Posting around here has been a little sparse, but for good reason. I’m ecstatic to announce Loupey, the free and easy social network for photographers. Loupey is a place for seriously interested photographers to get together, share photos for serious critique, and stay in touch.

Too many photo sharing sites out there don’t emphasize serious critique. Loupey is about saying more than just “Nice photo!” It’s about helping someone get better at what they are trying to do by giving their work some serious thought. I want to encourage everyone to go and sign up for a free account. Be sure and tell your friends about it too! This is just the beginning, and we’re completely interested in hearing what you all have to say to make this the best resource for photographers on the internet.

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If you’re looking for a video walkthrough of HDR (including a demonstration of Photomatix Pro), definitely check out TWIP’s video here.

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* Photojournalist Matt Hancock demystifies basic flash exposure.
(http://markhancock.blogspot.com/2005/11/
understand-basic-flash-exposure.html)

* Do you want to try and take cool looking studio product shots? Putting together a cheap light tent will get you on your way.
(http://jpgmag.com/stories/458 and
http://www.instructables.com/id/Super-Simple-Light-Tent/)

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Know Your Camera

The last thing you want to do on a planned shoot is fumble with your camera. Your subject may do something tangential to what you had planned, and you definitely don’t want to lose the moment trying to figure out how to change some setting.

Put Your Subject at Ease

If you’re looking to capture something “natural” looking, it’s important to put your subject at ease. It’s only natural for people to want to be painted in a flattering manner when on film, and it’s your duty to make this happens if it’s what you desire. To help get your subject comfortable…

Consider “Fake Firing”

People tend to loosen up after you shoot a few exposures of them. If you are shooting on film and don’t want to waste it, consider faking the act of taking a photo. It’s dually beneficial - you save film and you loosen up your subject at the same time.

Frame Only What’s Relevant

If you’re taking a portrait photo, why include the highway in the background? Granted, if it’s your artistic intention to include something, then by all means include it. However, be conscious of your frame. If the person you are photographing is a doctor, why photograph them while they are at a basketball game?

If you’re looking for a good resource for environment specific portraits, consider Kodak’s Portraits Tips. Do you have some other great techniques? Share them in the comments!

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Today we’ll talk quickly about street photography and popular street photographers.

You can download the MP3 version here. It is also available in the iTunes podcast directory. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast feed to get new episodes the second they are out. As always, if you find these useful, please consider donating via Paypal or shopping at Amazon to help keep UNSHUTTER free.

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If you’re interested in sharing your photographic tips and techniques with everyone, consider submitting an article to UNSHUTTER. Upon review, your article may be published on the front page of UNSHUTTER for the world to see! And of course, you’ll be credited as the author. You can read more about the process here.

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Today we’ll quickly discuss the benefits of the mirror lock-up mode available on most SLRs.

You can download the MP3 version here. It is also available in the iTunes podcast directory. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast feed to get new episodes the second they are out. As always, if you find these useful, please consider donating via Paypal or shopping at Amazon to help keep UNSHUTTER free.

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For our first assignment in photography, we’ll study light and texture. Take your camera out and notice how different light affects the texture of objects in the world. Consider photographing one spot over the course of a day to see how light affects that area.

Share what you photograph with the rest of us in the comments!

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One of the most important parts of purchasing a tripod for your camera is to make sure the tripod can support the camera’s weight. There are way too many $15 tripods that’ll introduce your expensive camera to the hard ground very quickly. Then again, you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on a tripod that works well. I recommend something like the Velbon DF-60 Dual Function Light Weight Tripod. Be a conscious consumer - don’t trust your $1000 camera to a $5 dollar tripod that falls every time the wind barely blows.

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Today we’ll discuss some quick tips for improving the composition of your photos.

You can download the MP3 version here. It is also available in the iTunes podcast directory. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast feed to get new episodes the second they are out. As always, if you find these useful, please consider donating via Paypal or shopping at Amazon to help keep UNSHUTTER free.

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The histogram for photography is often viewed with great confusion, but is actually quite a simple and useful feature.

A histogram is basically a graph that represents the spread of the pixels in a digital photograph. On the leftmost side we have the “dark” pixel count of our image and on the right side we have the “light” pixel count of our image. The vertical growth represents the amount of pixels representing a certain luminosity level as demonstrated below:

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Lens hoods have many uses. The most common use is to prevent lens flare and glare in your images. They also allow your photos to have higher contrast and more saturated colors. Both of these uses are possible because of the way a lens hood works. Basically the functional property of a lens hood is to prevent light from striking your lens at odd angles. Using a hood can also help in protecting your lenses.

You will most probably want a lens hood in the design type displayed above to prevent weird vignetting issues from occurring in your images. One thing to remember when using a lens hood with your camera’s built-in flash is that you may run into an awkward dark semicircle on the bottom of your images. This is because your lens hood (or lens depending on size) is obstructing the effective flash range of your built-in flash.

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You’ve got your gear together and have been having all kinds of fun taking different pictures. The hardest transition some face is moving from taking what are little snapshots for yourself to being more serious about compositions and having photos that mean something not only to you but also to other people who see them. The best way to make this transition is of course to practice, but it definitely helps to have some guidelines as to what to actually practice. Below are some composition tips that you can practice to help you get where you want to be.

Keep It Simple

One of the typical tendencies of new photographers is to clutter their compositions with lots and lots of different things. When someone looks at one of these photos, the immediate question they have is: what should I look at? Keep your compositions simple. Find the subject in your composition you want to focus on, and then focus on it! For example, if you are photographing a portrait of someone, and it’s not important to have their surroundings in the photograph, then why include it? Keeping your compositions simple can help people remain focused on what your focus was when taking the photo. Don’t be afraid to fill your frame with your subject of interest.

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In photography, “white balancing” is at its essence the act of correcting the colors in your photographs. In other words, it’s the act of getting the whites you saw when you were taking to the picture to also be white in the final photograph.

Different sources of light (tungsten, florescent, sunlight, etc.) all have different color temperatures. Color temperature is essentially how cold,warm, or neutral a light source is. In terms of your photograph, the temperature of a light has the ability to cast a certain color over your end result - a result we sometimes seek to alter by manipulating the color balance of a photo. The salient things to know about color temperature are that it’s measured in Kelvin (K) and that 5000K is about neutral. Anything below 5000K tends to produce a ‘warm’ orange cast on a photograph and anything above 5000K tends to produce a ‘cold’ blue cast on a photograph. Of course, these casts may be desired depending on how you wish your final result to look.

The process of white balancing is thankfully not so tedious on digital equipment. If you are shooting on a digital SLR, there is most often a menu option (refer to your camera manual) that allows you to set a custom white balance based on the lighting. Most of the time, there are many preset balances. For instance, if you’re in a room lit only by tungsten bulbs, use the tungsten white balance setting on your camera to account for awkward color casts. That’ll generally get you started in the right direction.

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The polarizing filter is used to remove reflected light from your photos. This occurs through a property of physics that is beyond the scope of this article, and will probably bore you to tears.

The two most popular uses of polarizing filters are to remove reflected light and to create richly saturated skies in your photographs. Look at the photo above. The high contrast, darkened sky is achieved using a polarizer. Why not just use a polarizer all the time to make great looking photos? The polarizing filter (and most other color filters as well) come at a cost: they will reduce your effective f-stop level, thus requiring a change to what your typical exposure for a scene would be.

The most important thing when purchasing a polarizing filter for your digital SLR is to get what’s referred to as a circular polarizer. This is because on camera bodies with modern autofocusing systems, you’ll have a difficult time determining and maintaining your polarizer’s ’setting’ with a linear filter. The best way to learn to use a polarizer filter is to take it out and experiment with it. Examine how rotating the filter changes the contrast of the sky, or how it prevents unwanted reflections against reflective surfaces.

My recommendation for filters are to either go for an inexpensive Tiffen or Hoya. Be sure, just as you did when purchasing a UV filter, to get a polarizer that has a filter size your lens accepts. This information is readily available in your lens manual.

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UV filters (Ultraviolet filters) are used to reduce the possibility of fogginess in your photographs created by ultraviolet light. While being effective on “invisible” light, UV filters are transparent in regards to visible light.

This means that we can effectively use a UV filter as a protective filter on our lens with a negligible change in our photo. In fact, this is what is typically done. Most if not all photographers will protect their lenses with UV filters. If they accidently drop their lens glass face down, the chances of the actual lens being damaged are reduced. Most of the time, the cheap and easily replaceable UV filter takes the damage and the expensive lens lives another day.

The important thing to note when buying a UV filter is to make sure it matches the filter size of whatever lens you are using. This information is readily available in your lens manual. I get UV filters for all my lenses - better safe than sorry.

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The winter holiday season is approaching fast. If you or someone you know is looking to get into photography, this holiday is the perfect excuse. Below are some of the best selling camera equipment on Amazon, with my recommendations in bold. As always, if you have questions about right gear for you, send an email to .

Top Digital Camera Bodies

1. Canon Digital Rebel XTi 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 Lens (Black)

2. Nikon D40 6.1MP Digital SLR Camera Kit with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor Lens

3. Canon Digital Rebel XT 8MP Digital SLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 Lens (Black)

4. Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18K 8.1MP Digital Camera with 18x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Black)

5. Nikon D40x 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor Lens

My first digital SLR body was the Canon Digital Rebel XT and I never regretted it: it’s still got everything a new photographer would ever need. The value of Canon Digital Rebel XTi and the Nikon D40 are phenomenal. If I had to pick the best price-to-feature camera in the group, I’d definitely say the Nikon D40 6.1MP Kit with 18-55mm is the way to go.

Top Nikon Lenses

1. Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED IF AF-S DX VR Zoom Nikkor Lens

2. Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom-Nikkor Lens

3. Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor Lens

4. Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR Zoom Nikkor Lens

5. Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II AF-S DX Nikkor Zoom Lens

You can’t go wrong with the Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor Lens: it’s a surefire way to get started taking sharp, low light photographs. The Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 is also highly recommended. It’s a very popular zoom at a good price.

Top Canon Lenses

1. Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Ultra Wide Angle Zoom Lens

2. Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

3. Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM Telephoto Zoom Lens

4. Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens

5. Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Standard Zoom Lens

I personally used to own the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM and had no regrets. It was one of the best lenses I’ve owned, and considering the price, it’s a steal! The f/1.4 aperture helps so much in low light situations and the photos it produces are absolutely sharp.

Top Photography Software

1. Apple Aperture 1.5

2. Adobe Photoshop CS3 [PC]

3. Adobe Photoshop CS3 [Mac]

4. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 Win/Mac

I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 for Mac for several months now and can’t live without it. The ease of performing complex photo manipulations and the simple photo organizing and tagging system makes Lightroom the winner of this group for me. If you’re looking for more general purpose image editing software and extremely fine control of your digital photos, Adobe Photoshop CS3 is the way to go.

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Our first podcast is up! Today we’ll briefly discuss tips for getting started with digital photography.

You can download the MP3 version here. It is also available in the iTunes podcast directory. More are coming soon. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast feed to get new episodes the second they are out. As always, if you find these useful, please consider donating via Paypal or shopping at Amazon to help keep UNSHUTTER free.

The products discussed in this show are:

Nikon D40 with 18-55mm lens

Nikon D50 with 18-55mm lens

Canon Rebel XT with 18-55mm lens

Canon Rebel XTi

SanDisk 2 GB SD

SanDisk 2GB ULTRA II

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Lenses are split into two categories: prime and zoom. A prime lens has a fixed focal length. A zoom lens has a variable focal length. So what is focal length? Technically, the focal length of a lens is a the distance from the film or sensor to the optical center of the lens. More succinctly, the focal length is used to determine the angle of view.

For photographic lenses, focal length is typically measured in millimeters. On a 35mm film camera, a 50mm lens produces an angle of view that has a perspective “normal” to that of a human. A 50mm lens is referred to as a “normal lens.” Anything shorter is typically referred to as a “wide angle” lens, and anything longer is a “telephoto” lens.

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If you’re interested in photojournalism, or just want to see the inner workings of a great photographer, I urge you to check out the documentary War Photographer. I saw this a few months ago and was blown away. In it, a crew follows around James Nachtwey, a photojournalist who has dedicated himself to capturing the effects of war. We’re taken through the entire process - from him documenting tragedy in all parts of the world, to interviews with those closest to him, to enlarging his selections for a show of his. Be sure to check out the bonus features on the DVD. There are some great features of him speaking about what photography as an art means to him.

If you like his photographs, definitely check out his book Inferno. Highly recommended.

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I’ve recently upgraded the UNSHUTTER RSS feeds. Please add the new feed to your feed reader. I hope you all have noticed the new podcast feed as well. In this upcoming week, we’ll be releasing our first podcast episode - available through the feed here and also in the iTunes podcast directory. I’ll keep you all informed.

I also wanted to thank those of you who order products using our Amazon Referral shop. UNSHUTTER is a free site and I’d like to keep it that way, so your PayPal donations and Amazon purchases really do help!

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Take a look at the photo above: how was that blurred motion photographed? By understanding shutter speeds. A slower shutter speed means that the shutter is open for a longer amount of time. This means the camera film or digital sensor is able to collect all the information about a scene that occurs over a certain time period. A slow shutter speed will allow you to blur motion.

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Always wanted to take one of those gorgeous night photos you see in magazines? You can with ease - as long as you remember a few things.

Night shots, by their very nature, require a longer exposure time to properly expose a photo to a pleasant, visible level. In other words, they require a slower shutter speed. Since there is far less light at night, we need to expose our film or digital sensor for longer to let what little light is available bring out the details of our scene. Makes sense, right?

Because we need to use slow shutter speeds, we can’t take night exposures handheld. If we were to try that, we’d end up with blurry pictures. Night photos can require shutter speeds in seconds, instead of fractions of seconds like day photography requires. Just try holding your hands perfectly still for even a second - you might not see the subtle way your hand moves but it does, and I assure you the camera will notice it!

What we need is a tripod to hold our camera still for these extended exposure periods. I take and highly recommend the Velbon CX-470 Deluxe Tripod around with me whenever I expect to take night photos - it’s affordable, light weight, and able to support the weight of my digital SLR. It’s hard to find a nice tripod that’s affordable and able to support the weight of heavy SLRs, but the Velbon does the trick. A tripod is a required tool for photography of all type - night and day. Having one will improve the quality of your photos without a doubt.

Additionally, you may be interested in using a remote control to trigger the shutter on your camera. By not using a remote control, we run the risk of blurring our photograph. When you put your hand on your camera to press the shutter to take the photo, unless you’re unhumanly nimble, it’s quite easy to shake the camera. This introduces the same sort of blurring problems we have with handheld photography. If you are using a Nikon D-series body, I recommend the Nikon ML-L3 Wireless Remote Control. For a Canon Rebel-series body, the Canon Wireless Remote Control RC1 should do the trick.

Once you’ve got everything together - go take some photos! As you are out and about, use the metering recommendations of your camera as a guide. Don’t be afraid to override its settings and experiment. Night photography can be really rewarding and produce images you’d never get during the day. Take the image above for example - the man made lighting around that tree created an otherworldly feel to that photograph.

Every so often, I’ll post these short ‘quick tips’ to introduce you to a fun technique to try. I encourage all of you to try these little tips and share what comes out of it with all of us in the comments section. Be fearless! As always, feel free to email me at .

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An “exposure” is essentially a photo. The term comes from the fact that you are “exposing” your medium: either the film on a traditional camera or the the sensor on your digital camera is exposed to light. This exposure is what creates the image we see. It should be our goal to create great exposures. In other words, it should be our goal to allow in the right amount of “exposing” light, creating a pleasing looking image. The relationship between three mechanisms allow you to do this: aperture, shutter speed, and film speed.

1. Aperture

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Without a doubt, digital photography is incredibly rewarding. The ability to instantly see the very photo you are taking is not only gratifying, but encourages fearless experimentation.

Everyone needs to start somewhere. Unfortunately, the incredible depth of photo gear available today can make it really difficult to begin. Which camera is right for you?

The good news is that it’s hard to go wrong. Following the five easy steps below, you can hit the ground running in no time at all.

1. Pick the Right Camera

Go to any photo website or store, and you’re immediately inundated with camera model after camera model. The simple fact is most of these do basically the same thing. Digital cameras primarily fall into two categories: Point-and-shoots and Digital SLRs. While point-and-shoots are traditionally easier to use (find a subject then click the shutter), one will quickly encounter their limitations.

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More people have cameras now than ever before. Beautiful photos are coming out of all parts of the world from all types of people. Unfortunately, getting started in photography is truly intimidating. How does everyone take such great photos?

The purpose of UNSHUTTER is to help make you a better photographer. Through tips, tutorials, podcasts, and interviews with other photographers, you’ll gain the know-how to try everything you’ve always wanted to. We’ve got resources for shutterbugs of all levels - from one photographer to another.

If there’s a particular topic you’d like to see covered in detail, send us an email: . We love hearing from people!

If you find the information here useful, please strongly consider donating (PayPal Donate button on right) or shopping through our Amazon referral program. Donating keeps this site free and updated regularly! Good karma all around.

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