3 Weeks Left: Photo Contest for July

“The Three Armadillos”
© Copyright Steve Creek

To be honest, I haven’t seen many photos of armadillos in my lifetime. They’re just not something people take a lot of photos of, I guess, and there probably aren’t a lot of opportunities to see them. They’re also not exactly Mother Nature’s most photogenic creature.

Steve Creek might have captured one of their best sides in the photo shown above entitled “The Three Armadillos” which he entered into the Photobird Photo Contest for July 2009. If I’m not mistaken, the photo shows three armadillos walking away from us — not walking towards us. I do believe that those are three tails in the photo. It’s a cute, well-done photo, with great color and excellent depth of field.

“Three” is the theme of the Photobird Photo Contest for July 2009. Enter the contest here. The contest is always free to enter and this month’s contest ends July 31, 2009 at 11:59pm Pacific time.

Photobird Photo Contest details:

• Free to enter. Enter your photo here.
• “Three” is the theme for this month’s contest.
• Your friends and family can vote for you. You can send them a reminder here.
• This month’s contest ends Friday, July 31, 2009 at 11:59pm Pacific time.

The two winners for the Photobird Photo Contest for July 2009 will each receive the following cool prizes:

• Photobird account with 500MB storage space
• $50 Amazon.com gift card, which you can use to buy anything on Amazon.com, such as:
  • memory card for your camera
  • photography book
  • tripod
  • adorable bunny slippers (with pose-able ears!)
  • 115-piece tool kit (with locking pliers!)
  • or use the $50 toward a new camera!

Read more details about the monthly contest here.

Every monthly Photobird Photo Contest has two winners. At the end of each month, we pick one winner for the Photobird Award, and we will tally your votes to determine the one winner for the People’s Choice Award.

See the previous contests and their photos at this link.

Go here to enter the contest. And be sure to have your family and friends vote for their favorite entries to help select the People’s Choice Award. (You can send them a quick little reminder here.)

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Best Selling Cameras on Amazon.com – July 9

Amazon.com keeps a running tally of its best-selling digital cameras, updated hourly. Check out the Amazon.com Digital Camera Best Sellers page at this link to see the complete list of cameras.

The top 10 list for the Amazon.com Digital Camera Best Sellers page is below. This week’s list and the list from two weeks ago are shown. Click on any of the links to go to the Amazon.com page for that camera to read reviews and to obtain more details on each camera.

This week:

1. Canon Rebel XSi – $682
2. Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS (Dark Gray) – $183
3. Canon Rebel T1i – $810
4. Canon PowerShot SD780 IS (Black) – $228
5. Canon PowerShot SX10 IS – $370
6. Canon PowerShot SX110 IS (Black) – $230
7. Canon PowerShot SD890 IS – $197
8. Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5S – $213
9. Canon Rebel XS (Black) – $509
10. Canon PowerShot D10 – $300

Two weeks ago:

1. Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS (Blue) – $180
2. Canon PowerShot SX10 IS – $360
3. Canon Rebel XSi – $688
4. Canon PowerShot A1000 IS (Grey) – $140
5. Canon Rebel T1i – $832
6. Canon PowerShot SD890 IS – $199
7. Canon PowerShot SD780 IS (Black) – $245
8. Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5S – $215
9. Canon PowerShot A1000 IS (Brown) – $130
10. Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W290 (Black) – $210

There continues to be a lot of turmoil at the top of the Amazon.com Digital Camera Best Sellers list. For many months, the Canon PowerShot A590 IS compact digital camera was in first place. Then, for at least 6 weeks, the Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS tiny digital camera in blue was in first place, just as it was two weeks ago. But recently, both the Canon PowerShot SD880 IS in silver and the Canon PowerShot A1000 IS in grey have also been in the number one spot. This week, the Canon Rebel XSi DSLR, shown above, is in first place as the shuffling continues.

Canon dominates the top 10 list again this week on the Amazon.com Digital Camera Best Sellers list. Canon holds 9 of the top 10 spots, with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5S as the only camera in the top 10 list that’s not manufactured by Canon. Usually Canon holds at least 7 spots in the top 10 list and I’ve never seen them with less than 6.

Before you buy a Canon digital camera or anything else on Amazon.com, please click one of our links to Amazon.com on this page or anywhere on Photobird.com. For each product you buy after your click, we receive a small referral fee, at no additional cost to you. Your clicks and purchases allow us to continue to publish the Photobird Daily and the Photobird Learning Center. Thank you for your support!

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What is the RAW File Format?

“Giving Me Advice”
© Copyright Vicki Tinnon

You may be reading a lot these days about the RAW file format and wondering, “Is it right for me?” You might also be asking yourself “What is it?” and “Why would I want to use it over JPEG?”

Well, the simple fact of the matter is that most of you will likely want to stick with the JPEG (or JPG) file format — that is, unless you do a lot of editing with photo editing software. Read on and we’ll explain. (Fortunately, we have the assistance of this savvy, little woodland creature in the photo shown above entitled “Giving Me Advice“, by Vicki Tinnon.)

JPEG is a universally-accepted and standardized file format that can be read by just about every computer operating system and software application on the market today. It’s the de-facto file format for most digital point-and-shoot cameras. The problem with JPEGs is that they are highly compressed. While this helps to make the file sizes smaller so that you can get more pictures on your memory card, the very act of compression removes some data from each of your pictures. Because of this, JPEG files do not technically have the same high quality as RAW files, which use what is called “lossless compression”.

To make matters worse — and here’s the rub — every time you resave a JPEG file, you risk recompressing it, which can make your pictures look even worse.

It’s these frustrations with JPEG’s “lossy compression” that have led most professional photographers to the RAW file format. But this relatively new format is not without its own drawbacks, which is why it is still not universally accepted and, therefore, still rarely used by amateur and hobbyist photographers today.

The main issue with RAW is that there is currently no standardization or even agreement among camera manufacturers, or even among camera models from the same manufacturer, on its technical specification. Yes, there are essentially two flavors: uncompressed and “virtually lossless”, which contains minimal compression, but Nikon uses the NEF extension, Canon uses the CR2 extension, and Olympus uses the ORF extension. Adobe Systems is marketing a RAW standard called DNG (Digital Negative), and they provide a free converter for both Windows and Macintosh users which converts camera RAW files from various camera manufacturers into DNG files. However, you still need to invest in a software program that supports this file format in order for it to be usable. Conveniently, Adobe also sells Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Lightroom, which use the DNG file format.

So, what file format do I recommend that you use? Well, if you’re doing a lot of photo editing, you may wish to investigate working with your camera’s RAW format or the DNG format. Otherwise, I’d advise you to continue to use JPEG and to wait until a clear RAW standard emerges.

If you’d like to read more about JPEG versus RAW, this article on fotohacker.com provides a good summary from the perspective of someone who uses RAW exclusively.

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Show Off Your Photos, and Keep Some Private

“Blue Windows”
© Copyright Rafa Torcida

I know it’s important to you that you want to show off your favorite photos with the world here on Photobird.com; but on the other hand, you also have some photos that you’d like to keep private, such as family photos.

Fortunately, it’s really easy to do both on Photobird.com.

One of the best things about your Photobird photo albums is that they remain private until you tell people about them. When you sign up for a Photobird account, you are the only person who knows about it. We don’t tell anyone, and no one can find your photo album. But the whole reason why your photos are on Photobird.com is to share them with someone.

Here’s how people will find your photos on Photobird.com:

• Tell your friends and family. When you tell your friends and family about your photo album, they will know where it is and how to find it.
• Post links on websites, blogs, and forums. If you, your friends, or your family post links to your photo album or one of your photos on another website, blog, forum, or somewhere else online, other people who you may not know will be able to visit your photo album.
• Submit photos for the Photobird Photo of the Hour. If you submit some of your photos for the Photobird Photo of the Hour and your photos are selected by us, then when just one of your photos is shown on the Photobird Look at Pictures page, all of your photos displayed in your Photobird photo album will be available to anyone who visits Photobird.com. More information about submitting your photos for the Photo of the Hour is here.
• Search on Google and other search engines. If your photos are shown on the Look at Pictures page, Google and the other search engines will find them too. Then, when someone searches on your name or a word in one of your photos’ titles or descriptions, it’s quite possible that they will find your photo album on Photobird.

Some people definitely appreciate the exposure provided by the Photo of the Hour and People, Places and Things. They want as many people as possible to see their photos.

If you want to keep your photo albums private, that’s the easiest thing to do because you don’t need to do anything special to keep your photo albums private on Photobird.com.

If you want a combination of the two — show off your favorite photos, but keep some other photos private — here’s how easy it is to do both without sacrificing the privacy of your private photos:

1. Make an album called “family”, “private”, or anything you want. Just be aware that even if an album is hidden, people can still guess the name and see the album, so be creative.
2. Make the album hidden. Click the Edit Album Options button and check the “Do not display…” checkbox.
3. Put all of your private photos in this hidden album. You can even create more albums within this album and they will all be hidden.
4. If you want extra protection on this private album, you can require that people enter a password to see the album; you can set this up easily in Edit Album Options.
5. Then, create all of your public albums, the ones you want the world to see, at the main, top level of your album, just like you already have.

Here’s one example. You may have already seen my photo album located at http://photobird.com/ekrimen/ . But what you don’t see there is an album called Florida. It’s there. It’s just hidden; it’s not displayed in my album. Your hidden albums will be similar. No one will know about it unless you tell them (or they guess correctly; if you think they may be able to guess it, then put a password on it or choose a name they can’t guess). You can see my Florida album at http://photobird.com/ekrimen/florida. It even has an easy-to-remember direct link, just like your other albums that aren’t hidden.

The beauty of having your photos on Photobird is that you can easily set up which photo albums are public, which are hidden without passwords, which are hidden with passwords, and to make things even easier, you can put all of your hidden albums without passwords inside one album, and your hidden albums with passwords inside another album. Or multiple albums of each. There’s no limit. If you decide you want to add or remove a password within one of those hidden albums, that’s easy too: Just click on the album you want to change and click the Edit Album Options button to add or remove the password, regardless of where the album is located.

We’ve made this easy for you because we know it’s important to you. We like things to be really easy too!

Please let us know in the comments below or contact us directly if you have any questions about this functionality or anything on Photobird.com. We’re happy to help!

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It’s All About the Light

Photo © Copyright Jim M. Goldstein

Looking at Jim Goldstein’s series of photographs of the Sutro Tower, one is immediately reminded of Claude Monet’s famous series of paintings of haystacks, which captured different types of light across different seasons and at different times of day.

Monet painted these haystacks over 100 years ago in Giverny, France, but what Monet knew then is the same thing professional photographers know today: It really is all about the light.

To underscore this point, Jim took photographs of the Sutro Tower from a chosen point throughout the day. Jim includes an animated time-lapse of the tower taken throughout the day. The Sutro Tower is a giant telecommunications tower which is prominent in San Francisco’s western skyline, and despite complaints from locals, it has become something of a city landmark, whenever it can be spotted poking through the fog that rolls over Mount Sutro on most days.

Akin to what we discussed when talking about one of Michael Reichmann’s essays, “The Art of Photography”, found in the Photobird Learning Center, Jim concludes that the best landscape photography occurs during the “Magic Hour”, that time just before and after sunrise and sunset each day when the light is warmer and less direct.

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How to Photograph Sharks

Photo © Copyright Cat Gennaro

If you are fascinated by sharks and would like to learn more about how to photograph them, underwater photographer Cat Gennaro says that even ordinary people can photograph sharks on shark-touring expeditions. Popphoto.com has an introductory article featuring Cat Gennaro and I’ve summarized the tips below.

1. Pick a location friendly for novices. Fortunately, two of the best places to photograph sharks are close to the U.S., according to Cat Gennaro. Cold-water species such as great whites can be found at Isla de Guadalupe, which is 210 miles from San Diego. (The article at Popphoto.com incorrectly identifies the location as Guadeloupe, which is in the Caribbean.) Warm-water species such as tiger sharks and lemon sharks can be found at Tiger Beach off of Grand Bahama Island.

2. Book your trip with a professional touring company. Cat Gennaro recommends San Diego Shark Diving Expeditions at www.sdsharkdiving.com for Guadalupe and The Dream Team at www.sharkexpedition.com of West Palm Beach, Florida for excursions to Tiger Beach.

3. No flash needed near the surface. Down to 10 feet under water, there is usually enough light so a flash isn’t needed. You’ll definitely need a flash below 20 feet.

4. Use a wide-angle lens. Cat Gennaro usually shoots with a 24mm lens, autofocus, and 200 to 400 ISO. She also recommends putting your camera a bit outside the cage so that you don’t see the bars in the photo.

5. Keep both eyes open. Cat Gennaro says that if you decide to dive without a cage, don’t turn your back to the sharks. “Tiger sharks are pretty docile, but great whites are ambush predators. Put your back up against the wall or go with a safety diver” she advises. Sounds like it’s a good idea to also keep your eyes open in back of your head!

I haven’t yet photographed underwater — let alone with sharks — but I would highly recommend that if you photograph great white sharks that you choose to go inside the cage and go with a safety diver and put your back up against the wall. You don’t want an opportunity to shoot photos from inside the shark!

Good luck!

For more underwater photography tips, read the Photobird Daily article “Underwater Photography Tips“.

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“Golden Glory” by Vicki Tinnon

“Golden Glory”
© Copyright Vicki Tinnon

I really like this stunning photo of a gorgeous, majestic golden eagle by Vicki Tinnon. It’s one of the many beautiful photos that Vicki Tinnon has submitted for the Photobird Photo of the Hour. You can see more of Vicki Tinnon’s inspiring photos in her Photobird photo album at photobird.com/vickitinnon. Vicki Tinnon won the Photobird Award for the Photobird Photo Contest for May 2008 with her photo “Moving In“.

Photobird.com is the easy way to share your photos. You capture and share so many great photos on Photobird.com that we created the Photo of the Hour feature to give you the opportunity to share your very best with the rest of the world.

It’s really easy to submit your favorite photos to be featured on the Photobird Photo of the Hour: Simply view the photo from your photo album and click the “Submit for Photo of the Hour” checkbox. There is no limit to the number of photos you can submit and we always like to get new submissions.

In return for each photo we use on the Photo of the Hour or People Places and Things, you get more storage space for your photo album so you can store more photos. Details are here.

If you’d like to keep some of your photos private while you share your favorite photos with the world, you can read how easy it is to do that with Photobird photo albums in our Photobird Daily article entitled “Show Off Your Photos, and Keep Some Private“.

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Photobird Photo Contest for July

“Just Ducky”
© Copyright John Maher

Many good things come in threes. Three’s Company. The Three Stooges. The Three Musketeers. And of course, one of photography’s most popular composition concepts, the Rule of Thirds. These three ducks are staying together in the photo shown above entitled “Just Ducky” by John Maher, winner of the Photobird Award for the Photobird Photo Contest for July 2007.

“Three” is the theme of the Photobird Photo Contest for July 2009. Enter the contest here. The contest is always free to enter and this month’s contest ends July 31, 2009 at 11:59pm Pacific time.

Photobird Photo Contest details:

• Free to enter. Enter your photo here.
• “Three” is the theme for this month’s contest.
• Your friends and family can vote for you. You can send them a reminder here.
• This month’s contest ends Friday, July 31, 2009 at 11:59pm Pacific time.

The two winners for the Photobird Photo Contest for July 2009 will each receive the following cool prizes:

• Photobird account with 500MB storage space
• $50 Amazon.com gift card, which you can use to buy anything on Amazon.com, such as:
  • memory card for your camera
  • photography book
  • tripod
  • adorable bunny slippers (with pose-able ears!)
  • 115-piece tool kit (with locking pliers!)
  • or use the $50 toward a new camera!

Read more details about the monthly contest here.

Every monthly Photobird Photo Contest has two winners. At the end of each month, we pick one winner for the Photobird Award, and we will tally your votes to determine the one winner for the People’s Choice Award.

See the previous contests and their photos at this link.

Go here to enter the contest. And be sure to have your family and friends vote for their favorite entries to help select the People’s Choice Award. (You can send them a quick little reminder here.)

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See more great photos and photography articles in the Photobird Daily.

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Photobird Photo Contest Winners for June

“Two Rainbows” © Copyright Ramon Prince

Thank you to everyone who entered the Photobird Photo Contest for June 2009! The theme for June was “Two”. Thirty-two photos were entered into the contest and we had a wide range of photo subjects shown in twos. There were brothers, friends, a lot of birds, frogs, a mother and child, a couple of monks, a couple in love, a couple made for each other, and lovebirds on the beach.

Congratulations to Ramon Prince, winner of the Photobird Award with the photo “Two Rainbows” shown above. I wrote about the photo a couple of weeks ago. I like the beautiful sunlight on the rocks, the rich saturation of the colors in the photo, and of course the rarely seen and even more rarely captured double rainbow. Click the photo above to see a larger version.

Congratulations to Chanchal Ghosh, winner of the People’s Choice Award with the photo “Butterfly“. I wrote about this photo a week ago and I like the vibrant colors and the sharpness of the butterflies in the photo. I also like that the colors are very earthy: greens and browns, especially the very rich browns of the butterflies.

Ramon and Chanchal will each receive the following prizes:

• Photobird account with 500MB storage space
• $50 Amazon.com gift card, which you can use to buy anything on Amazon.com, such as:
  • memory card for your camera
  • photography book
  • tripod
  • adorable bunny slippers (with pose-able ears!)
  • 115-piece tool kit (with locking pliers!)
  • or use the $50 toward a new camera!

Congratulations again to both winners!

“One” was the theme for May. “Two” was the theme for June. Guess what’s the theme for July! Yes, “Three” is the theme for the Photobird Photo Contest for July 2009. The Photobird Photo Contest is free to enter, so be sure to get your entry in and have your friends vote on their favorite photos before month’s end.

For more information about the contest, please check out the details here.

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Posing Basics

Photo © Copyright Michael Van Auken

The text and photo in this article are excerpted from The Art of People Photography by Bambi Cantrell and Skip Cohen. Copyright © 2007 by Bambi Cantrell and Skip Cohen. Reprinted by permission of Amphoto Books, an imprint of Watson-Guptill Publications. All rights reserved.

To read more about this book, read the article in the Photobird Daily entitled “The Art of People Photography“.

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Posing Basics

Position your subjects so that they create pyramid shapes or triangles. Put people in small clusters. Stay away from the firing-squad approach (everyone standing straight in a row). And, don’t be afraid to leave a little space between your subjects.

If any of the subjects are to be seated, the art of communication is critical; you’re not just a photographer any longer, you’ve graduated to director. You want to make sure your subjects don’t sit flat on their backside. Instead, have them turn or shift so that they sit on their bottom thigh (more on their side than on their bottom) and have them lean forward, toward you, so that the majority of their weight is behind them.

If your subjects are standing, have them turn approximately 45 degrees away from the camera, separate their feet, and push their front hip away from you while turning the front foot toward the camera.

Remember, you can always break the rules, providing you understand them up front. For example, there may be times when you’re going to set up a “group hug” and create the infamous bunch-of-grapes pose, perfect for a message that screams “We love you, Grandma!”

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The text and photo in this article are excerpted from The Art of People Photography by Bambi Cantrell and Skip Cohen. Copyright © 2007 by Bambi Cantrell and Skip Cohen. Reprinted by permission of Amphoto Books, an imprint of Watson-Guptill Publications. All rights reserved.

To read more about this book, read the article in the Photobird Daily entitled “The Art of People Photography“.

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Before you buy The Art of People Photography or anything else on Amazon.com, please click one of our links to Amazon.com on this page or anywhere on Photobird.com. For each product you buy after your click, we receive a small referral fee, at no additional cost to you. Your clicks and purchases allow us to continue to publish the Photobird Daily and the Photobird Learning Center. Thank you for your support!

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