Archive for April, 2008

Contrast! How can one exactly explain what is contrast and its importance.

Before you know how to improve contrast in the photographs and its importance in the photographs, let’s know what is contrast.

Contrast can be explained as the amount of difference between the two tones in the photograph.

To understand this visually, open a photo in image editing software workshop such as a Photoshop, open the channels in the tool bar and click on the red, green, blue or any other channel.

Now you see a black and white representation of the image. By adjusting the black slider to the right and white slider to the left in the image, you will adjust the contrast in the photograph.

The contrast in the photograph makes the ugly photograph look better but it cannot make the photograph look good. One thing to remember before you start editing your photograph is, your image should be 16-bit color depth.

Different editing techniques for best contrast in photographs:

1. Curves and masks: These are the most powerful and useful image editing tools for improving contrast. If you want to master in ‘editing contrast techniques’ in pictures, you can limit yourself to this 2 techniques to yield fruitful results. The curves correct color balance, lightness channels and adjusts layers in the photos. The masks correct the visual strength, offers flexibility for vector masks, layer sets and adjustments layers.

“Color photography is a photography that uses media capable of representing colors which are produced chemically during the photographic processing phase.”

Color photography is an extension to black and white photography, which used only grey and black colors.

Black and white photos were not able to show off all the colors, which were in the original frame.

Necessity of colors in the photographs started the revolutionary color photography.

The different developments in color photography:

• The first permanent color photography was taken in 1861 by James clerk Maxwell.
• Herman Vogel in 1973 discovered sensitizing dyes which were a pursuit in full color photography.
• Experiments were made on subtractive color to improve color photography in 1977 by Louis ducous du hauron.
• The Lippmann process was introduced to color photography in 1891.
• Jolly screen process was pioneered in 1896.
• The process to improve clarity in the photographs was started in 1908 with Dufaycolor process and continued till 1919 with tri-color carbo prints. The clarity in those was top most for these prints.
• Kodachrome was a new revolution in the color photography, a 16mm motion picture film was made in 1935.

Aerial photography does not mean taking images from satellites. Taking the pictures of a ground or part of the earth’s surface from an elevated angle is referred as aerial photography.

The platforms in air to take aerial photos are aircrafts, helicopters, balloons, rockets, kites, parachutes etc…

Aerial photography is widely used in military purposes to locate the enemy units on the ground.

The view you see in aerial photography reveals the other side beauty of the place.

Aerial photography is also a sector in landscape photography, as aerial photography involves the impressive photos of landscapes, mountains and deserts also.

The tourism developments in many countries use aerial photography to attract visitors to their country as they can show off their recreation possessions. If you work in real estate development company, you can use this photography technique to fasten the expansion of the company for showing vast expansions of your lands.

The stadiums use the aerial photography to give publicity for their stadium construction and density of crowd it can withstand.

The first aerial photography was clicked in 1897 from a rocket mounted camera. There onwards, the cameras were mounted on different objects. At one point of time, pigeons were used to carry cameras attached to their legs or back to click aerial photos.

LIGHT TRAIL is a line recorded on film resulting from movement of a point of light (or camera movement) during the exposure. Light trails is another photographic effect where motion blur is used.

Here are 25 amazingly taken photographs of light trails…

[click on the images for the full size.]