Simple Composition Tips to Improve Your Photography
By Pat McCarthy

You can improve your photography dramatically by following a few simple principles of composition. This article give you some tips to help you shoot well-composed photos.

1. Decide on your subject. Know what you want the viewer to look at and focus attention on that part of the picture. How do you do that?

1. Leave out any distracting elements. Make sure the overflowing trash can and the cluttered kitchen counter are not in your picture. You may be concentrating on your subject, but the camera records everything in the viewfinder.

2. Simplify the background. If you’re shooting people or animals, try to position them against a plain wall, a background of grass or trees, or a sheet or curtain you’ve hung up.

3. Zoom in on the subject. Let it fill up most of the frame. Then there will be no doubt what the subject of the photo is.

4. Use leading lines. Diagonal lines are great for leading the viewer’s eye into the picture. A road, a fence, or something similar coming in from the bottom left corner does a wonderful job of leading the eye straight to the subject of the photo. Curves are pleasing and do the same thing. Using triangles helps the composition of your photo, too. If you have three people, don’t arrange them in a row, but have two in front and one behind, to create a triangle. You can do the same thing with elements in a still life or landscape.
2. Use the Rule of Thirds

Envision a tic-tac-toe grid in your viewfinder. Position your subject where two of the lines intersect for the most pleasing photo.
3. Frame your subject. Use something around one side and the top of the subject, or all the way around.

1. You can frame a person in a doorway or a window.

2. Often you can use tree branches to frame the subject. It can be a log cabin, a person or a barn.

3. If you’re shooting in an area with rock formations, you can sometimes frame your subject within one of the formations.
4. Watch the placement of moving objects. Make sure to place them where they look as if they are moving into the picture, rather than out of it. Also have people or animals looking into the picture.
5. Avoid mergers and amputations. Watch for trees growing out of people’s heads or similar distracting elements. Also be careful not to cut off a person’s arm or leg at a joint.
6. Decide between landscape and portrait orientation.

1. Things such as trees, windmills, lighthouses and people are taller than they are wide, so they usually look better if the picture is taken in portrait orientation, or vertically. Simply turn your camera sideways to look through the viewfinder and snap the picture.

2. Long, low objects such as cars, trains, animals on four legs and some scenery work best in landscape orientation, which gives you a horizontal picture.
7. Vary your camera angle. If possible, walk around your subject, looking at it from all angles. Try a high camera angle and a low one. Also try a close-up shot and one not so close to see which looks better.

If you’ll put these principles into action, your photography is bound to improve.

Pat McCarthy is an instructor for the Institute of Children’s Literature and the author of over a dozen books for children. Learn more about her books at her blog, www.PatMcCarthysAuthorBlog.blogspot.com If you have a question about writing for children, e-mail Pat at patmcbirder@woh.rr.com . More resources for children’s writers will soon be up on the blog.

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Following CS3 announcements from Adobe, Total Training has today unveiled five new DVD-ROM based training series covering Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, InDesign and Dreamweaver.
The 5 Total Training Adobe CS3 products ship in April 2007 and vary in price from $149 to $199.
Total Training Helps Adobe Creative Suite 3 Users Get Up to Speed Video Tutorials Demonstrate the Software Essentials.
“Adobe Creative Suite 3 is the biggest launch in Adobe’s history,” said Caleb Belohlavek, director of product management for Adobe’s Creative Solutions. “Training is vital to the success of this release so we’re excited that Total Training will be releasing their exceptional in-depth video training content across these products to help customers quickly get up to speed and make the best use of Adobe Creative Suite 3.”
The Creative Suite 3 training series offers a visual learning experience, hosted by Total Training’s industry experts on Adobe products.Each video tutorial is filled with useful tricks of the trade to help viewers further discover the software’s extensive capabilities.

Because we started these posts about Photo manipulation I want to tell you about: KODAK PROFESSIONAL Image Enhancement Plug-Ins

KODAK PROFESSIONAL Image Enhancement Plug-Ins let you quickly and easily improve the most common problems associated with digital images. Whether you are a professional photographer or an ADOBE PHOTOSHOP Software enthusiast, choose from four professional and three standard versions depending on what you need to achieve. You can quickly and easily optimize images to improve quality and create even more compelling results.

The DIGITAL GEM Plug-In automatically reduces image noise/grain without sacrificing image detail or excessive softening.

The DIGITAL GEM AIRBRUSH software allows users to create an airbrush effect by automatically smoothing areas of a digital image without blurring or reducing fine detail. It minimises the imperfections of skin and other surfaces whilst fully preserving details like hair, eyebrows and the true character of the subject’s face.

The DIGITAL ROC Plug-In restores, balances and corrects the colour of almost any digital image by removing colour casts that have been caused by coloured lighting or fading.

The DIGITAL SHO software automatically adjusts the dark areas in a digital image so that more detail is visible. The plug-in corrects exposure problems in images with backlit subjects and uneven flash illumination, as well as partial shade.

The plug-ins work with ADOBE PHOTOSHOP Software and other compatible image-editing applications (including ADOBE ACROBAT Elements Software and COREL PAINT SHOP PRO Software). They also work with both MACINTOSH and WINDOWS Operating Systems. All offer straightforward action and batch command options, one-click corrections, and advanced customizable controls.
The professional versions offer greater flexibility and control over the final result. The standard plug-ins have fewer modification options and are geared for the type of adjustments commonly found in enthusiasts’ images e.g. the removal of ‘noise.’

WINDOWS OS

* PENTIUM II or better with 128 MB of RAM
(for typical size images; very large images will require more memory)
* WINDOWS 98 SE, NT 4.0 (Service Pack 6a), 2000, ME, XP Home, XP Professional
* Minimum monitor display resolution: 800 x 600 pixels

(Note: Use only the Small Fonts display font size at 800 x 600 resolution.)

MACINTOSH OS

* POWERMAC G3 or better with 128 MB of RAM
(for typical size images; very large images will require more memory)
* Macintosh OS 8.6, OS 9x, OS X
* Minimum monitor display resolution: 800 x 600 pixels

Three more video tutorials, about retouching faces with photoshop. I’m trying to make a collection of video tutorials here because I’m not an Photoshop expert, not at all, and I like to have them in one place. I hope this is helping others too.
So here is how the stars from the magazines covers are always young and beautiful:

This one is jut to see the change, not a tutorial:

I always liked this effect. Until now I didn’t imagine that it is so simple to do. You have below a Photoshop video tutorial that will teach you haow to do that in about 2 minutes.

Maybe you have some old black and white pictures, with your dad, grandma and want to make them a surprise. Here is a Photoshop video tutorial learning you how to colour those black and white photos:

Here is a Photoshop video tutorial where you can learn to Combine two photos and adjust the color cast :