Greene County Photography Club, Waynesburg, PA

20 USEFUL TIPS:
From Jerry and Fran Hardy

1. Fill the Frame. (See #2, it and #1 go very closely together)
2. Move in Close. (Jerry believes this is the single most important tip here)
3. Pay Attention to Detail.
4. Don't alway place your subject in the center. (See #13)
5. To avoid deep shadows of people, move into shade or take pictures on an overcast day. (Do not try to take people pictures in bright sunlight.)
6. Remember your flash onsmall cameras is effective only between 4 and 11 feet. (The flash on your point-n-shoot will not work across Niagara Falls at night).
7. With a felt tip pen, always date your photos and identify the persons or events.
8. Organize your photos into albums or scrapbooks.
9. Don't move your camera when taking a photo. Take a breath, let it half-way out and then press the shutter release.
10. Become familiar with your camera and how it works.
11. Avoid leaving your camera in a hot car or glove compartment.
12. Use a tripod for landscapes and exposures longer than 1/125 of a second.
13. Remember the rule of thirds in composition. Try to position the subject or center of interest in one of the four intersections of the 1/3 lines.
14. Learn from your mistakes. Only keep your good photos. Get rid of your mistakes.
15. Use your camera regularly. (All the time is better suggestion)
16. Be alert to photo opportunities. (Don't get caught without your camera)
17. Take photos of your hobbies, family, and friends and share them.
18. Learn to share your photos on the internet.
19. Become a member of a camera club or group to improve your photography skills and interest.
20. MOST OF ALL, ENJOY YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY, IT IS A LIFE-LONG REWARDING EXPERIENCE.

PHOTOGRAPHY TERMS:

• ANGLE OF VIEW - Also known as the "Field of view," "FOV" and the "Angle of the field of view", it is the extent of the view taken in by a lens. Focal length of a lens, in conjunction with film size, determines the angle of view. A "standard" lens has an angle of view equal to the diagonal of the film, which is generally around 52° or 53°.
• APERTURE - A circle-shaped opening in a lens (a hole, really) through which light passes to strike the film. The aperture is usually created by an iris diaphragm that is adjustable, enabling the aperture to be made wider or narrower, thereby letting in more or less light. The size of the aperture is expressed as an '-number, like '/8 or '/11. Click image to enlarge
• ARTIFICIAL LIGHT - Illumination that comes from a man-made source, such as electronic flash.
• AUTOEXPOSURE - Shutter speed and aperture are set automatically by the camera based on its interpretation of the camera's exposure meter readings. Some high-end cameras employ highly-sophisticated, computerized autoexposure systems that seem to be almost foolproof, whereas most consumer cameras' autoexposure systems work best in average lighting situations.
• BLEED - Describes a photographic print that extends to the edges of the paper and has no visible border or defined margin area.
• COMPOSITION - The arrangement of the elements (subject and other objects) in a scene or photograph.
• CONTRAST -
  1. The range of difference between highlights and shadow areas in an image. Many factors affect an image’s contrast, including the degree of development and the contrast grade of the paper on which an image is printed.
  2. The range of brightness in a scene or in the light striking a subject. (Sometimes contrast is also referred to as "Density.")
• CROPPING -
  1. Removal of parts of an image in order to improve the image’s composition. Cropping occurs when an area that is smaller than the entire image frame is printed or reproduced.
  2. Cropping is sometimes also used in reference to a photographer moving closer to a subject, thereby eliminating (cropping) unnecessary surrounding elements from the composition.
• DEFINITION - Sharpness of an image (as seen by the clarity of detail) formed by an optical system.
• DENSITY - The relative opacity (blackness) of an area of a negative, a transparency or a print. The greater the density, the less light can be transmitted through it. (Sometimes density is also referred to as "Contrast.")
• DEPTH OF FIELD - Depth of field refers to how much is in focus in front of and behind the subject that is focused upon. “More” depth of field means that more is in focus. “Shallow” depth of field means that very little is in focus other than the subject.
• DIGITAL CAMERA - A camera that takes pictures without film, but instead records the image on an image sensor chip in a format that is readable by a computer.
• FLASH PHOTOS - Flash photography is a topic that many people are deathly afraid of and many others do not fully understand. Flash units are tools that have been made to assist us in our picture taking and improve our photography. When most of us think about using a flash, we think of low light scenes such as indoors or outside at night. Granted, a flash is important in these situations. But it will improve your photographs in many other situations, such as Direct Flash, Fill Flash, and Bounce Flash.
• GIF - An acronym for Graphic Interchange Format. Yet another image format type generated specifically for computer use. Its resolution is usually very low (72 dpi, or that of your computer screen), making it undesirable for printing purposes.
• IMAGE - Two-dimensional reproduction of a scene.
• INITIALIZING - Also known as formatting, initializing refers to the preparation of a digital camera's image memory card's contents to enable digital image data recording.
• JPEG - An acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group that describes an image file format standard in which the size of the file is reduced by compressing it. A "JPEG" image file name carries the extension "jpg" - e.g. "portrait.jpg"
• JUXTAPOSE - In composition, to place two objects close together or side by side for comparison or contrast. Often helpful in showing scale in an image.
• LENS - A true “lens” is a single piece of glass (or other transparent substance) having one or more curved surfaces used in changing the convergence of light rays. What we commonly call a photographic lens is more accurately and technically called an “objective,” an optical device containing a combination of lenses that receive light rays from an object and form an image on the focal plane. However, dictionaries have come to accept the usage of the term “lens” to mean the entire photographic objective itself. A photographic lens will always be called a lens, even though it is not a lens, but has a lot of lenses in it. A camera lens collects and focuses rays of light to form an image on film.
• MEGABYTE - 1,048,576 bytes
• MEGAPIXEL - refers to a million pixels, and is used in describing the number of pixels that a digital device's image sensor has.
• MEMORY ADAPTER - Another name for a Memory Card.
• MEMORY CARD - A removable device for storing images taken by a digital camera.
• MONOCHROME - An image of a single color in differing shades, descriptive of a black and white or sepia-toned image.
• PHOTOGRAPHY - The process or art of producing images of objects on sensitized surfaces by the chemical action of light. The word "photography" derives from the Greek and means, literally, “light writing.”
• PIXEL - Abbreviation for Picture ELement, a pixel is a small square of colored light that forms a digital image. It is the smallest unit in a digital image.
• PNG - An acronym for Portable Network Graphics. A compressed image file format similar to JPEG.
• RGB - An acronym for the primary colors of light, Red, Green and Blue.
• RESOLUTION - (1) Fine detail in an image. (2) Also means “Resolving power.”
• REFRACTION - Refraction is a change of direction of a ray of light. Light that is traveling in a straight line alters course - bends - when it strikes light-transmitting substances at any angle other than perpendicular.
• SCANNER - Electronic device that captures an impression of an object (commonly a photographic print or other flat document) and converts it into a digital image which can be edited and saved on a computer.
• SHUTTER - A movable cover for an opening. In photography, that opening is the lens - more specifically, the aperture. The shutter blocks the passage of light traveling through the lens to the film when it is closed, and allows light to reach the film when it is open. Shutters are composed of blades, a curtain, a plate or another movable cover. They control the amount of time that light is allowed to pass through the opening to reach the film.
• SHUTTER LAG - Using a digital camera, the delay that occurs between pressing the shutter release button and the actual moment the picture is taken.
• SHUTTER SPEED - Controls the duration of an exposure - the faster the Shutter speed, the shorter the exposure time.
• TELEPHOTO LENS - A lens with a narrow angle of view, a longer-than-normal focal length, the ability to magnify images, and exhibiting relatively shallow depth of field. Examples of 35 mm camera telephoto lenses include 85 mm, 400 mm and 600 mm lenses, to name a few.
• TIFF - Tagged Image File Format - A standard digital image format for bitmapped graphics in an uncompressed state. The image files are much larger than compressed files, but can be opened in all image-processing programs.
• ZOOM - The action of varying the focal length of a zoom lens to enlarge (zoom in) or reduce (zoom out) the image.