There are many books available that teach photography - traditional film and digital. I've read many. The ones that have stayed in my collection are as follows: General Tips for Composing that "Perfect" Image How to Photograph Your Life by Nick Kelsh Tao of Photography: Unlock Your Creativity Using the Wisdom of the East by Tom Ang Mechanics The Kodak Workshop Series: Existing-Light Photography The Field Guide to Photographing Landscapes Photographing Wildflowers: Techniques for the Advanced Amateur and Professional by Craig and Nadine Blacklock The Photographer's Guide to Using Filters by Joseph Meehan Digital Photography How To's Getting Started with Camera Raw by Ben Long Welcome to Oz: A Cinematic Approach to Digital Still Photography with Photoshop by Vincent Versace The Art of Raw Conversion: How to Produce Art Quality Photos with Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Leading Raw Converters by Uwe Steinmueller and Jurgen Gulbins

The choices are: Intellect , Good Looks , or Talent . Of the three, I'd rather have world-class talent. Intellect you're either born with or you're not. Good looks are fleeting. Talent--now that can be developed and sustained. I'm passionate about all I do and strive to fully master any and all hobbies/interests I take up. I love doing something that I enjoy and having friends enjoy it also. My talent is that whatever I put my heart and soul into I tend to master. The two talents I'm working on taking to world-class level are cooking and photography. The other reason why I'd rather have talent is that talent can be shared with more people. For example, I cook pretty well--learned to cook Thai food when I was helping friends market/franchise their restaurant and was able to teach my Thai roommate who didn't know how to cook how to cook--when her mom came out for graduation she was surprised that her daughter had learned how to cook Thai food from an American.

Another project had us taking the same subject and framing it vertically and then horizontally. I took two series - the first of a shell and the second of my guilty pleasure. My favorite daily guilty pleasures--Oaxacan coffee in the morning when I wake up (conical burr grinder so that the beans aren't scorched and stovetop espresso maker), Egyptian cotton fluffy spa towels, Featherbed with down pillows and down comforter, and a convertible roadster. After looking at the Morning Coffee series I realized that the image would have been better if the handle of the coffee pot was parallel to the line created by the coffee grinder.

A class assignment had us focus on the regularity of form in machinery. I chose the valve of a fire house connection for my series of 4 images. Top photo taken with a Canon EOS 30D on 4/16/2007 18:45:04. Tv(Shutter Speed) - 1/125 Sec; Av(Aperture Value) - F5.6; Metering Modes - Evaluative metering; ISO Speed - 800; Lens - EF28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM; Focal Length - 95.0 mm; White Balance - Tungsten; AF mode - AI Servo AF. Middle left photo taken with a Canon EOS 30D on 4/16/2007 18:40:53. Tv(Shutter Speed) - 1/80Sec.; Av(Aperture Value) - F5.0; Metering Modes - Evaluative metering; ISO Speed - 800; Lens - EF28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM; Focal Length - 80.0; White Balance - Tungsten; AF mode - AI Servo AF. Middle right photo taken with Canon EOS 30D on 4/16/2007 18:43:52; Tv(Shutter Speed) - 1/80Sec.; Av(Aperture Value) - F5.0; Metering Modes - Evaluative metering; Speed - 800; Lens - EF28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM; Focal Length - 35.0 ; White Balance - Tungsten; AF mode - AI Servo...

Week one of my photography and Adobe Photoshop classes finds me playing with aggressive cropping and color correction. I took a photo destined initially for the trash and experimented with it. In the original image, the focus is off, the overall photo is underexposed and has a redish cast (the text on the banner is actually white). First I decided to play with the composition - a vertical composition captures the portion of the image that's in focus (image on the left below). Once I have a decent composition, it's time to see if I can correct the exposure and the color cast (image on the right below). By looking at the histogram for the image, I discovered that I'd clipped the shadows - which means that some details in the shadows of the image appear as black. I also discovered that to balance the image I had to watch blowing out the highlights - which means that the bright areas in the image get converted to white and detail disappears (for example the highlight in her h...

My recent purchase of a Canon 30D has re-sparked my interest in and passion for photography. Now this doesn't mean I haven't been actively capturing the world around me. It means I hadn't been considering the technical characteristics of my photographs. First a little history. When I made the switch to digital in 2002, I dove in with a Kodak DC4800 ( http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=593 and http://www.steves-digicams.com/dc4800.html ) - although I wasn't completely sold on digital photography and wasn't ready to part with my Canon AE-1. I soon discovered my trusty Kodak was extremely more flexible than my Canon AE-1 due to it's size and weight. Unlike my Canon AE-1 with its complement of lens that I felt compelled to bring with me when I was "shooting" I accepted the limits of the Kodak and began carrying it with me more frequently. This lead to thousands of photos as I began photographing my life. While snapping these photos, I forgot...