Digital Art & Photography

Are you looking for a non-DSLR camera that is suitable for stuffs such as sport and wildlife photography?

The Samsung Pro 815 may be a good choice. It feels like a DSLR, although it is not. This camera sports an effective 8.0 megapixels. The maximum resolution that it can go is 3264 x 2448. That is quite a good image resolution.

The lens is pretty good producing crisp and sharp images.

Its body only weight is less than 900 gram. Metering modes includes Center-Weighted, Spot and Multi-Segment. The camera has the capacity for 15X optical zoom, making it useful for shots such as sport and wildlife photography.

To many photographers, the morning is regarded as the nicest time to take landscape photography.

When the sun is near to the horizon, it creates a very pleasing soft shadow effect. At the same time, colour tone are less saturated when compared to other times of the day such as the midday or noon.

Interesting subjects for the morning include elements of nature. An example is the morning plants and dew droplets. Dews and droplets on leaves and grass blade create very pleasing compositions. In the case of photographing dew droplets, the close and macro focusing settings are the most appropriate.

Some plants open up in the morning such as the Morning Glory. So morning is the best time to capture their full splendour.

Many people have heard about healing using natural therapies. These practitioners are known as Naturopaths. However, do you also know that photographs can also be used as a mode of healing?

Phototherapy is the practice of using photographic images as a mode of healing. Phototherapists are professionals who use phototherapy to heal their clients.

There are several main techniques used in phototherapy.

1. Using client’s own photo to assist in revealing their inner feelings and emotions.
2. Using photos taken by others that include image of the client. This can allow the client to understand hinself or herself from a different perspective.
3. Therapy through self-portrait. This is quite a good approach.
4. Photo-projectives which enable the client to face his/her own reaction to certain image and symbolism.

Phototherapy is a relatively uncommon mode of therapy. Nevertheless, there are people out there who are experts in this field of work.

The umbrella is one of the most commonly used kit in a photo studio setup.

There are 2 main types of umbrella for photographic usage. They are:

1. Reflective Umbrella. This type is designed to bounce light and usually has metallic looking reflective surfaces.

2. Shoot-through umbrella. This type is typically translucent to allow lights to pass through.

Umbrellas are popular partly because they are a relatively low cost solution. Hama is a brand that produces Studio Umbrellas.

With the advances in 3D modeling and rendering technology, sometimes it is quite hard to tell if an image is a photo or a computer rendering. Just take a look at King Kong the movie. King Kong was fully virtual and digital, yet he was so life-like that he managed to draw strong emotions from the human audience.

What is also interesting now is that 3D art software for modelling and rendering programs are freely available over the internet. In the past, they were the domain of high end and expensive graphic technologies. Not anymore…

Below is an image that was created using Blender 3D and Yafray.

Courtesy of Studio Rola

Blender 3D was used to create the 3D model, while Yafray took care of the photo realistic rendering. The best thing is that both software are totally free and can be downloaded from their respective websites.

There are many software programs that can replace some of the role traditionally held by product photography studio setups. These are 3D art programs with high quality renderers. These renderers are usually based on Global Illumination technology that allows the software to fully mimic the properties and materials and light sources.

As a recent update: Yafray is not longer supported. Instead it has a new successor known as Yafaray. Now Blender is supported by Yafaray.