Choosing A Wedding Photographer
Jan/120
Selecting the right wedding photographer for your big day can be the difference between wedding photos that you love and wedding photos that you hate. Wedding photography is an important part of wedding planning and not a decision that should be taken lightly. Here are some steps to take in choosing the best wedding photographer for you.
To find the professional in your area, you an employ a variety of methods. Try attending local bridal shows, getting recommendations from friends and looking for reviews on the web. Wedding photographers can either be credentialed or not. While being recognized or having credentials is not required to be a good wedding photographer, it does indicate a photographer with skills in the area.
The online Wedding Photography Directory is a list of quality wedding photographers. To make the list, the photographer is screened for quality. The directory lists photographers in order of portfolio quality, services offered, travel availability and prices. The Professional Photographers Association of America certifies photographers who exhibit great skill and knowledge in the industry. To remain certified, the photographer must maintain quality. Certification is every five years, with only three percent of U.S. photographers certified. The Wedding Portrait & Photographers International organization maintains a list of wedding photographers, but does not require certification. The Wedding Photojournalist Association maintains strict membership guidelines before allowing a wedding photographer to gain membership.
Reviewing a wedding photographer’s portfolio is a great way to narrow down your choices. Ideally, the photographer should have photos from several different weddings in the portfolio for you to view. The portfolio gives you a glimpse of the photographer’s style and lets you know how your wedding photos will look. You should only consider photographers with a style that you enjoy. Don’t be afraid to ask for references. This lets you confirm that the photos you saw in the portfolio were actually taken by the photographer.
Try to get an idea of how accessible the wedding photographer is. The last thing you want to do is end up with a wedding photographer whom you can’t get in contact with after the wedding. The most accessible photographers have multiple ways for you to contact them. Some might even have an actual studio where they can be reached.
Get to know the photographer to determine how comfortable you feel around him. Since the wedding photographer is usually in the dressing room with the bride, it is important that there is a nice comfort level because the photographer will be in the room as the bride is getting dressed. You might also want to ask if the photographer works with any female photographers or assistants, which might be preferable to having a male photographer in the dressing room.
Ask the photographer how he normally shoots weddings. Some do straight digital, some straight film and others a mix of the two. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, which leaves it up to personal preference. If it is important to you, also inquire about archiving. Not all wedding photographers archive photos and offer a recovery service. You might also want to ask if the photographer offers two photographers in the event that one has a faulty SD card or film.
Brandis Alves is a Minneapolis Wedding Photographer.
3 Tips For Getting Started with Landscape Photography
Dec/110
Landscape photography is a whole different ballgame to portrait or wedding photography, and I’m not just talking about the subject which you’re shooting.
The skills you need to know in Photoshop change (no longer trying to get rid of wrinkles now you’re trying to wrap your head around HDR), the equipment you need is different (no more nifty 50 mm time to start looking for a zoom if not a telephoto), and even your composition is going to change.
So what’s the best way to get started in landscape photography?
For starters you’ll want to do a bit of research on composition. It’s always a good idea to never crop your photo when taking the shot, leave that for post production. There’s been more times then not that I’ve cropped a shot when taking the image, then get home and realize that when I want to print the shot I have to crop off some of what made the shot so great.
The next thing is you’re likely going to want to invest in a wide angled lens. Most landspace photography will require you to stand back and take in the big image. Whether it’s mountains, a body of water or a city scape, a wide angle lens will do your proud in these situations.
Finally, familiarizing yourself with the exposure, ISO and F-stop settings on your camera body is a must. HDR photography is big in the landscape world and for this to work properly you need to take one shot at perfect exposure, one under exposed and one over exposed and then overlap them all in photoshop.
This can be a challenge, but with a tripod and a solid understanding of how your camera body works it’s not so tough. The video below will serve as a solid introduction to HDR photography for landscape shots.
Get Into Photography
Nov/110
The world of photography has changed more and faster during the last ten years than in any other decade of its history.
As it has become cheaper and easier to make better pictures, the use of the camera – one of the symbols of contemporary social evolution – has spread to the masses.
Professional photography has equally grown in dimension and scope serving commerce and industry. News photography is now an ever-present witness to events everywhere.
Photographic materials provide the most efficient means of recording and documentation in nearly all fields of business and professional activity. Contemporary reproduction and printing are unthinkable without them. New methods of education and tools of perception are based on their use.
Photography helps in pioneering research far beyond the limitations of sight. Cameras observe, isolate and interpret; they hold on to passing time, they vary its pace and look into the unknown.
Photography, which used to mean just “taking pictures“, now provides the most penetrating and all-embracing medium of communication and understanding by images.
New aims call for new means as in turn new means will point to new ends.
Not surprisingly, the dimensions, structure, and geography of the industries producing the new equipment and materials are appreciably affected by all that.
Landscape Photography – The Principal Interest
Nov/110
A landscape, like any other kind of picture, needs a principal item of interest to which the eye naturally travels. This, as a rule, lies in the distance or middle distance.
The main item of interest may be emphasized by adjusting its tone scale and placing in the final picture. It is not often possible to emphasize it by differential focusing, because most lenses render the middle distance and distance equally sharp at all apertures.
But there is often some atmospheric haze in the air and this splits up the picture into more or less clearly defined planes. This haze lightens the tone and softens the edges of shapes in the far distance. There is less haze between the closer planes and the camera, so the nearer they are, the clearer and sharper they look. And the shadows of nearer objects have a thinner veil of mist over them, so they appear blacker than more distant objects.
This natural separation of the picture planes can be reduced by the use of color filters.
But the interest must also be prevented from being led out of the picture. Straight, horizontal lines: fences, roads, waterways, and the horizon itself:tend either to divide the picture or to direct the eye out of it. But so long as the line is broken or hidden by some other object before it reaches the margin of the picture, it loses most of its distracting power.
One useful way of keeping the interest within the boundaries of a landscape picture is to frame it with dark foreground objects, e.g: a gateway or overhanging trees.
A Turkey in a Roasting Pan is a Beautiful Holiday Photgraph
Oct/110
How many of us chronicle the cooking of the turkey in photographs. Let’s face it it’s a great opportunity to get candid shots of moms and grandmothers. But the turkey in it’s roasting pan, with Mom doting over it is a classic American photographs.
I love the holiday scenes where you see all of the women in a family busy in the kitchen. Because you know more than just cooking is going on there. Everyone is getting caught up. But more than that advice is being passed from one generation to another. Treasured family recipes, never written down, are being passed on. That’s the only way that stuffing will taste as good in 25 years. Grandchildren are learning what life was like when their great grandparents came to the United States and settled in the city to start a new life.
So when I see a roaster pan filled with all-American dishes like Thanksgiving turkey, I think about all of the women who have been cooking those turkeys for generations. And how their lives have changed. You just have to look at the photographs over the years to see more than a change in fashion. What’s that a man in the kitchen – helping? Yes things have changed.
Sunrise and Sunset Photography
Oct/110
Light at sunrise and sunset is richer in red and orange rays than in the middle of the day.
Photographs of the sky at sunrise and sunset are apt to be disappointing when seen in black-and-white as the main attraction about such a scene is its color. At the same time much of the beauty of the sky can be reproduced by careful technique. Generally the exposure should be kept to the minimum value; anything like a full exposure gives a dense negative and a print that lacks the necessary feeling of luminosity. For the same reason the negative should be processed in a soft-working developer to preserve the delicacy of the tone rendering in the highlights.
Panchromatic films are always best for black-and-white photographs taken early or late in the day because they are sensitive to red light.
A sunrise or sunset is best photographed in color. Exposures should be kept to a minimum, otherwise the scene will be colorless and have a washed-out appearance. A daylight color film without filter should generally be used, as such a scene would lose considerably if its characteristic red quality were removed.
When photographing scenes illuminated by a low sun, and not the sunrise or sunset itself, however, it will often become necessary to use a correction filter to render the scene less red.
At such times of day the light changes quickly from minute to minute and any special effects need to be anticipated and photographed without delay.
Photography as Art
Oct/110
The noun, photography, is generally considered to have been used first in 1839 by the astronomer, Sir John Frederick William Herschel who also first applied the terms negative and positive to photographic images.
The development of practical, easily processed color film in the late 1930′s added a valuable new element to the art of photography.
Careful manipulation of color and of other factors, such as focus, made possible a range of effects similar to those available to painters. One familiar photographic convention is the intentional blurring of images, as in Brian Brake’s vibrantly colored shot of two Indian women on a swing at the left. Abstract patterns can be created by photographing selected details out of a recognizable context. The pattern below is a patch of chipped paint recorded by Ernst Haas. A commonplace photographic convention is the posing of silhouetted figures against a large area of cloudy sky.
In the example on the right, by John Lewis Stage, distinction is gained by the unusual use of gray, monochromatic color. Distortion is introduced in both the angle and color of Eliot Elisofon’s portrait of trumpeter Louis Armstrong, resulting in a caricature effect.
Don Ornitz, in his shot of a girl diving into a pool, makes elaborate use of frozen action and ambiguous relationships in space.
Landscape Photography – Filters and Lens Hood
Sep/110
For general use a medium yellow photographic filter is all that is required to brighten the greens and retain the sky. For dramatic effects, when greater contrast is desired or a bold cloudscape emphasized, an orange filter can be used.
Care should be exercised in the use of a green filter. In spring, when the foliage is light, a green filter will bleach the tone values out of recognition and produce an effect of snow. But later in the year when the greens have darkened, a 2x green filter is invaluable in bringing life to an otherwise dull scene.
For the reason that a person shades his eyes when looking at a distant scene, a lens hood should be regarded as an essential. And in “contre jour” photography it is helpful to hold, or get someone else to hold if the camera is not on a tripod, a map, book or folded paper at a suitable distance from the lens to cast a shadow on it, and thus extend the efficacy of the hood.
Open landscapes taken in colour tend to be disappointing because of the over-all monotonous green, particularly in high summer, with its distant haze.
Spring and autumn are the best tunes for colour work; spring with its blossom and varying shades of green, and autumn with its galaxy of tints. But it is important to have an appropriate object of principal interest, e.g: a grey stone church, a black and white half-timbered cottage or one of tinted plaster and thatch, a carpet of bluebells, a field of poppies, even a simple white field-gate: to act as a foil to the green landscape.
Southern Oven Fried Chicken
Sep/110
There are many different types of American recipes. As a true southerner, my favorite kind of American cuisine is southern food. And of all the wonderful southern food available, one of my favorite dishes is fried chicken. I sometimes think I could eat fried chicken every day! As much as I enjoy eating fried chicken, however, I don’t always enjoy frying it the traditional way. That’s why I like to make oven fried chicken.
Southern Oven Fried Chicken recipe
Ingredients:
- 1 cut-up fryer chicken
- 1 cup plain flour
- 1 teaspoon seasoned salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- ½ teaspoon Accent
- ½ teaspoon poultry seasoning
- 1 stick butter, melted
Directions: Rinse chicken parts and pat dry. Trim away any dangling skin.
Combine flour, seasoned salt, black pepper, paprika. Accent, and poultry seasoning. Pour dredging mixture in a paper sack or a large plastic food bag. Close sack or bag and shake to thoroughly mix ingredients.
Pour the melted butter into a 9 x 13 baking pan.
Drop chicken into bag, one piece at a time, and shake vigorously to coat with the seasoned flour. Place chicken pieces in the pan, skin side down. Bake uncovered at 425 degrees for thirty minutes. Turn chicken pieces over and reduce oven heat to 325 degrees. Cook chicken for about forty more minutes.
Ocean Beach
Apr/110
Adult Only Hotel in the full moon beach party June 26, 2010 in Jaco Beach
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Adult Only Hotel in the full moon beach party June 26, 2010 in Jaco Beach
Come dressed in white Hotel Copacabana desire Full Moon Party on Friday, June 26, 2010 and participate in contests and win free nights in the treatment of adults Desire Hotel Costa Rica, and one free massage spa.
Enjoy the atmosphere of open-minded adults, the fun and excitement under the stars and the beach of Jaco Beach (Jaco Beach), Costa Rica.
Everyone knows the desire Jaco Beach Hotel Copacabana is the main part of the central sea.
Each week throughout the month, Tuesday Night Mic Open and Thursday is Karaoke night 20:00.
Every Friday and Saturday nights, there are 2 games in progress from 20:00. In the outdoor terrace in front of us with music or a DJ, live bands, such as mice or wet bread. All are welcome to the parties on the front terrace. In the back of the hotel and the pool naked, we Couples Only Adventure Parties for couples and sexy single women. For hotel guests are not charged an admission fee to attend these parties located in the pool naked.
Each Wednesday is Wild Wednesday night night affair with Mexican food, raffles, DJ and salsa, a salsa contest and body shots. Get wild and crazy feels a bit of Mexico while enjoying our delicious chicken, shrimp and beef quesadillas, chalupas, tacos, burritos, fajitas, and more.
Each Monday night is our Seafood Festival. An exquisite variety of international dishes prepared with the best offer fresh fish and seafood ceviche Wed seafood, and cocktail shrimp, mussels, shrimp, avocado, fish, grilled tuna, cooked shrimp, scallops, seafood paella and more.
Stroll the beach at sunset and watch the spectacular sunset that is facing the Pacific Ocean and while sipping a cocktail under the stars.
The Hotel Copacabana offers desire Jet ski and mountain bike rentals, and tours of the Cascade volcanoes, see monkeys, macaws and more.
Relax and enjoy our professional Coconut Palms Spa offers deep tissue, hot stone massage, four hands and a pair of ex foliation Body, manicure, pedicure and waxing services.
Lust after our famous barbecue, entertainment day and evening pool parties of 20:00.
Enjoy the Copacabana Bar Ocean Waves and an international restaurant, most Latin American cuisine daily. Asia Sunday night, Monday night is our night and Wednesday Seafood Festival is our Mexican nights.
Watch sports on big screen all day and enjoy our two pools, one designed for nudists, outdoor Jacuzzis, beds by the pool with two pools and swim-up pool full alcohol bar.
Bring your fantasies to life and living in a fully equipped suite with Jacuzzi Deseo Hotel at Copacabana beach in the Pacific Ocean in Playa Jaco (Jaco Beach), Costa Rica.
Only an hour from San Jose and Jaco Beach on the pleasures of Puntarenas Province await your adult fantasies.
Many events planned for 2010, so join our open atmosphere and spirit meet wishes to copacabanadesirehotel.com . When e-mail or call please ask for our partner special!
About the Author
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Copacabana Desire Hotel is an adult only beachfront resort located on Playa Jaco, in the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, in the province of Puntarenas and caters to the adult lifestyle and nudists.
Black Mighty Orchestra – Ocean Beach (Cybophonia Cinematic Remix)
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