Perfect Angle Photography

Digital cameras have opened up amazing new photography possibilities. The following is an overview of several digital techniques that were on this website in the beginning. It now serves as a motivator to delve into the various techniques available in the digital world.

Camera equipment has made great strides in being able to mimic our visual perception in a single photograph. However, despite all of this progress, many key limitations still remain. Our eye can discern a far greater range of light to dark (dynamic range), is able to realize a broader range of colors (color gamut), and can assess what is white in a given scene (white balance) far better than any photographic equipment.

Photographers have to be aware of these and other shortcomings in order to emphasize the elements of a scene as they see them. Overcoming these often requires interpretive decisions both before and after the exposure.

When we view a scene, we have the luxury of being able to look around and change what we are analyzing with our eyes. This ability is quite different from what a still camera is able to do with a given lens; it is the implications arising from this that are discussed in the three sections below:

Depth of Field Dynamic Range Field of View

Each technique can evoke a heightened emotional response in the viewer, by emphasizing not only what one wishes for them to see, but also how they would like them to see it.

Our eyes can choose to have any particular object in perfect focus, whereas a lens has to choose a specific focal point and what photographers call a “depth of field,” or the distance around the focal plane which still appears to be in sharp focus. This difference presents the photographer with an important interpretive choice: does one wish to portray the scene in a way that draws attention to one aspect by making only that aspect in focus (such as would occur during a fleeting glance), or does one instead wish to portray all elements in the scene as in focus (such as would occur by taking a sweeping look throughout). Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes it’s very useful to be able to capture an image of whatever is on your screen. For example, if you encounter an error or a web site is displaying unusually, it can be a lot easier to take a picture of what’s going on than trying to describe it. A picture of what’s on your screen is commonly called a “screen capture” or just “screenshot.” I’ll refer to it as the latter in this article.

Print Screen, but not really

In Windows, the simplest way to take a screenshot is to press the Print Screen (often abbreviated to “Prt Scr”) key on your keyboard. You’ll find it on the right side of your keyboard, above the Insert/Home/Page Up keys. Despite the label, in Windows this key doesn’t actually print anything. It simply copies the contents of your screen to the clipboard, the invisible area in your computer’s memory that holds things�like text, files, and pictures�while you Copy and Paste them. Once you’ve got a screenshot in the clipboard, you can now paste it into an image. You can use any image-editing program for this, but the obvious choice is Paint, Windows’ built-in drawing program. You can usually find Paint in the Start menu under Programs > Accessories.

Once you’ve pasted the screenshot into Paint you can edit, crop, or resize it there or you can go ahead and save it like you would any document. And that’s pretty much it.

Oh, but here’s one more tip: If you want to take a screenshot of just the window you’re working on, instead of everything on your screen, all you have to do is hold down the Alt key when you press Print Screen.

Something more advanced

Print Screen and Paint will take you a long way, but if you’re making a lot of screenshots or want a few more options, I recommend kicking it up a notch with FastStone Capture. FastStone Capture is a great freeware utility that’s a quick download and uses very little memory. When you run it it just sits in your system tray (on the taskbar next to the clock) and waits for you to call it. While FastStone Capture is running, you can still use the Print Screen key, but instead of copying a screenshot to the clipboard, FastStone will launch its own image editor. Its editor works a lot like Paint�click on the Draw button if you want to add lines or text to your screenshot�but it also has a few features that are especially useful for screenshots. The Comment button lets you quickly add a caption to the screenshot with the date and time (this is configurable, as are the font and colors), and the Edge button lets you add a decorative border and drop shadow, and even a watermark. You can also crop and resize your image here, which is good if you’re putting the screenshot online or want to crop out unnecessary information. When you’ve got the image you want you can click on the Email button to email it directly to a friend or colleague, or Save As to save it to your hard drive for later use. Read the rest of this entry »