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It’s just a few days until Christmas so I thought a quick tutorial on the topic of Christmas Photography might be appropriate. Hopefully this will give you some good Christmas photo ideas.

Here are 16 Christmas Photography tips and ideas to try that come to mind for digital camera owners wanting to capture the big day:

1. Prepare - Making a List, checking it twice….

Making sure you’re ready to capture any planned event is part of the key to a successful shoot. Getting yourself ready but also the location of your shots is worthwhile.

• Pack the camera - goes without saying? I forgot mine last year in the rush to get the car packed.
• Make sure your batteries are charged and you have extras and/or the recharger packed.
• Pack extra memory cards - have them empty and ready to fill up
• Put someone on ‘photos’ - our family has someone on drinks, main course, dessert - why not put someone on ‘photos’ so that in the craziness of the day they don’t get forgotten.
• Consider the light in the room that you’ll be photographing in. Is there enough light? Will you need a flash? Are the backgrounds too cluttered and distracting?

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\\ tags: Christmas, Digital Photography

It’s the time of year when family and friends come together for a meal or two celebrating any number of special occasions.  No matter the holiday, family gatherings are a time worth sharing and remembering through photography.  In this post, Peter Carey takes a look at eight ways to capture great candid photos of your loved ones.

We’ve all seen the posed family photos around the dinner table, in front of the hearth or in any number of places.  These types of shots are great and have their place in preserving your family memories.  But some of us are looking for a more realistic representation of what went on at that meal or gathering.  We want to convey the sense of laughter around the table, the craziness of having ten nieces and nephews under foot and the joy in sharing gifts.  And posing doesn’t work well for these real world shots.  That’s where candid photography comes in!  Practice with these eight tips and you’ll be well on your way to preserving family get-togethers in a compelling, engaging manner.

Tip #1 - Let The Know You’re Coming - At any family gathering someone is always taking photos.  Most people like to ham it up for the camera or will avoid it like the plague.  Letting your family know before hand that you’ll be taking some photos and to ‘act natural’ will greatly increase your odds of capturing the essence of the moment.  Not everyone will heed this request, but it’s good for people to know they should generally ignore your photo taking to keep the photographer from distracting the event.

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Over the years I have worked with many freelance photographers to produce photos for my Adelaide website design clients. In that time I have seen the best and worst of photographic creativity. I have seen “professional” photographers turn up to a corporate shoot with no shoes on. I have lost a hundreds of dollars worth of shots because a photographer thought it would be a good idea to leave a USB on my home front porch. But, I have also worked with photographers who know how to work magic with their cameras.

In this post I want to show you the 9 worst mistakes that freelance/professional photographers can make when taking photos for a web designer. I hope this information will be a useful resource for any budding young photographers out there who are just starting to work for and establish relationships with some bigger firms.

Warning: This post may contain rage fueled tangents of utter frustration!

The 9 Worst Mistakes Photographers Make When Working for a Web Designer

1. Looking unprofessional

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph I once had a charming young photographer turn up to a corporate photo shoot with no shoes on. She was extremely good at what she did and turned some pretty boring “suits” into powerful looking businessmen (much to their surprise!). But, unfortunately, her dress sense really let her down.

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\\ tags: Photographers

How do you take Portraits that have the ‘Wow’ factor?

Today and tomorrow I want to talk about taking Portraits that are a little out of the box. You see it’s all very well and good to have a portrait that follows all the rules - but it hit me as I was surfing on Flickr today that often the most striking portraits are those that break all the rules.

I want to look at some ways to break out of the mold and take striking portraits by breaking (or at least bending) the rules and adding a little randomness into your portrait photography. I’ll share ten of these tips today and a further ten tomorrow

1. Alter Your Perspective

Most portraits are taken with the camera at (or around) the eye level of the subject. While this is good common sense - completely changing the angle that you shoot from can give your portrait a real WOW factor.

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It has been a few days now since I asked readers to nominate which Digital Camera Manufacturer is best.

By no means have we arrived at any solid conclusions (and I wouldn’t expect us to) and by no means is the conversation over (you’re more than welcome to keep having your say) however I thought it would be interesting to do a little analysis of the conversation so far and have come up with the following graph which is an attempt at observing what the trend is so far in conversation.

It was a difficult process to do as we have over 50 opinions already expressed and many of them contain numerous ‘votes’ (my fault for making the topic so broad) but the following is an indication of what I’m personally observing in the conversation.

Obviously the the ‘big two’ are Canon and Nikon - but there’s an interesting ‘battle’ going on at the second tier between Pentax, Fujifilm and even Olympus.

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\\ tags: Digital Camera

Which digital camera manufacturer is best?

OK - before we start World War III with this discussion, let me set a few ground rules.

1. Be constructive - while simple responses of ‘Canon Rules’ or ‘I love Nikon’ might be easy - tell us WHY you like a particular manufacturer.

2. Respect each other’s opinions - ultimately there’s no right or wrong answer here - different aspects of the different manufacturers will appeal to different people. Argue your case strongly if you like - but let others hold their own opinions also

3. Give examples - tell us about the digital cameras that you’re talking about if you’d like. The more information and the more specific it is - the more we’ll all learn.

Feel free to have fun with this discussion - I’m sure it’ll cause some lively debate. My hope is that through it that those on hunt for a new camera might learn a thing or two (as might the rest of us) and go into their purchase more informed.

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\\ tags: Digital Camera

It’s that time of year when critics make the often futile attempt to sum up hundreds of movies and twelve months of viewing into a nice, neat package. How do you define 2008 in movies? Personally, I found myself turning away from films that were too focused on the depressing. The movies that I loved not only transcended criticism but also were more often than not “positive.” Maybe Poppy in Happy-Go-Lucky wore off on me but bleak films like Revolutionary Road, Changeling, Ballast, Wendy and Lucy, and I’ve Loved You So Long didn’t make my top twenty and I’m completely burned out on everything Nazi (The Reader, Valkyrie, The Boy with the Striped Pajamas). Not that they’re all bad, I just found myself looking for those moments of emotional transcendence instead of reminders about the bleakness of humanity. Walter’s drum-playing in The Visitor, the beautiful wedding at the center of Rachel Getting Married, the Dickensian triumph that has made Slumdog Millionaire a phenomenon, the movement of Milk, even The Ram’s final moment of twisted glory in The Wrestler, and, of course, the little robot who saved planet Earth. Blame the economy, the war, the bitter campaigns, or just the general state of the world, but the movies that really spoke to me in 2008 gave me hope, not just for filmmaking, but for life.

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Yo momma so fat her bellybutton gets home 15 minutes before she does.

That’s a prime example of a ‘Yo Momma’ joke, a genre so popular it became the basis for a series of no-holds-barred competitions on MTV. Produced and hosted by actor Wilmer Valderrama, matches were held on successive seasons in Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta.

From Monday to Thursday, the show pitted the toughest trash talkers against one another. Each team of contestants battled it out in front of a rowdy live audience of their peers. The four winners then came back on Friday for a Best of the Week. Here are 98 more prime examples of Yo Momma humor:

Yo momma so fat,

1. she had to go to Sea World to get baptized.
2. when she tripped over on Fourth Avenue, she landed on Twelfth.
3. she’s got her own area code.
4. when she talks to herself, it’s a long distance call.
5. she’s got smaller fat women orbiting around her.
6. whenever she goes to the beach, the tide comes in.
7. she was born on the fourth, fifth, and sixth of March.
8. she was floating in the ocean, and Spain claimed her for the New World.

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\\ tags: Jokes

With Christmas just around the corner, can the haunting melody of carols be far behind? I have already started shopping for funny Christmas carols, because I just love them! I make it a point to buy at least two or three CDs of these carols every year. If you want to know where to get them, read on to find out!

The best carols are those which appeal not only to the kids but also adults and old alike! In this article I am going to tell you about some of these carols, as well as where to buy them for cheap!

1. Chipmunk Song: This is one song which I cannot do without; I always make it a point to listen to this traditional Christmas carol every year! David Seville had sung this song along with Alvin and the Chipmunks! It has a subtitle called “Christmas Don’t Be Late”. It is a very short carol of just two paragraphs; in fact it is one of the shortest Christmas carols available!

However its length didn’t in any way hinder its success when it was first released way back in 1958! Even if you are not into the habit of listening to carols, I recommend you listen to this one at least!

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\\ tags: Christmas

So, you want to write a haiku poem? Some think it’s very easy to do. After all, it’s only 3 short lines. But if you want to write a haiku, you need to know the basics. Let’s get started!

First of all, forget about the 5-7-5 syllable rule. Modern haiku poets here in the west rarely use it. The Japanese used it because their language somehow fit it quite nicely. Fortunately for us, we don’t have to think about how to fit what we want to say into a certain number of syllables.

What’s important when writing a haiku is to understand the haiku spirit and basically, this really has to do with looking at things in nature with reverence. To understand that the beating wings of a humming bird is a small miracle itself is to begin to understand haiku for it seeks to capture the “small” things and make them big.

Now we can look at a certain technique I like to call macro-micro technique. Basically, this is when the first part of the haiku poem, the fragment, takes a macro view of the world. For instance, if we begin a haiku with something like this: “winter twilight,” we’ve established the background or mood of the haiku… the macro view.

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\\ tags: Haiku, Poetry