world. They represent only a small fraction of the number of stock photos that reside in the files of the Internet’s worldwide database of photographers.

The largest stock agency is the Internet + Search Engines + You. Increasing numbers of photobuyers are finding out they can easily locate the source of the exact photo they need by simply using a search engine such as Google, and typing in several specific words describing the photo they need. *

THE GOOGLE EXPERIENCE

You’ve no doubt experienced it: “the Google Experience.” You needed to know the name of the village where Michaelangelo was born, or the name of his father. You typed your question into the Google search bar and your answer was available to you in seconds.

A text search on the Internet for photos is no different. If you were a photobuyer researching the making of violins in Italy, you would have found that Cremona is famous for its violins. But you need an aerial view. Your search request on Google or Yahoo would read like this: Cremona Italy violin aerial. Presto, the name of a photographer (or photographers) who has this photo comes up. Try it.

How large is this Internet directory of photographs? You be the judge. Estimate how many individual photographers now have digitized and labeled their collections and presently make them available to photobuyers via the Internet. If your calculations are similar to mine, you’ll figure there are presently at least 450 million images search-available on the Internet. By the year 2010 there will be three times that number. Getty, Corbis, and Jupiter can never catch up.

*Do photobuyers use Google Images as a source for images? No, they don’t. The Google Images system directs them only to sub par images, that also often present complicated copyright issues. More and more buyers know instead to use the “text” option of the Google search bar, and type in their photo-need description, to locate quality stock photos that offer ease of transaction.

Rohn Engh, veteran stock photographer and best-selling author of “Sell & ReSell Your Photos” and “sellphotos.com,” has helped scores of photographers launch their careers. For access to great information on making money from pictures you like to take, and to receive this free report: “8 Steps to Becoming a Published Photographer,” visit http://www.sellphotos.com

Digital photos can be viewed on computer screens or printed on paper. Most of the time you are most likely to print on standard paper sizes like 4X6 or 5X7. Every now and then however you might want to make enlargements of some photos that you specially care about. Print enlargements quality depends on your digital camera mega pixels figure, here is how.

Every digital photo that you take with your camera has a certain resolution normally expressed as the number of pixels in the photo or sometimes as two numbers depicting the number of pixels over the X axis and the number of the Y axis (multiplying these two numbers provides the total number of pixels in the digital photo).

When you print digital photos you are really printing those digital pixels on paper. If the paper size is very big relative to the digital photo resolution the result will be a poor quality print. One of the most noticeable results of such poor quality is your ability to actually see the individual pixels on the print also known as pixelization.

So how can you determine what is the maximum print enlargement that you can make from a certain digital photo? There is no one precise answer. In addition to the actual number of pixels in the photo there are other things that can influence the answer like how many details are in the photo, what were the lighting conditions and more. Even when considering the number of pixels the answer is not precise since different people would have different views about the quality of a photo print.

A rough estimation of what comprises a good print quality is based on the pixels density or in other words the number of pixels per inch on the printed photo. This is also known as PPI (pixels per inch) and it represents the number of pixels over an axis line.

Experiments show that the following qualities are usually associated with a specific PPI number:

PPI 100 - fair to bad

PPI 200 - good

PPI 300 and up - very good

The next logical step would be to figure out how many mega pixels are needed for good quality printing on a specific paper size. Fortunately calculating this number is very easy. To do that all you need to do is to simply multiply the page length by its width in inches. The result is the number of square inches on the page. Next multiply this number by the square of the PPI number and the result is the number of pixels on the page which is the number of pixels we want our source photo to have. Here are the numbers calculated for some common sizes (for 100,200 and 300 PPI respectively):

page 4X6 0.24MP 1MP 2MP

page 5X7 0.35MP 1.5MP 3MP

page 8X10 0.8MP 3MP 7MP

page 11X14 1.5MP 6MP 14MP

page 16X20 3MP 12MP 28MP

page 20X30 6MP 24MP 54MP

This table is just an estimation of what is considered suitable number of mega pixels for different paper sizes. There are many other factors to consider when making enlargements. Experimenting with different paper sizes is the best way to go but it can be expensive. In addition sometimes what is considered poor quality pixelization can actually be a nice artistic effect which strengthen the unfortunate fact that in addition to the above calculation some common sense and experience are needed in order to match a specific digital photo to a specific paper size enlargement.

Ziv Haparnas is a technology veteran and writes about practical technology and science issues. This article can be reprinted and used as long as the resource box including the backlink is included. You can find more information about photo album printing and photography in general on http://www.printrates.com - a site dedicated to photo printing.

Are you still using a film base camera? if you are than this article is for you. You probably know by now that you are becoming a minority as more and more people switch to digital cameras. This article lists some reasons why you should also consider making that switch.

Digital cameras are not just a hyped buzz word. They have real advantages over film cameras. In the beginning of the digital era many claimed that digital cameras are inferior in quality to film cameras. One of the main arguments was that printing enlargement from digital photos results in poor quality. While this was true back then new digital cameras with modern sensors and a large number of mega pixels provide superior quality even when printing enlargements.

Just having the same or better photo quality is not a good enough reason to switch. Using digital cameras and digital photos and switching to digital media has many advantages, here are just a few:

Photo cost: digital cameras take digital photos that are stored on digital media. For all practical purposes the marginal cost of taking digital photos is zero. You can view, manipulate and discard such digital photos without spending a dime. If you were using film you would have to spend money on developing the film roll in order to view your photos. Developing prints would cost more.

Photo capacity: digital cameras store digital photos on digital media. With modern memory chipsets the storage available on such media is practically infinite. You can hold thousands and more photos on each media card and since these cards are so small you can easily carry extra cards with you. With infinite photo capacity you can take many photos without thinking of the problem of running out of space. With old film cameras each roll would typically hold 36 photos. Film rolls were relatively big and you could only carry so many rolls with you. The result was thinking twice before taking a photo and in many cases missing great photo opportunities.

Immediate feedback: a great feature of digital cameras is the ability to immediately view the photos taken. Such immediate feedback allows better photos since you can check the composition and the quality of the photo and immediately take more photos to correct what you found was wrong. With old film cameras you had to wait until the film was developed in order to review the photos. Obviously at that time it was not possible to shoot the photo again to correct any problems in the photo.

Photo manipulation: digital photos are computer files stored on digital media. As such they can be easily manipulated with photo processing software. Such software can reside built-in the digital camera or installed on your personal computer. Photo processing software allows such manipulation as red-eye removal, contrast enhancements and more. Such manipulation is impossible with film cameras. The only way to manipulate film based photos is by converting them to digital photos through the process of photo scanning.

Adapt to changing conditions: digital cameras use electronic sensors instead of physical film. The camera can electronically set the sensor to different modes in order to support different photo shooting conditions such as different light conditions, different light sources, speed of the object photographed etc. The sensor settings can be changed instantly for each photo taken. With film cameras each film roll would be designed for a specific condition such as different light sensitivities, granularity and more. Once a film was loaded you had to take shoot the complete roll using the sane setting, or change rolls.

Longevity: digital photos never lose their quality. Digital photos are digitally saved on digital media and as such they will be identical tomorrow and 1000 years from now. They do not turn yellow and do not fade as film prints.

Ziv Haparnas is a technology veteran and writes about practical technology and science issues. This article can be reprinted and used as long as the resource box including the backlink is included. You can find more information about photo album printing and photography in general on http://www.printrates.com - a site dedicated to photo printing.

Everybody knows to check how many mega pixels their new camera has. Although more mega pixels does not necessarily mean better photos most people understand why mega pixels are important. One characteristic of digital cameras that many ignore is the sensor size.

Digital cameras capture digital photos. A digital photo is a collection of pixels. Each pixel has its color and intensity. When all these pixels are put together the result is an illusion of a photo. Pixels are captured by the camera using an electronic sensor known as a CCD. The CCD sensor is a silicon chip that is built of many tiny light sensors. When taking a photo each such tiny sensor measures the amount of light also known as intensity and some other attributes such as the color. Each such sensor results in one pixel and all the tiny sensors put together represent one digital photon.

This is very interesting to know – but why should you care? The reason is that there is a relationship between the size of that CCD sensor and the number of mega pixels that it supports. This relationship is important and has practical consequences. It is intuitive that for the same CCD sensor size, the more mega pixels the smaller each CCD tiny sensor is. The same is true if the number of mega pixels is fixed: the bigger the CCD sensor the bigger each tiny sensor is. For each CCD sensor size and number of mega pixel we can calculate the pixel sensor size.

The pixel sensor size is important and influences the characteristic of the digital camera especially in marginal light scenarios. Your digital camera sensitivity to light is directly influenced by the pixel sensor size. The bigger the sensor size the more light it can accumulate in a certain period of time. The result is that bigger pixel sensor sizes allow for faster shutter speeds at lower light conditions. In addition bigger pixel sensor sizes result in less noise captured by each such sensor.

In practical terms if you take two digital cameras with the same number of mega pixels but different CCD sensor sizes - the camera with the larger CCD sensor size will be provide digital photos that are sharper and have less noise. It will also be able to take digital photos in scenes that are too dark for the other camera. In normal light scenes the higher light sensitivity allows more range for changing the aperture and shutter speed and more freedom with getting different focus depths.

Bigger CCD sensors are more expensive. There are many reasons for that one of them is the lower manufacturing yield. For that reason cheaper pocket cameras use smaller sensors than high end digital SLR cameras. CCD sensor size also influences other optical attributes of the camera – for example the aperture needed in a specific scene changes as the CCD size changes. The depth of field is directly influenced by such aperture changes. To normalize optical figures many cameras manufacturers choose to normalize their optical attributes to the good old 35mm film (film can be seen as a sensor too, 35mm in size).

Ziv Haparnas is a technology veteran and writes about practical technology and science issues. This article can be reprinted and used as long as the resource box including the backlink is included. You can find more information about photo album printing and photography in general on http://www.printrates.com - a site dedicated to photo printing.

Your wedding day is one of the most special, eagerly awaited days in your life; and often we spend a great deal of time and money to ensure that it is perfect in every way. Everything from the flowers to the food is given careful consideration in an effort to plan a cohesive and exciting event that is reflective of your personality. And nothing is more scrutinized than the photography – that which will be a lasting memory of your special day. Today’s sophisticated brides and grooms are looking to artistic wedding photography more and more – as a way to infuse their wedding with non-traditional style.

Artistic wedding photography is photography that is approached with more than just “stand and pose pictures” in mind. Gone is the day of formal – and often stiff – wedding photography. Today’s photographers have ushered in a growing trend wherein they bring creative expression to the age-old craft of wedding photography.

Some methods included in artistic wedding photography may include the use of non-traditional angles that you may have never associated with wedding photographs – including the use of light, color, shadow, and scale. A creative photographer can create dramatic works of art out of a single photograph and present you with a photographic result you can frame and hang in any room.

An increasingly popular style of artistic wedding photography is that of candid – or journalistic type – photography. Using this method, the photographer takes photographs of the couple and their guests when they are unaware of the picture being taken. Photographers who are adept at this have an uncanny ability to stay unnoticed and still get beautiful, engaging shots.

Artistic wedding photography may also include the use of the computer to add design elements to the photography in order to make them unique. The choices are really endless when it comes to creating photographic works of art. Working with a photographer who can best express the style that is unique to you and your wedding means finding one that works at a higher creative level than traditional wedding photographers. Luckily, most photographers host their own website where visitors can browse through their work and get a sense of their style.

Having a wedding does not mean that you are stuck with traditional vendors and formality reminiscent of your mother’s wedding. Infuse your wedding with modern sophistication by choosing artistic wedding photography. The memories will last you a lifetime.

For easy to understand, in depth information about artistic wedding photography visit our ezGuide 2 Wedding Photography.

When you have free time to travel to any of the beautiful locations of your choice, your camera and your knowledge of how to use it will be the difference of having beautiful visual memories to reflect on forever, or to experience the disappointment of lost memories.

There are so many wonderful places to travel to around the world, and for most of us it can be a once in a lifetime experience. It is wonderful to have photographs as seen through your own eyes to relive those times over and over.

Most of us nowadays have a digital camera to record our travels and they are fairly easy to use, usually just a point and shoot method. But many people forget small basic steps that can lead to disaster and lost photographic opportunities.

Simple things like not having spare batteries or making sure their rechargeable batteries are charged. Making sure to have more than one memory card in case one has a problem or you get caught up in the moment and take too many photographs. Not having your owners manual with you to explain a possible error message from your camera and how to fix it, or how to do an advanced photography technique that you may not be able to do in automatic mode.

Try to make sure you have had the camera for a while and are fairly familiar with it, you will be gambling if you go with a brand new camera that you are not familiar with.

When you are traveling and on different tours you do not always have a lot of time to compose and capture your images, so knowing your camera and being ready will prevent you from missing great photographs.

When taking your photographs, you do not want to point your camera into the sun unless you want a silhouette effect. Always try and have the sun or light source behind you to get the best results.

When photographing people in a scene try and photograph them in the shade otherwise they will be squinting and the photographs
will have too much contrast.

Try and use objects in front of the camera to show perspective. Along with your beautiful landscapes try and pick a subject within the landscape as a motif. A small mini tripod is also a great piece of equipment to take low light or night photographs.

These are just a few small tips to insure that your travel photographs are as close to the real thing as possible. Enjoy your travels and return to relive them again in photographs.

Ed Mercer and his wife Sue are professional photographers and studio owners. They have been in the business for 30 years. Samples of their work can be seen at:

http://www.travelphotographysecrets.com

http://www.mercerphotography.com

http://www.photoshopsolutions.com

Most beginners take photos to capture an event, or moment in time; a birthday party, a trip, a new family member, a cherished pet. These are usually considered “snapshots”. What we all like about good snapshots is that they remind us of stories.

What about a portrait, which tends to be taken in neutral surroundings, thereby robbing us of the story aspect? See if you can answer the following seven questions the next time you want to “shoot” a portrait.

1. What part of the subject’s character can we capture? For a portrait to be considered good, it must reveal an important part of the subject’s character that can be identifiable to those who know them. Talk with your subject, and discuss what part of their character or personality they want to be noticed.
2. Is the subject ready? A portrait needs to be taken when the subject is comfortable and at ease, both with his or her appearance, and the surroundings. If people are stressed or rushed, this is not the right time to try to grab a great portrait. That stress will probably be visible in the finished product.
3. Is the photographer ready? The need for this question should be self-evident. Keep in mind that it is not enough that the photographer feels ready. Does the subject feel that the photographer is ready? If not, we will be back to question #2 above. The photographer needs to be prepared and relaxed throughout the session.
4. Is the lighting correct? Without a doubt, the best light for capturing a portrait is natural daylight. A talented photographer can take full creative advantage of the lighting choices brought about by outdoor conditions. A common technique is to have the subject sit near a window. Since nature can be fickle and un-cooperative, photographers need to have artificial lighting available. An on-board camera flash tends to be harsh, so access to one or more studio flashes is a necessity.
5. Is an appropriate background available? You must always pay close attention to the scenery behind the subject. Outdoors, you may have access to trees, flowers, mountains, sea, or a beautiful morning or evening sky. Indoors, one can use a backdrop. In today’s high tech world it is becoming very easy to digitally replace a backdrop with any background you desire.
6. Are special clothing and props required? A portrait is usually a rare photograph of a subject, and there may be times when special clothing or props help tell the story. Think of a drum major, or an athlete. They may want to be photographed as if participating in their favourite activity. In some cases even a hint of their special clothing will tell the right story. Just make sure that props do not distract from the main subject.
7. What type of frame is being considered? The kind of framing that the subject is considering can influence how the portrait is taken. Talk to your subject, and if possible, talk to others in their immediate circle. Find out how people plan to display the finished work of art.

Producing the perfect portrait may seem hard at first but answering these seven (7) questions can help novices produce a portrait that will be cherished for decades.

Richard Killey is an amateur photographer who shares the love of his hobby with readers of his website.

Visit http://www.photosbyrichard.ca to read other articles of interest to novice phtographers.

As the demand for higher quality and instant photographs are prevailing amongst the professionals and amateurs alike. The advent of the instantmatic camera by Kodak and the instant photos by Polariod. It has given rise to the silicon chips in-built into cameras, computers, television, audio and video digital editing machines, etc, etc.

Whether we like it or not the great Digital Transformation is here and we have to keep up with it. Thus, this give rise to the battle for the niche market for digital cameras. All over the world, every camera industries have gone Digital. Five years ago 99% of the nation would never have dreamed of getting a Digital camera, the mega pixel demands have been the battle amongst the camera manufacturers.

With the dramatic increase in this new technology people are taking a lot more photographs because it is so simple and inexpensive to take Digital photographs and archive them. People all over the universe have armed themselves with knowledge from many resources like Guide-books on Digital Photography, manuals, handbook etc.

However, the Digital photography era has been well received by the world judging from the higher sales of digital cameras recorded. Every body regardless of their ages ,you will chance amongst the tourist attraction spots shooting every memorable moments with their Digital cameras.

The greatest moment is that they can view, print, email or archived all what their Digital cameras have recorded with the simple action of aim and shoot. The next step is to improve on their skills on quality shooting and making it into multi-media formats. Indeed, the Advent of the Digital Photography is the greatest Breakthrough in the 21stcentury,thus, the enhancing the quality of lives and gratification for the fast technological era.

I am a lecturer,social worker and sportsman.Please visit my website http://www.Low-Liang-Seng.com