TheChestbump.com

I thought this article was really cool. It talks about your rights as a photographer and is a brief description of what you are and aren’t allowed to photograph. Read the full text at Photojojo.

I. Anyone in a public place can take pictures of anything they want. Public places include parks, sidewalks, malls, etc. Malls? Yeah. Even though it’s technically private property, being open to the public makes it public space.

II. If you are on public property, you can take pictures of private property. If a building, for example, is visible from the sidewalk, it’s fair game.

III. If you are on private property and are asked not to take pictures, you are obligated to honor that request. This includes posted signs.

IV. Sensitive government buildings (military bases, nuclear facilities) can prohibit photography if it is deemed a threat to national security.

V. People can be photographed if they are in public (without their consent) unless they have secluded themselves and can expect a reasonable degree of privacy. Kids swimming in a fountain? Okay. Somebody entering their PIN at the ATM? Not okay.

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Anyone who says that the Deer population isn’t getting out of control is crazy. We had 9 deer in our front yard this morning. I had the camera handy so I snapped a couple pictures.

My mom just had her four kids go in for a sitting at the Picture People in the Danbury Fair Mall. The pictures came out great, but I feel like we really got ripped off. I was thinking the whole time that I should invest in a few more pieces of gear and be able to set up a temporary studio in a room in our house and take some portraits. I might be wrong, but it seems like we just sat down on an off white sheet and they snapped away with a flash. I have been reading about creating your own studio lighting inexpensively in the flurry of blog postings i get in my google rss reader for weeks now. I think it’s time to go back and investigate.

Anyway, she ended up spending 270 bucks on 2 framed photos, one was 13×8 and one was 4 4×4’s in a frame? I couldn’t believe that they charged $5 per sheet to make a photo black and white!!! Oh well. Where are those links? I figure 275 could have been spent better, and she has a second sitting scheduled, i’m sure she’ll spend at least half of that. This could be a good time to invest in some gear.

Jeff over at PhotoWalkPro made this great tutorial on how to make a HDR image. Watch the video below or head over to his site.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Everyone and their mom is talking about Microsoft’s offer to purchase !Yahoo for ~45 billion.  Thomas Hawk has taken an interesting perspective when it comes to Flickr and brings up some very good points.

Owning a digital camera can be a very fun and rewarding hobby.  At the same time it can be very overwhelming and sometimes daunting.  If you own a digital camera you have probably come across this term; Metering Modes.  For a great explanation on metering modes and how you can use them to your advantage and take your photography to the next level, check out this article at the digital photography school.

Some of the coolest pictures i’ve seen are taken using this technique. One of the best known HDR(High Dynamic Range) photographers around the Internet is a guy by the name of Trey Ratcliff. He has written an awesome tutorial on how to produce these images. You can see it below.

http://stuckincustoms.com/2006/06/06/548/

I hope to get the opportunity in the next few weeks to experiment with this a little bit. I need to get a few other software programs it looks like before I can.

Check out his top 100 flickr photos.

It would be really cool to have the opportunity to travel like that.

My favorite photography website for camera information is by far dpreview.com.  I have them listed in my links list and have been viewing the site for as long as I have owned a digital camera(a few years now).  My only gripe with them thus far is that they didn’t have reviews of lenses.  When I bought my Nikon D40 (chosen from their reviews) I wanted to expand it’s capabilities with a new lens.  dpreview.com is the first place I turned and came up empty handed.  Sure there are a bunch of other places to get reviews on Digital Camera Gear, but this is the best.

The good news is that they have a new lens review section! Sure they only have 2 canon lenses and 2 Pentax lenses to start, but let’s hope they get the Nikon Lenses review quickly.  I’m looking forward to their opinion and tests of the new Nikon 60mm F2.8 Micro AF-S Lens.

Nikon put together a website to assist user’s of it’s cameras with taking better pictures. Learn definitions of photography terms, learn how to take specific types of shots and even get tips for the types of photography you love.

Check it out here

Don’t forget to let us know what you think. Post some links below

I set up the tripod and turned all the lights off to try and get a cool picture of the embers in the fireplace in my room. Didn’t work so great, but some of the shots came out pretty cool.

Check out this photography blog for great tips and some really cool photos.

http://blog.epicedits.com/

Guiness meet Scout…

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Unlike Matthew, I don’t know the name of this camera, but it rocks! I don’t know what it does nor what SLR even means, but I know a good picture when I see it, and this thing can capture anything. We used it on waterfalls, people, flowers, objects, portraits… you name it, this Nikon mastered the task. Here’s to hoping Matt is discriminatory in the photos he posts…

Big chestbump to the Nikon D40. I picked this camera up last week after reading about digital slr’s for the past couple months. I really wanted to spend the money and get something a little bigger, but I am very happy that I didn’t. I love to take pictures and want to become more ‘professional’ with my picture taking, but for now, if you are interested, check out the review over at dpreview.com.

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