How do I Back Up My Pictures?

What was that I hear? “ I save them to CD…When I remember” or “ I print everything” hmmm or the best – “I don’t back up my pictures!”

Well, I’m not hear to judge you. I admit I’m not the world’s most organized person but I do try. I’m currently trying to gain control of my hard drive and it’s contents. Mostly my pictures. I couldn’t believe it when I opened Picasa last week and realized how much stuff is on there. I have so many photos on my hard drive! Especially since having my daughter. I’ve probably taken more photos this past year than I had in the previous 3 years. And they’re all just sitting there…waiting…until someday, I burn them onto DVDs and file them away, possibly even delete them to free up some space on the hard drive. Oh a girl can dream…

Now, I teach all my students the importance of a good “workflow”:

Take Pictures – transfer to computer (my choice – use Picasa) – delete Pictures off memory card – Edit –

Print or Share – BACK UP.

I’ve got to be honest. I’m great at the taking, uploading and could use a little improvement on the “share” but when it comes to remembering to Backup my pictures, I have failed miserably.

It’s constantly on my list of things do.

Or should I say it WAS constantly on my list of things to do. Now I don’t worry about it thanks to a cool online back up service called MOZY! For $4.95 a month they back up my entire hard drive . That’s unlimited storage. Pictures, documents – EVERYTHING! How awesome is that? It works away in the background, uploading any new files and storing them on their servers and I can honestly say I don’t even notice it doing it’s thing.

They’ve just recently redesigned their website and it’s super easy to use.

• Just sign up and give them your info. They even have a free service where you can get 2GB without paying a dime. I decided to go for the MozyHome Unlimited Plan though – for less than $5 a month for unlimited storage.  It walks you through the necessary steps but basically you just do the following:
• Download MozyHome
• Then select the files you want them to back up (they give you a suggested list.)
• Over the next few days or weeks, depending on the size of your files, they back up your entire hard drive. (it took me 2 weeks).
• After that they periodically backup when your computer is idle.

Cool or what? No more CDs no more external hard drives No more “long finger.”

So go check it out before you regret it!

Remember: It’s not IF your hard-drive fails, but WHEN it fails. Don’t loose all those memories. Check out Mozy here – Trust me – you’ll sleep better at night!

Use this link and the coupon code AUGUST to get 10% off annual and biennial Mozy Unlimited or MozyPro

Happy snapping!

Ingrid

Thinking of Buying a Digital Camera?

Stuck for Creative Photography Ideas?

Sometimes it’s hard to get creatively charged to get out and take some pictures.  I know I’ve felt it  – how many more photos can I take around the same environment!  I’ve completely exhausted all the possibilities  – right?  Creative photography ideas just are not jumping out at you right now?  It’s a bit like writer’s block, except its photographer’s block I guess!  Well, I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way – I’ve found a few ways to over come it!

First of all,  I’ve been participating in (and helping to present) an awesome telecourse with Sheila Finklestein.  You can check out her course info at Through and From the Lens.  Sheila teaches how to see your world through fresh eyes and hence rejuvinating your photography skills.  I’ve certainly found that I’m starting to look at things a little differently.  Check out the faces I found in the trees in our yard.  I’ve been inspired to create a whole series of them.  (these guys have been around forever!)

Man Blowing Smoke

I’ve been reminded to look at everything from different angles, close-up and at a distance.  Looking at color, texture and thinking more about light.  In these pictures I was looking for faces in nature.

Fishy Face

Then this morning I discovered this new site thanks to the ever cool Photojojo –  Noticin.gs (see what they’ve done there?)  It’s a game really, played on Flickr.com.  “Noticings are interesting things that you stumble upon when your out and about”  You post your pics on Flickr and tag them with “noticings” and Geotag them with where they were taken.

You get points for noticing things like noticing the first thing in a neighborhood or noticing the same thing for a week.  Seems like a great way to get into the habit of taking pictures on a regular basis – one of the key ways of improving your photography.

So I’m headed out to get creative and find some noticings before the snow hits Atlanta 😉

Happy snapping!

PS If your not on Flickr you really should be!  Connect with me there by adding me as a contact.  My Flickr Stream.

White Balance – Learn a Mode Mode Monday

It’s All About Balance

What is White Balance?

The White Balance setting (WB) on our digital camera controls the overall color cast of the image.  The reason why there may be a color cast on our pictures is because this is the way that digital cameras react to light temperature.

Every light source- the sun, light filtered through clouds, a bulb inside or florescent all have a different light temperature.  And each temperature results in a different color hue.   Our eyes naturally filter out these color differences and in most cases all light appears the same.

Digital cameras however do see the differences in different light temperatures and hence different “colors” of light.  The White Balance setting adjusts to counteract these color casts.

Just use Auto White Balance?

In most cases our camera’s Auto White Balance does a pretty good job at setting this mode correctly, however in some scenarios we are going to have to adjust this setting manually.  This is especially true if we are shooting without flash and in a particularly unusual lighting situation.

Here are some pictures I took without flash to demonstrate.  My subject’s dress is supposed to be snowy white:

Auto White Balance

As you can see in the first picture, by leaving the camera’s White Balance setting to Auto, the light inside gives an overall yellow hue or cast to the picture.

White Balanced adjusted for Tungsten

In the second picture I changed my White Balance setting to compensate for this by changing the WB to Tungsten – Much better and definitely more realistic!

Experiment

You can experiment with the White Balance Setting on your camera.  Look for the WB symbol either on the back of your camera as a shortcut button or in the functions menu.

Most types of light are preset for you there

Daylight

Cloudy

Fluorescent

Tungsten (which just means a regular bulb)

Check your camera manual so that you can decipher the WB icons and play around with the settings to see the different effects that you get.  This works best if you take a series of the same shot, especially if your subject includes something white so that the effect is really obvious and shoot without flash.

You’ll see how by changing this one small setting on your camera you can achieve very different results.

Happy snapping!

A little late but none the less – Happy New Year!

CameraShy Student at work

So how many of you got a new digital camera for Christmas? Judging by my inbox  – a lot of you!  That’s my excuse for not being blogging as much lately.  I’ve been out helping my clients around Atlanta get to grips with their new DSLRs.  It’s been great fun but I just realized that I had gone a month without posting here and I’ve been neglecting my readers.  So from now on I promise to write more regularly, with more tutorials, recommendations, reviews and all round great photography advice for beginners and anyone else who wants to listen!

So for this post I’m just going to try to encourage you to get out and start shooting and make 2010 the year when you really learn how to move out of Auto mode, get creative and really master your camera.  I’m planning on learning a few new techniques myself and I’m challenging myself to improve my skill set to bring my photography to the next level.  So let’s learn together  – it’s always more fun that way, isn’t it?

If you are in the Atlanta area and would like to book a One-to-One private instruction lesson with me email me for my availability and more info at ingrid@camerashy.info

Happy snapping!

Christmas Time! How to Photograph Lights

This is  a really great time of the year to get  unique and magical pictures of your kids.  One of the things that adds to the magic, is all the sparkly lights everywhere.   From the lights on the trees, to the neighbor’s vibrantly decorated yard, there are excellent festive backdrops for holiday pictures everywhere.  So why is it that when we try to photograph lights at night they disappear into the darkness?

What Usually Happens (what not to do!):

1. We see a beautifully lit up scene and position our subject in front of this perfect Christmassy backdrop.
2. We use our camera’s auto setting, the Auto Flash fires and the lights disappear into the background.

Here’s a shot I took at the weekend which demonstrates what happens when we use flash:

It’s a perfectly exposed shot but we don’t really get a feeling of the atmosphere of the picture.  The background is beautifully lit by fairy lights but when the flash fires it throws the background into darkness.

How to Photograph Lights (do this instead)

So how do we accurately portray the scene as we see it?

1. Simply set your camera to Night Scene Mode (the icon looks like a little man beside a moon and stars)
2. Hold steady and shoot!

And here is the result:

What happens in Night Scene mode is the shutter stays open for longer than normal so the ambient lighting in the background is exposed.  Then, the flash fires in order to expose your subject in the foreground.

The result is a well-exposed subject and a perfectly exposed background.  So we get the overall festive feeling of the picture.

Some things to remember when using this mode:

1. Only use when the background is lit up and the lights are to be part of the picture.
2. Hold your camera extra steady – that slow shutter speed will result in camera shake if you don’t
3. Only use for very still subjects.  My model was being unusually poised for this picture!
4. If you have no subject (person) in shot you could try turning flash off altogether and raising your ISO 

So go and find some cool illuminated backgrounds and take some Holiday pictures using Night Scene Mode.

Happy snapping!

P.S. This is a great method to use to photograph your Christmas tree and your living room when taking your picture for Capture the Magic!  Be sure to read my post on this great way to catch Santa in the Act!

Picture Gift Ideas for Mom

Gift Ideas for Mom

So I’ve eventually started my Christmas shopping this year and I’ve been scouring the internet for pressies. One of my sticking points every year is gift ideas for Mom. Being a photographer one of my “go-to” gifts for her is always of course Pictures!  She is usually inundated with photos of recent times and loves to look at them on her laptop, but we have heaps of old pictures that just sit upstairs in boxes and albums gathering dust.  It’s a shame that these pictures are now mostly forgotten. So when I found this idea by ScanDigital I was impressed.

How about getting them all together on a brand new digital photoframe?  All you have to do is ship off your old pics, negatives, slides, whatever you have to ScanDigital and they upload everything to a digital frame and send you everything back plus the preloaded frame and a DVD of all the images.

Perfect gift idea for Mom who has it all and it saves you from having to show her how to put stuff on the frame herself.  I also love the idea of putting old pics on display.  In this digital age they are  always forgotten about.

So get together some of your old pics and visit the ScanDigital website for more information.

But don’t delay! Deadline is December 14th!

Happy Snapping

The Best Santa Picture without even leaving home

Gotcha! Santa in your living room!

Most of you know that I’m the proud mom of a baby girl and this year I’m anticipating that Christmas will be even more fun than usual, having her around. I know I really should go and stand in line at the mall so she can get her first Santa picture but that doesn’t sound so appealing. So, since Santa will be paying us a visit this year I thought I would capture the event on camera on Christmas Eve.

How so I hear you say? You’ll never catch Santa in the act!

Well, thanks to a new website called Capture the Magic you can!  These guys help you get a picture of Santa in your very own living room.  You could even get a picture of him talking to the dog.

Set up your camera on Christmas Eve before the little ones head to bed and in the morning you have the proof of the pudding to show that the big man himself made an appearance.

Thrill your kids this Christmas! Catch Santa in YOUR house!

Continuous Shooting Mode – Learn a Mode Monday

Hi Guys,

For today’s Learn a Mode Monday I thought I’d try something a little different and post a video of how to use your continuous shooting mode.  This mode is perfect for capturing fast moving subjects like wildlife, athletes and 11 month old babies!

Check it out and let me know your thoughts!

• So remember, for shooting fast moving objects look for your camera’s Continuous Shooting Mode button 

• Keep your finger fully depressed on the shutter button and capture all that action!

A great way to use up an entire memory card 😉

Here’s the Transcript of the video for those of you who like to read:

Hi everyone! Welcome to the 1st Camerashy  Learn a Mode Monday via video. This is an exciting day for me because this is the first time that I’ve ever done a video blog. Also I would like to give a special warm welcome to all my Facebook fans. Over the last number of days our numbers have actually doubled on Facebook so I’m super excited about that. I hope that I will be able to deliver all the good content that your guys are looking for.  In the meantime,  lets go over to the Learn a Mode Monday since it is Monday. Today’s mode is going to be continuous shooting mode. Now this is a good mode if you are at a sporting event and you want to catch fast movement or if your kid is just on the go like my little Sophie who is always moving all the time. I want to be able to just snap quickly as she moves along and not missing a shot. So what I use for that is I use my continuous shooting mode. You might have seen this on some of the more professional looking cameras but most compact cameras can actually do this feature as well.

I’ll show you first where it is on my Digital SLR  which is my Canon so that I can show you where the mode is. First of all I’ll have to turn it on at the top  and the mode is usually at the back of the camera that usually has a symbol like a stack of papers.

Holding up closer, this one is just there. So all I do to select that is to turn on the continuous shot mode. Usually with most cameras you have to scroll through a couple of different modes to get the one that you want. If you are  looking for that little icon like the stack of papers which I’ll be posting so you will know what it looks like under this blog.

All you do is keep your finger on the button while you’re shooting. So it’s just a matter of snapping. All I do is to continually keep my finger pressed down on the button. The method of doing it if you are at a sports event is to keep your focus onto what you are looking at.  Keep your fingers on the button  and you should move the camera and follow the actions along. That action is called Panning and we will probably talk about that in another blog.

On the compact camera, it’s the same exact icon. At least it is for the Canon cameras and most cameras have the similar thing. And for this Canon, it is the shortcut button on my particular camera – it is the little stack of papers symbol that you can actually see better than  on the  Digital SLR.

So that’s Continuous  Shot Mode or Continuous Shooting Mode. Remember you keep you fingers pressed on that button and you will never miss any of the action.  Thank you very much for tuning in to my latest blog cast. Hopefully I can keep them coming so keep snappin’! =)

Keep snapping!

Ingrid

Flash Photography Tips at the Pumpkin Patch

Fill Flash

It’s Pumpkin time! And of course what does one do if one has both a baby and a pumpkin?  You sit on on top of the other of course!  Well, in my case the baby won’t stay on the pumpkin and tries to eat everything around her in the great outdoors – grass, gravel, bugs…(she doesn’t get outside much.)  So for my pumpkin picture we had to have daddy in the frame too.

It was quiet a gloomy day in Smyrna, so check out the two photos below to see what happens when I used my “Fill Flash.”

This first picture was taken in Auto Mode and as we were outside the camera detected that no flash was necessary.

No Flash Used

But I know better than my camera!!!

The second picture is so much more vibrant and bright.  I did this by simply switching my Flash to “on” or “Fill-in” so that it will fire outside. this is one of my top flash photography tips!  This give just enough light to brighten up the shadows on my subjects’ faces and adds a bit of sparkle in their eyes.

To do this…

• First, find your Flash button (usually denoted by a “lightening strike”  ) and a “shortcut” button on the back of your camera.
• Select Fill In flash from your flashy type choices – Usually denoted by the” lightening strike” symbol again.  This will ensure that your Flash will fire regardless of lighting conditions that the camera senses.
• Don’t forget that you have to be within about 3 to 4 feet of your subject, otherwise the flash effect will be lost.

So no need to worry if it’s not the perfect Fall day when you have your trip to the pumpkin patch – Use Fill-in Flash!