But when using a camcorder to capture the event under scrutiny, whether it’s a wedding, a speech or presentation or some other significant event, the issue of having the best quality sound presents unique challenges. So its best to do some concentrated planning on how you are going to accommodate the sound needs of the event to your equipment because if you have wonderful pictures but the words and sounds of the event are muddy or lost, then the quality of your final product is seriously damaged.

Many an unsatisfactory video was taken with a camcorder because the operator depended too heavily on the small microphone that is built into the casing of the machine. The only situation where this microphone may be adequate would be if you were conducting a one on one interview in a small room where you could position the camcorder within three feet of the subject. Even then, surface noise from the surrounding building could become part of the audio outside of the awareness of the operator at the time.

To assure that you have complete awareness of what is going onto your video recording of each event, the investment in a good set of closed back headphones to monitor the audio is an outstanding move. You can plug it into the camcorder and you are dynamically aware of what is going onto that tape at all times. If something gets into the audio that is not appropriate, you can use editing techniques or even re-shoot the segment if that is possible in the context of the event.

For the majority of events, plan to use the auxiliary audio input plug to incorporate a mobile microphone unit rather than depend on the onboard microphone in the camcorder casing. This small plug alone opens up a large range of solutions to the problem of poor camcorder audio that is so often endemic of videos made with this technology.

If you are working with an external microphone, be aware of the limitations of the wire if you are not working with a radio frequency microphone unit. In a situation such as a speaker doing a presentation, you can lay the cord down between the recorder and the speaker’s stand assuming you have sufficient cord length to reach the where the microphone will mount on the stand. Be careful with the excess cord, perhaps securing it with duct tape so those listening to the presentation don’t trip on the cord or pull it free which could cause injury and damage the equipment.

In many situations such as one in which you plan to interview people in a roving fashion or to record a speaker who is on the move a great deal, a radio frequency microphone may be necessary. These can be more expensive but without the investment in this technology, your audio quality relying exclusively on the camcorder built in microphone will almost certainly be disappointing.

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Most people don’t realize what difference light sources make in photography until they see the results–and then wonder why the picture looks absolutely nothing like what they remember pointing the camera at.

Light of various temperatures is associated with a temperature in Kelvin. For example, a candle is about 1500 K, a standard light bulb about 3400 K, and the flash on your camera about 5600 K. Light from a sunset, for example, is a rich golden yellow. Light from flourescent bulbs actually shows up as purple in some photos! If you really want your subjects to look like people and not refugees from a planet of purple-skinned strangers, you’ll need to keep White Balance in mind.

White Balance is an automatic setting on most digital cameras to account for these adjustments in light sources. Cameras come with a variety of pre-programmed settings. The camera recognizes that if the setting is for flourescent bulbs, then “white” is actually going to look “purple.” It will find an example in the frame that it thinks is supposed to be white, and adjust the spectrum for the picture accordingly. Then the picture will turn out with the colors that people expect to see. Unless your picture has wide areas of just one color, it’s generally safe to let the camera decide the white balance automatically.

But, if your camera didn’t do the white balancing job correctly, then you’ll get purple-people syndrome, and you’ll have to use your photo-editing program to make up for what the camera missed. Most programs have some sort of color balance control, and the majority of them work the same way the camera was supposed to. Select a point in the picture that was supposed to be white, and the computer will then adjust the entire color spectrum of the picture approprately. Presto, no more purple people.

Sometimes it’s good for us as photographers to go back to basics. And, of course, if you are just getting started in the world of photography and want to learn “the ropes”, the basics are a natural start. But you want the basics of what the professionals know about the craft of photography.

Anybody can take a picture. I attended a wedding reception where the wedding party left a disposable digital camera on each table at the reception for guests to snap photos. Before the evening was over, it was the children who were running around taking pictures of everything from the dirty dishes to their own underwear. These were not photographers and while those pictures will no doubt get a few chuckles, these are not the kind of professional pictures people want for their long-term memories.

Obviously, the cornerstone of the basics of photography is the camera. When you see a camera geek walking around with enough equipment on his neck to launch a space shuttle, you get the impression that cameras are phenomenally complex, more than mere mortals can grasp. But look at the professionals and you see them working with portable, relatively easy to operate cameras. That is because the basics of running a camera come down to aperture and shutter speed.

Now don’t get nervous about fancy terms. Aperture is just a term for how wide your camera lens is open to let in light. And shutter speed is just how long you let the light come in to affect the picture. For getting a shot of a fast moving event, you want a wide aperture to let in a lot of light but a short shutter speed so you capture the event quickly and close the window so the picture is caught before more light hurts the quality.

Photography is really all about light. You can and will get learn a lot about lenses and flash photography and other ways to turn the control over the lighting of a shot to you. So add to your core skills of photography a willingness to never stop learning. The better and more sophisticated you get in your ability to work with the equipment, the more you will learn and the more you will want to learn.

You can get a greater control over these basic controls of the camera such as aperture and shutter speed by learning how to switch from automatic settings to manual settings. The automatic settings of any camera are just there for the general public who are not interested in learning the basics. So they give you some basic settings like landscape, portrait and sports settings. By switching to manual, you can learn what settings work best in different situations.

And that takes us to the most important basic about becoming a great photographer and that is practice. Take some time with your equipment and play with it. Take it to situations and take photos with different aperture and shutter speed settings, in outdoor and indoor settings and different orientations to light. Don’t get upset when some shots don’t work. That’s part of the learning curve.

By learning by doing, you will build your confidence in your work and eventually become a great photographer. But don’t get cocky, there is always more to learn. And that is one of the fun things about photography, isn’t it?

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In general, the goal of photochopping is to produce a visual joke of some sort. This could involve changing a product cover (like changing the Coca Cola label from “Coke” to “Croak” or inventing Jalapeno flavored baby food jars), adding elements to a picture (like people who weren’t there or items that change the meaning of the picture), or even distorting a familiar image so that it’s recognizable but different.

Since the idea is to change an existing photo, most photochopping projects don’t involve creating anything from scratch. The main focus is on merging existing images or making changes to recognizable ones.

Photochopping isn’t the original name, of course. Originally, it was called “Photoshopping,” but the people who enjoy it have changed the name to avoid receiving angry letters and emails from Adobe. Of course, it’s still pretty easy to find websites that still use the original name.

Several famous (or infamous) images sent around as email jokes originally started out as photochopped images. One, showing a historical supercomputer complete with steering wheel, and another, showing a shark apparently attacking a helicopter, were both good enough to fool quite a few people.

Some websites sponsor photochopping contests. The site sponsor will post an original picture, as well as any rules or restrictions. The entrants are then given a set amount of time to return their submissions, and the prize goes to the best image that stays within the rules. Some sites even take the concept further, with “Tennis” matches, where people take turns making further a series of changes to the picture.

The world of photo editing today is completely different. Paint programs like Photoshop make it easy to improve the features of a photograph, giving the photographer a bit more leeway with lighting and exposure. Unfortunately, they also make it very easy to change the photo, and present something that wasn’t really there when the picture was taken.

Photojournalists have a responsibility to present facts, not fiction. Editing the picture to correct a color cast is not the same as changing a dull grey sky to a brilliant red sunset. Adding smoke, or multiplying the number of people in a scene, do not make the picture more “dramatic” or “more representative” of what happened–they lie to the viewer, in the same way that putting a celebrity’s head onto another person’s body is a lie.

At what point does the photographer cross the line from “improving” a picture to “improving upon” it? When he adds or subtracts elements that change the message or meaning of the picture. Adding or removing information, even by simply cropping out damage or blurring critical information, is the line that photojournalists must not cross.

Keep these facts in mind when editing photos. If a picture is “artwork,” and not meant to be a scene of reality, then the artist is free to edit as he chooses. But a photojournalist is not an artist, and news photography is not supposed to be art.

Why Postcards?

This is affordable. And this can be done with the quality that you are looking for at rates you can definitely give way to. If you are new in the business and you don’t know anything about marketing, postcards will be a safe and also a good way to start.

You can reach your targeted list through this medium. Your chosen printing company can help you with this dilemma as most of them offer a targeted list at affordable prices. Now what you have to remember is to use this tool wisely.

Not because many people have benefited from its effectiveness, you will also gain the same. There are certain elements about postcards that must be taken into deep consideration for you to be able to use them to work towards your advantage.

First, you must know who your target market is. You can base a lot of your next decisions on this one. If you know who will be patronizing your products, you will be able to serve them better. You will know their preferences. For this reason, you will be able to tweak your ads, in this instance the postcards, according to their tastes, what they will like. And you will also be able to avoid what will turn them off.

Your product should be the basic pattern of your design. Depending on the images that you use, you will be able to achieve the perfect one that will appeal to your target market. Chocolates can be very tempting. So use all your photography talent for this reason. You must come up with photos that will justify what you have to offer your target market.

Match the design with a good headline, something that will make your audience hold on to your material. You must remember that you are in constant competition with other chocolate makers. And most of them may have used this tool before. So you must aim for your cards to be noticed and be seen by your target market.

Don’t forget to include your contact details on your cards. You don’t want people to be lured by your promotions only to be left hanging in the end with nowhere to go to ask for directions about you.

There are many tools that you can use to market you products. Many people love chocolates so you will not have a hard time finding a niche who will want to take a bite or more of your money making biz.

What are you waiting for? Start up that biz of making chocolate. If you are really good at it, you might as well share with other people your expertise. You never know what a good fortune is awaiting you for this trick that started out as a hobby. Postcards can be your ally to success. Just remember to follow the rules accordingly.

But you must also learn to bend it at times if you deem that it will work more appropriate for you.

This is nowhere more true than photography. For decades the film and chemical processing method has undergone continual refinement to achieve higher and higher levels of sophistication and to find higher levels of quality. Small wonder that when the digital revolution came along, “the purists” were, to say the least, a bit snobby about the idea of professional photography moving in this direction.

But there are some genuine reasons to at least incorporate digital technology into your professional photography game plan. These reasons are compelling enough that more and more we are seeing the big studios going all digital. So if you are running an independent photography business or if you are “just” a photography hobbyist (and thank God for the hobbyists), you may have to think through the value of moving to digital processing yourself.

Ease of Use.

The amount of fuss and sheer “stuff” of doing a shoot digitally is dramatically less involved than using the older technologies. Witness how the digital revolution in photography has revolutionized the personal camera world. Now people can take as many pictures as they want and have them to review virtually instantaneously.

Probably the biggest leap forward in the use of digital photography is that you can do re-shoots quickly, easily and for virtually no cost. If you conduct a portrait session with a customer, you can have the “stills” of the session available almost as soon as the session is done. If a shot was good but not perfect, you can correct it and re-shoot immediately saving huge amounts of time and improving the chances you will get the portfolio you want and that the customer wants on the first session.

Rapid Customer Service.

The impression we get when a technology delivers so much value to the public is that quality will go down. But, amazingly, this is not the case with digital photography. If anything, the quality of the photographs is as good or better than any we could do with prior technologies. And the cost both to you as the photographer and to your customer drops off so dramatically that the age old complaint the customer has had about professional photographs costing too much can be eliminated making the customer want to use your services more often.

Digital photography, being a child of the internet and the digital revolution that has swept our lives via personal computers, can be delivered in a myriad of ways and at a speed that was unheard of prior to the arrival of this technology. We can deliver the photos via email, by posting them to an online gallery or by burning them to a DVD or CD so the customer can order lots more shots for the same cost and have them delivered in a way that easy to view and store.

Editing

Editing has similarly moved from the realm of the back room wizards to something any of us can do due to the sophisticated computer programs, such as Photoshop, that we can use to improve the pictures we take. It is really amazing the effects that can be imposed on a picture with this software. But more importantly we can so much more easily correct minor problems with a photograph so what might have been a lost session can be improved to become acceptable with some clever use of digital editing.

In virtually every way, digital photography, delivery and editing is superior to the way “the purists” would have us hold on to. It makes our lives as photographers easier, faster and more profitable. But above all, this is something our customers want us to use. They get to enjoy their pictures so much faster, at a more reasonable cost and the pictures can be emailed to friends and posted on their family web sites which is fun for everyone. So despite our desire to be “purists”, every reason we need is there to convince us that digital photography is the way to go.

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Everyone develops a workflow that’s best for them, and a process that makes perfect sense to one photographer will be hopelessly confusing to another one.

First, the pictures have to be transferred from the camera. Most cameras have an Upload feature, where the camera is plugged directly into the computer. Plugging the chip into a chip reader also works well. Archive off a master collection, so that you don’t overwrite the original with the edited version.

Second, filter the collection. Delete the accidental shot of the photographer’s knee and the portrait where the baby crawled out of the frame.

Next, make the edits that will apply to the entire image. Color balance, contrast, brightness, and cropping, for example. If you’re working with RAW images, you have a lot more control at this stage.

Once the large adjustments are made, it’s time to focus on the smaller ones. Are there areas of the picture that could use cloning (like painting away the electrical wires passing through the subject’s head)? Would a little bit of background blur make the subject stand out better?

When you’re satisfied with all of the large and small scale edits, it’s time for one final sharpening step, like using Unsharp Mask. Multiple sharpening steps will make a picture look terrible, so only do it once. Save the edited and sharpened version under it’s own name, and then save a JPG compressed copy for emailing and web work.

You can use photo editing techniques to achieve the same effect.

Load your picture into your favorite photo editing program. Using a selection tool like a “Lasso,” select the foreground image, the “animal” that has to be set off from the “leaves and branches.” Once it’s selected, “Invert” the selection. Most photo editing programs have this option. In effect, it means “swap the selected areas for the unselected ones.” By inverting, you’ll select only the background of your image. If your program has the feature, you might also consider Feathering your selection. This helps to break up the outline of the selection, so that it doesn’t have such a sharp edge to it.

Once the background is highlighted, use a tool called Gaussian Blur. This is a specific type of blurring routine designed to imitate the blurring that happens in traditional photography. Don’t be afraid to experiment with the settings, but remember that a little bit of blur–leaving the background out of focus, but recognizable–is better than a lot.

A related photo technique is called Panning. Focus on a moving object, like a racecar, and keep the camera pointed at that object as it goes by. Done properly, the racecar will be in focus, while the crowd behind it will be blurred. This kind of blur is called Motion blur, or sometimes Radial blur. Using Radial instead of Gaussian will make your subject appear to be racing past the background.