The Digital Photo Guy

Registration Page is Active

The registration page for Gloria Hopkins’ webinar is now active. If you’re a member of San Diego or Northern San Diego Photography Meetup Groups, use discount code “Meetup” for $5 off. If you’re a registered reader here, use discount code “TDPG10” for $10 off. If you buy Gloria’s book, Natural Design, for $19.99, send me a copy of your invoice for a $20 discount code. That’s like getting the book for free! If you’ve taken more than 5 classes with me, not including Palomar, MiraCosta or other community college classes, send me an e-mail and I’ll apply the Exalted Frequent Learner discount.

Learn Photographic Composition in Just 3 Hours

Gloria Hopkins, award winning artist, photographer and author will present a 3-hour webinar class covering her amazingly easy-to-understand concepts of composition and design. In just three short hours, your photos will improve dramatically and noticeably.

Composition is a complex topic because it means different things to different people under different circumstances. In an effort to simplify composition, many photography instructors leave out too much and make it even more mystifying. For example, many religiously follow the Rule of Thirds (RoT) and always try to place the center of interest in an RoT intersection. That can be as bad as never applying RoT. How many contort your brains to identify the Golden Mean? How many are so geeky as to actually understand how a Fibonacci spiral applies to your photographs? Gloria can reduce all that to basic concepts that anyone can understand and apply.

All my students know I hammer cropping as the single most useful technique in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Read this article by Gloria to see how she brings structure and clarity to HOW cropping makes a good photo even better. During the webinar, Gloria will use actual photographs and a technique she developed called “compositional maps” to guide you through the process of evaluating and enhancing photos. Not only will you learn how to compose photos, you’ll also learn how to evaluate photos so you can more quickly sort winners from losers. No more agonizing whether a photo is compositionally salvageable or a lost cause.

Register for the webinar today. If you buy Gloria’s book before the webinar, I’ll refund the cost of the book. Citizen, it don’t get no gooder’n that!

Closing out 2010 By the Numbers

By any measure, 2010 has been a tough year so I’m especially thankful for all the loyal readers who have stuck with me and continued to return, week after week, reading my Monday Morning Tips and viewing my Video MMTs.

This site was launched in February of 2009 to replace a 5 year old, static web site whose time had passed. In 2009, we counted nearly 1 million hits from 14,000 unique visitors who viewed nearly 175,000 pages. As we close out 2010, we’ve been visited by nearly 25,000 unique visitors who have viewed over 375,000 pages. Our hit count has doubled to 2 million.

Through it all, we’ve managed to keep this site advertising free so you can rest assured that my reviews and recommendations are not tainted by biases or even the perception of bias.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

If You Can’t Dazzle ’em With Your Brilliance

Baffle ’em with Photoshop Elements. Obviously, in-camera is the best way to make high-key photos but, you may have noticed, not all photos are made in studios. Some are made inside dark, cluttered places where it’s tough just to set up a backdrop, never mind controlling the light.

Technically, this isn’t a candidate for high-key based on some definitions. In true high-key, Tina would be wearing pastels or whites, no dark colors. OK, so much for technicalities. The following video shows how you can achieve this look with Photoshop Elements.

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Keep That LCD Monitor Dust Free

If you’re like me, the sight of dust bunnies, lint balls and cat fur on your monitor is like the screech of fingernails across a blackboard. In other words, it’s enough to drive you up the wall. The only thing worse is trying to keep it clean. Well, for all your dust-o-phobes, I have good news and I have bad news.

The good news is that I’ve found a solution. A 4 inch Kinetronics StaticWisk removes all dust, lint and fur using static electricity. Of course, this does not remove the little spots left behind by your sneezing cat or the coffee stains when you open your brother-in-law’s latest non-PC joke while drinking your morning cuppa joe. I bought the SW-101 with a grounding strap but that’s probably not necessary for most people. The photo of Tylor is simply because she’s so cute. Who wants to edit that photo while looking through dust, lint and fuzz.

Now, the bad news. The Kinetronics people are complete incompetents. I ordered through B&H who doesn’t stock these but has them drop shipped by Kinetronics. It took Kinetronics over 6 weeks to fill the order. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend dealing with such incompetence but, bottom line, the product works. My advice is to search the web for a company that has them in stock.
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E-Mail Notifications Not Working

I just discovered that my e-mail notification system hasn’t been working since around April 20, a month ago. I haven’t made any changes to the system so either my host has made changes or something else is intefering with the e-mail system.

If you’ve been receiving e-mail updates over the past month, please let me know. Obviously, if you haven’t been receiving updates, you’d only know that if you happen to drop in today.

Temecula Western Days

I was in Temecula, CA on Sunday, May 17 for the 2010 Western Days and Chili Cook Off. My intent was to photograph some of the High Noon Shoot Outs and sample the chili but, in photography, flexibility is imperative.
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