Hey Everyone,

You may remember I posted a nice autumnal shot a while ago, as an inspiration to go out and get some great shots down in the Autumn, well, not that there isn’t still time, but Christmas is here now, and you can get some incredibly moving, and interesting shots around this time of year, I personally love it!

Lights
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Lights are one of the things that make Christmas nowadays, whether it be a really nice candle, or the lights on your Christmas tree, even one of those houses drenched in lights, they can all make interesting pictures, for example, this picture I took:

In my opinion this just oozes Christmas time, and I think that it was just so simple to take, all it is is a slightly long exposure of some lovely little Christmas candles, and you too can take photos just like this.

When you start getting out all your decorations, and getting things up, just try taking some pictures, although I advise that, taking pictures like this either requires a tripod, or something solid to rest your camera on, as for the beautiful glows, you really need to makes sure you have quite a long exposure, say, 1/2 to 1 second.

Ornaments
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Here you can put Macro Mode into action, the little ornaments hanging of the tree, or on the Christmas table, anything really with a twinkle, and you can make it into a lovely picture, for instance:

Just a simple shot of some Christmas sweets, but with a shallow dof, and very close in with the light shining off the foil, you can get a decorative, and attractive image. I really think that these are some of the really great Christmas pictures you see, if you look in shops, selling Christmas ornaments, I’m sure there’ll be blown up pictures, of extremely closeup ornaments and decoration.

People
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Nearly everyone is happy at Christmas, meaning it is the perfect time to get shots of the family, and of your friends, particularly if you get them without people knowing, because the result will be real happiness, none of this ‘cheese‘ stuff, you’ll get peoples actual emotions into an image, and a piece of advice that rarely fails, is try not to have people staring down the lens, get them off center, looking away, looking at someone else, anything like this will leave you with a much more natural and attractive picture that will make you want to frame it.

A little advice though, is that taking people will be a little harder around this time of year, sure, because people are hard anyway, but to get them from a distance generally means zoom, and with zoom you get shake, and no-one likes blur… so, jack up the ISO, wide open the aperture, and, there you go, you can get some, fairly crisp shots. Well, nothing that a bit of photoshop can’t fix.

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A quick insight into Christmas photography, brief, but hopefully factual.

Have a good one.

Charlie -

Hello Everyone,

I know it is slightly irrelevant, but I felt this to be rather important. Microsoft office 2007 is out now, and I have just got my copy of it. Firstly, I’ll start with a nice, wow.

This is probably the first office you should upgrade to after 2000. 2003, XP, and all those random ones in between were just time fillers, for the big one, 2007. This is truly a wondrous piece of software, and when I first used it, I was convinced this is something Apple designed, it is that beautiful.

Word. That is what I use most out of the office suite, with Excel following not far behind, and I must say that Word, is completely different, and not so much that old-time users will get lost, but in enough of a way to really show you how horrific the older versions looked. First of all, your ‘desk’ (ie. the background below the paper), is no longer depressing grey, nor solid grey, it is now a lovely blue, with a small wisp in the corner for interesting, and there is a really elegant, ‘OSX-esque‘ shadow around the piece of paper. Looks, very nice. Furthermore, the new features, I mean, it’s awesome, Mathematics is finally possible with Microsoft Word, there is a whole section on equations offering everything you could imagine, and trust me, as Steve Jobs would say, ‘it just works’.

I don’t have time to rattle through everything, as this is just a brief note really, to say how great it is. Excel, isn’t to be honest that different, it’s just a lot prettier, with some nice features thrown in. The graphs are much nicer to look at, and I prefer all, that’s all the icons associated with office now.

And that’s another note to make, is the new default font, I want to use it on this blog! It’s so nice, (btw, I’m not using it on this blog), it is called ‘Calibri‘ and it looks truly awesome, and there is a Calibri for the body of text and the headers, and it looks really nice.

Anyway, I don’t really, wait! Sorry, before I forget, the new Publisher is really great, everything is so much easier to find and do, and everything is animated in an oh, so beautiful way. Trust me, if you’ve been waiting to get out of Office 97 or 2000, now is the time, this is finally an upgrade worth bothering to get. Trust me.

Anyway, sorry for the short, slightly meaningless post, but I’ll get a much more detailed one in here at some time!

Hope you’re well,

Charlie - New Office ‘07 Fanboy

Hello Everyone,

I thought I’d just write a quick one to cover the functions of most vaguely advanced cameras. (Here meaning, SLRs, and Prosumer cameras, check out which cameras there are, HERE). There are some modes that can help make a subtle difference to your pictures, and also make it easier on you. I will explain the basic modes and then you can choose what you want to do…!

Program
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Program, is very similar to that of the ‘Automatic‘ function, this basically means that the camera will work everything out to do with the shutter speed and the aperture.

People often ask me why there is an Automatic mode, and then also a Program mode. The short answer is that the Program mode leaves you to configure ‘Soft’ settings, by which I mean, White Balance, Metering, ISO etc. Whereas in most cases, Automatic will leave you with nothing to change yourself and it will do everything for you.

Tv / S
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Known as Tv, (Time Value), on Canon cameras, and S, (shutter), on everything else this option gives you one variable to control, Shutter Speed.

This is quite useful if you want to either capture movement or not, and basically means that when you choose a shutter speed, the camera chooses the aperture to suit, and the end result will be a correct exposure. Of course, you have to remember that you cannot choose extreme values, as these will not work…!

Av / A
====

Known as Av, (Aperture Value), on Canon, and A, (aperture), on everything else, this gives you the opposite variable to Tv/S. Here, you control the Aperture.

This is what I use nearly all the time, it is the most useful for me. And it will be for you too if you wish to create dramatic images with shallow depths of field, say using an f-stop of around 2.8, or if you want to shoot landscapes at f/16/32. If the aperture things are confusing, I’ve written a 101 article explaining it: HERE.

M
=

Known as M on everything, (that I know of), this function is complete manual control. I.E. you have complete control over every function.

As far as I’m concerned, this function is only really useful when you wish to take extreme shots, for example, night shots, or HDR images. Otherwise, I feel that it is safer for you to stick in the one variable sections.

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I hope this has been a quick but concise guide explaining your camera’s modes for you.

Thanks a lot for reading,

Charlie - Teenage Photographer

Hey Everyone,

As the holiday season approaches, a LOT of people are going to be going out and investing in digital cameras. This short but hopefully useful article will leave you with a slight advantage over the average consumer, and I hope it does. You first have to decide exactly what camera you want, now, to help you choose what kind of digital camera you need, I am going to refer you to a previous article I wrote on choosing your ideal digital camera, HERE.

After you have decided on what kind of camera you want, you’ve then got to buy it, now, realistically, many people are going to want to go into their local photography shop and buy it, but may I please ask that you have a look on the Internet first, as there is nearly always a chance to save money.

Firstly, you will want to go to a price comparison website, examples are:

• PriceRunner (International)
• Froogle (UK, US)
• Ciao (Europe)

These are the majors as far as I am concerned, and you will probably always find some very good details on a cheap price in there. I find PriceRunner has the largest amount of products listed, although not as many retailers as Froogle. Ciao is very useful in the respect that nearly all major products have reviews attached by very well written people.

Another place you may want to look is the good old, eBay. Now I still feel that a lot of people have some serious misconceptions about eBay, and they are entirely unnecessary, seriously, it is extremely safe, you just have to make sure you deal with renowned dealers, very easy.

• eBay (UK, International)

I won’t go into the details about what eBay is, as I’m sure the visitors to a site like this will know what it is, and how good it is, and if you really don’t, just Google it…!

Now, I feel that I have gone over anything you may want to know about where to buy your product, you then have to go through the simple process of paying for it, usually by credit card, (most sensible), and you’re off.

I hope you get your cameras in time for Christmas, and I’m sure you will!

Thanks for reading,

Charlie - Teenage Photographer

Hey Everyone,

I just thought I’d say that, with all these wonderful oranges, reds, yellows, and still some greens, there is the making for some awesome photos. Check out my latest:

Let me know if you do anything special, I’d love to see it.

Hope you’re well,

Charlie - Teenage Photographer