The Best Greeting Cards Are Those With The Personal Touch

Looking through the ranks of greeting cards on offer in most stationers and card shops, it can sometimes feel as though it's more or less impossible to find exactly what you're looking for. Spotting an image and sentiment which exactly matches both the personality of the recipient and the nature of the occasion which you wish to mark can often be incredibly tricky. After all, you want the person receiving the card to know just how much they mean to you, and making do with a card which is less than ideal won't really do this. One way of making sure the message you wish to convey gets across loud and clear, however, is to create personalized greeting cards, meaning that you have total control of every aspect of the cards appearance and the message which it gets across.

In the past, creating your own card would have required at least a modicum of artistic skill, as well as specialized materials and equipment, and for this reason most people would have felt it was a step beyond their capabilities. No matter how delighted a recipient may be upon discovering you've taken the time to fashion a card on their behalf, this pleasure would be tempered somewhat if the card in question appeared somewhat shoddy and amateur in nature. Digital technology, however, has made it possible for anyone to select an image from their own collection of photographs and use this as the basis for a card.

With every image you've captured on your digital camera, mobile phone or hand held tablet to choose from, finding one which is absolutely perfect should be simplicity itself. If you wish to celebrate an anniversary, for example, then you might wish to use a shot of the happy couple together, whereas something like a thank you card following a child's birthday will have a massive impact if it features an image of the child in question happily playing with their gifts. Once you've made your choice, you merely have to upload the selected image to the relevant website and then use the software provided to tweak and modify every feature, from the size and shape to the presence of any text. Once you've done this, the card will be printed to the highest professional standards and will come complete with an envelope, ready to send and make someone's day. A card such as this won't just delight on the day it's sent, but will continue to give pleasure for years afterwards. The same simple techniques can be used to take whole collections of special photographs out of the photo albums in which they now reside and have them, instead, displayed in all their glory in bespoke, luxurious photo books.

Whether you wish to create small items such as greeting cards to celebrate special days, or push the boat out with top of the range photo books to give as once in a lifetime gifts, the options opened up by digital photography are virtually boundless.

Preserve your golden memories of life by engraving those precious greeting cards and online photo books through Albelli

View the original article here

Set the Mood of Your Audience by Using Background Video Loops

Background video loops are short movie clips that are used to spice up your videos. They are also known as video loops, motion loops, movie background, etc. As the name suggests, they seamlessly loop into the video giving it a natural look. These background clips come handy when using green screen photography for removing the green screen and replacing it with the clip that matches the theme of the video. These are an amazing way to add entertainment to your work so that it captivates your audience. When used judiciously, they can work wonders for you by saving your time and hassle of doing everything by yourself.

Why use Motion loops?

An increasing number of producers prefer Motion Video Backgrounds over the in-house clips. This is because making such a clip is time-consuming. You will need a designer or sometimes a team of designers to make them. Hiring them will be an additional investment. Moreover, you have to ask them to make a new clip every time you need one. The most challenging part of this entire process is ensuring high quality of the clip. If your designers are not really good at their work, the quality of loop produced by them may not satisfy your audience.

You can conveniently abolish these issues by buying royalty free motion background packs. Use them whenever you want and as many times as you want. If you buy them from credible sources, you don't have to bother about the quality. The most important benefit is that buying these packs will be much cheaper than hiring designers.

Film loops are frequently used in movies behind the video title. They are used in prayer videos where they are played behind the scripture along with lyrics to give it a movie look. Wedding videographers use Wedding Video Backgrounds to make an awesome video where the bride and the groom standing in front of a satin background. These days, even video loops are played during live shows in large screens that are present in the background when the candidates perform.

The demand of loop videos has grown so much that they are available in almost any theme you want, be it abstract, corporate, holidays, romance, nature, wedding and many more. These endless varieties make your work even easier.

Choosing a motion background

Although buying loops is a great way to save time and money on your video production, you must make sure you choose a clip that entirely compliments your video. It should integrate with the original film neatly so that it seems as if the loop was exclusively made for this movie.
While choosing the video background, keep your audience in mind. Make sure you choose something that matches their taste. Even if you choose a very attractive background, if it irritates your audience, your efforts will be wasted.
The background should be of high quality so that it enhances the look of your video. A low quality clip will not loop well and will also degrade the overall quality of your movie.

Use a high quality background for your movie and give it a magical effect.

View the original article here

Wedding Photography Tips for Amateurs

Wedding Photography Tip For Amateurs #1 - Be Prepared

Knowing that this is an one time event, you must get it right. So make sure that you have everything that you might think you need. If possible, get someone to help. Even if it's just to make sure that all of the people who need to be photographed are nearby. This will save you lots of time and energy. Have an extra camera, that you can give to your assistant to capture some important shots that you may be to busy to see.

What else can an assistant do? Anything that will make your job go easier! How about making sure that the brides dress is laying correctly, or moving an object that may interfere with the background out of the shot. There are so many things that you may not think about when you accept the job. And the pressure will be on. So, a second set of hands, eyes and ears may prove to be invaluable.

Tips for Amateurs #2 - Keep Your Check List Nearby

Keep your check list nearby. Theses days it is easy to handle your check list. How about making a list on you smart phone or iPad? These kinds of technology are must haves, and you won't have to worry about misplacing a sheet of paper.

List 'must have' shots you need to take. It is also important to think outside the box, here. As an amateur wedding photographer, you want to be called for another wedding, and this kind of thinking will help to grow your client base.

Besides the usual shots of the couple dancing or showing their ring hands one on top of the other try these tips:

1. The groom carrying the bride, (as in over the thresh hole).

2. Give each of the brides maids a disposable cameras and get a shot of them posed to take a shot of the bride. Do the same with the groomsmen.

3. Show the emotion of the father and the bride, as she is adjusting his tie.

These are just a few examples that will make your images special and unique. Give it some thought, you will come up with more ideas.

Wedding Photography Tips For Amateurs #3 - Include a Special Photo Shoot In Your Package For The Couple

This special shoot will help you to stand out from the crowd of other amateur wedding photographers.

As far as weddings go, most people don't think about the weeks or days before the wedding. These are special also. Ask if the couple would be interested in some photojournalism type shots of the two of them before the marriage. These might be shots of the couple together doing things such as having an intimate dinner, or hanging out partying together. This will all depend on the couple and how they interact together.

Weddings are special and as the photographer you are responsible for capturing the memories of the day. Being prepared and going the extral mile, will help thing go smoothly and stay on track.

Mary E. Foster, MFA, is a professional photographic artist. She enjoys teaching as well as working with all aspects of photography, from developing film, and making black and white prints in her darkroom to shooting digital imagery and editing it on the computer. You can find many more helpful photography tips, resources and lots of inspiration by visiting her website at http://www.photography-tips-and-resources.com/. While you are there sign up to receive a new photography tip every week through your email.

View the original article here

The Nikon D5100: An Excellent Choice for the Beginner to DSLR Photography

The Digital Revolution

The last decades our world has experienced a revolution: The Digital Revolution. Digital cameras and smart phones allow almost everybody to take nice photos. Photography is a child's play. The popularity of digital cameras created such a huge market that the uninitiated must be overwhelmed by all the choices.

Point-and Shoot vs. DSLR

Having taken photos with a smart phone or point-and-shoot camera people might suddenly discover a new hobby or even passion for photography. This can find its expression in an appetite for more, for a 'real camera' that is a reflex camera with interchangeable lenses, a DSLR or Digital Single Lens Reflex.

The Nikon D5100 - Your Access to more Creativity

Photographic gear on the shelves ranges from top-of-the-line professional tools like the Nikon D4 to entry-level consumer cameras.

This is where the Nikon D5100 comes into play. The D5100 sits between the smaller D3100 and the high-end D7000, but offering basically the same features and quality as the much more expensive D7000.

Key Features

16.2 Mega Pixel DX-format (1.5x FOV crop) CMOS sensorSide-articulated 3.0"LCD monitor (920,000 dots)Fast 11-point Autofocus System (with 3D tracking)Sensitivity range ISO 100-6400 (expanded up to 25,600)HD movies with Full Time Autofocus (1080p, 720 or WVGA)Continuous shooting at 4 fpsIn-camera effect modes for stills and videoIn-camera HDR (High Dynamic Range)Comes with Nikkor 18-55mm f3.5-5.6G VR lensBuilt-in Speedlight Flash with Intelligent i-TTLLive View

Handling and Feel

Digital cameras come a long way. The Nikon D5100 offers today quality and features that were not long ago only found with professional cameras. First of all, this camera with its high-resolution 16 Megapixel DX CMOS sensor and EXPEED 2 Image Processing Engine delivers an outstanding image quality. With only 822 grams, including kit lens, this small and light camera handles very well. The newbie might be confused first by all these buttons and levers on the body, but will soon realize how intuitive the layout and functions are. This is how the D5100 benefits from Nikon's decades long experience of being at the very front of professional photo gear. Dedicated buttons make a fast and efficient way of shooting possible.

The centerpiece of the D5100 is its vari-angle 3 inch LCD monitor with 920,000 dots and 170 degrees wide viewing angle, allowing for versatile high quality viewing and playback.

Try a high angle for overhead shots, shoot from the hip for candid shots or a low vantage point for looking up into the sky and last not least have fun taking a controlled self-portrait. The virtually 100% frame coverage makes it easy to check the composition while using Live View or shooting HD movies.

The clear layout of the control panel shows the most relevant settings like File Format, White Balance, ISO, Autofocus, Metering, Bracketing etc. at a glance. With pressing just two buttons, Info and Multi Selector, changes can be made easily.

The top of the body gives access to an array of additional functions. The main dial includes all the various Modes, besides an All-Auto Mode there are the standards like P=Program, S=Shutter Priority, A=Aperture Priority and M=Manual Mode.

For those willing to explore more options, there are Scene Modes like Portrait, Landscape, Child, Sports etc. and even Special Effects like Night Vision, Color Sketch, Miniature Effect, Selective Color etc.

Tell your Story with a Movie

The Nikon D5100 is not only an excellent still camera, but allows also high-quality movie-making with its Full HD capabilities (1920x1080 @ 30, 25, 24 frames per second, NTSC or PAL), the most advanced in continuous autofocus tracks your moving subjects with great accuracy. Live View and D-Movie start button are conveniently located on the top and allow video sequences up to 20 minutes. In-camera editing and creative tools will improve your still and movies. There is even a special jack for an external stereo microphone to achieve professional sound quality.

Nikon Software

The Nikon D5100 comes with a simple, yet useful software ViewNX2, allowing some basic editing like Resizing, Cropping, RAW processing and Movie editing.

David Pintz has passion for photography. Check out his latest niche site, Nikon D5100 and additional recommendations for Nikon Lenses.

View the original article here

Take Pictures Online

The amount of files stored on computers and mobile phones is growing more and more these days. One of the main reasons for this is that it's becoming much easier to take high quality pictures and make HD video's wherever you are these days because more and more people own a smartphone that can do these things.

Where do we store all of these digital media files? Most people store all of their digital media on their computer and/or their smartphones. But what if your computer or smartphone loses these files due to a crash or another mishap? Most of these digital media files are very precious because most of the photo's or video's you make display a special occasion or event such as the first steps of your child or another memorable event. All of the countless people that have experienced the loss of all of their precious digital media wish they had made a backup so they could recover all of those special moments in life.

Maybe it's worth considering a safe and easy way to backup your precious files. Until now, backing up your files could be done on cdr, dvdr or usb stick. But with the amount of data that comes with the high quality photo's and video's these days, it's time to look for another way to safely store your digital media files. The safest and easiest way to do this is by backing up your files online. So maybe it's time to take pictures online. This way of safely backing up all of your files is also known as cloud storage. It's a fast, safe and very easy way to backup all of your precious files and there's more than enough space available to store all your hd photo's and video's and you can even backup all of your music.

Another great benefit of this type of file storage is that you can also access all of your files with your smartphone. So if you want to free some memory on your smartphone, you can easily store some files online. On the other hand you can also download some files from your online storage to your smartphone. This can be very handy if you want to listen to a song that's not on your phone or if you want to show a picture to someone that came from your computer. With the growing amount of people who can go online with their smartphone, there is also a growing demand in online file storage.

Find out more about online storage

View the original article here

Tips To Taking The Perfect Picture

Taking great pictures and seeing the end results can be so much fun. However, it involves just a tad more than just a love for taking pictures in order for you to take a lot of great pictures, especially if you are doing it as a career. In addition to having a love for it, you will also need to have knowledge and know how to get the best possible pictures when you are involved in photography.

In order to become a very good photographer and to get into the exciting field of photography, one of the things that you will need to do is to get to know your device well, especially if you are into digital photography. This is so due to the digital cameras of today are so much more advanced than the ones that were designed ten years ago. If you are an amateur photographer you may not be too versed at using a new digital camera, and as such, your user guide should be your best friend. It will tell you how to use the different settings and about all the other important aspects of your camera such as how to zoom, crop, cut, edit, etc. You just need to learn as much about your camera as you possibly can, in the same way that you would learn about any other tools you work with for any other job.

There is a manual mode on many digital cameras these days. As such, it is advisable that you do some experimentation on manual mode to better learn about your camera. In addition, many digital cameras have several preset features that will help you to capture great photographs in many conditions, in the morning, at dusk, indoors, outdoors, while the subjects are in motion, etc. After you have become accustomed to your camera, you should then use your manual mode, do that you can learn more about zooming, exposure time, picture resolution, focus, among many other exciting things about your camera.

You should also learn about using a tripod stand when you are into serious photography, but also if you are doing photography as a hobby. This can help you to get pictures that are more in focus as you will not have to be dealing with your shaky, sweaty hands holding the camera. It will also allow you to be in group pictures, instead of having to be the one taking the pictures and always being left out of fun, family pictures.

View the original article here

William Klein Exhibits His 1950s Series "Rome" in Paris, France

The Maison Europeenne de la Photographie in Paris has recently opened a new series of exhibitions, including William Klein's work from Rome in the late 1950s.

Having myself lived in Rome for six months and Italy for more than 4 years, it's always interesting for me to see photographs of Italy and the Italians. The cities, even when falling down, remain beautiful and the people always have a special charm.

Overall, I feel the exhibition is successful and interesting although I have a few issues, particularly with choices concerning style of presentation. That said, it's inevitable to compare this work on Rome with his preceding project on his native New York. And I must say that the Rome work, while interesting and with some very strong images, doesn't attain the same level of his work from New York. I'm not sure if this is a consequence of spending more time in New York, a better understanding of New York than Rome and Italian culture, perhaps his lack of a mastery of the Italian language or if it's simply a reflection of the different character of the two people and the two cities, but the Rome work, with exceptions, seems less powerful. Certainly it is much less edgy than the New York work. We don't have kids angrily pointing guns at the photographer or faceless adults pointing guns at kids but while the text presented with the exhibit (one of my biggest disappointments about the show) makes frequent references to the intense poverty in and around Rome after World War II we don't tend to sense the same kind of misery and hardship that the work from New York often shows.

In general, while there are some quite beautiful photographs in the exhibition, it sometimes did feel more like the view of a casual tourist who is enchanted with the Italians and the often beautiful Italian climate. While there are street shots of passersby--just as in the New York series--they don't always seem to have the same raw energy as the New York work.

Now, in terms of the actual installation of the exhibition, there were a couple points that I found a bit troubling. The main one was the handling of the text. Frequently photos were presented with large laminated sheets of rather voluminous text. It was never really clear what the exact relationship of this text to the photographs was. Mostly it seemed to present general commentary on Roman or Italian society. I found it to be much too wordy and I regretted that none of the photos had a simple label indicating the date and location of the photographs. Each gallery did have a plastified sheet that spoke of nearly all the photographs--and here one could find the location of the photos. However, this also was filled with lengthy texts which were primarily historical quotes from writers, historians, etc. commenting on something relating to the photo. While it was somewhat interesting to hear what Goethe or Dickins or some other literary figure had said one hundred or more years before Klein about the section of Rome shown in Klein's photograph, I generally found it irrelevant--only barely giving me a greater sense of understanding of Italian or Roman culture or history--and offering no insight into the work of Klein.

The other issue was the size of the reproductions. Many of these images where large poster size. They were good quality reproductions and some of the images held up well at this size but many of the images didn't live up to the scale. Clearly they're were some quick and minor snapshots that Klein took that the museum decided to present (already questionable in some cases) and at a size that their importance couldn't live up to. Clearly the museum was trying to present an exhibition that would seem to live up to Klein's reputation from his early photographic work. However, I don't think this work is always at the highest level and it may actually have come across more strongly if the photos had been presented at the much smaller size that they were undoubtedly printed in the late 50s and early 60s. In essence, I think the museum was trying to fill a big space and to suggest something like a blockbuster show and so they inflated the image sizes but the consequence is making the work actually look weaker and Klein more full of himself for wanting to present huge photos of some less than brilliant shots.

The exhibit is definitely worth visiting, there are many very strong and beautiful photos. In my opinion this is not the best work of Klein's career but it does give us a glimpse of Italy in the late 50s. It's not the powerful vision he had of New York but it's interesting although less resolved and less distilled. I'm not sure we really get to the heart of who the Romans are or what the reality of their world was in the late 50s. Maybe Klein didn't spend enough time in Rome, maybe his Italian language skills weren't strong enough to enable him to have the bantering interaction with his subjects one imagines he had in New York. In the end it's a "nice" show but not a great exhibition.

Michael McCarthy
Atelier Vagabond

Michael McCarthy writes photo- and arts-related reviews for the Atelier Vagabond blog while also offering short photo tours, workshops and classes in photography and art in the Paris, France region. http://www.ateliervagabond.com/. To see more of Michael's personal art work, visit his site: http://www.michael-mccarthy.com/

View the original article here