Sydney Photographer

Posted by admin on July 25th, 2008 filed in entertainpanel-photography

There is a variety of Sydney photographers available: from corporate events to weddings and fashion photoshoots. With the popularisation of digital photography, photography as a hobby or even as a business is booming. The difficult choice of discerning photographers is largely dependant on the client’s knowledge of photography as well as knowledge of what they really want. Sydney has plenty of possible photography locations and this article will highlight a few of them.

Here are a few outdoor locations that wedding Sydney photographers use. These locations may be a great idea to hold a wedding or to simply visit for a quick photoshoot right after the wedding ceremony. Near the city, Sydney photographer’s love using the steps and the columns of the building of NSW State library (North side). Alternatively they would use the Art Gallery of NSW just down the road. These locations are just a stones throw away from Sydney Botanical gardens - another photographers’ haunt. From there you can get the overused Sydney Opera house on Sydney Harbour bridge photo.

Towards the East, Sydney photographers go to visit the beaches of Bondi or Bronte. Slightly north and you’ve got North Head and Watson’s bay with the fantastic sunsets and the famous view of yachts. On the lower North Shore you can go to Balls Head and get a fantastic shot of the reverse view of the Opera house on Sydney Harbour bridge. Upper north shore have their parks and the northern beaches have - guess what? Their beaches. Western Sydney to South Western Sydney residents have access to local parks and reserves. Bankstown has a huge nature reserve which is popular for those wedding shots. Auburn also have their own botanical gardens.

Corporate Sydney photographers are easy to find. Simply look up the Yellow Pages and there are many of them: especially as a result of the latest boom in digital photography. Corporate events are mainly held in Sydney’s major hotel chains as well as local halls and custom built conference areas like Darling Harbour. Major hotels in Sydney that are popular with the corporate crowd are the 4 Seasons hotel, Hilton Hotel and Intercontinental Hotel.

Fashion Sydney photographers are also sought actively. Multinational companies, as well as fashion labels that don’t even sell to Australia, come to Sydney to have their catalogue photographed in this beautiful city. They use locations similar to the locations for wedding photography. It is also common for these companies to hire local talent.

Article by Marco Palmero. Marco Palmero is a Sydney photographer. You can visit his website at http://www.photos2view.com.

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Send Photographs as JPEGs - Discover How and Why

Posted by admin on July 24th, 2008 filed in entertainpanel-photography

Your time is valuable. It’s annoying when you receive an image which is too large, too small, or impossible to open.

And your customers, suppliers, or friends will hate you if you do it to them.

In this short article, you’ll learn how to send the right size image, in the right format. It’s surprisingly pretty simple, once you know how.

Image formats and sizes seem complicated at first, which is why people send images that are the wrong size or format. But once you understand a couple of basic principles, you’ll be able to easily size any image appropriately and send it by e-mail or upload it to a web site.

Begin with the end in mind

Take Stephen Covey’s advice - start by being clear about your goal. What is the person to whom you’re sending the image going to do with it? Is it just for them to look at on their computer, or will they need to print it? It makes a big difference (the reason is simple, and you’ll find out what it is in a minute). If the image is to be printed, how big?

Pixels and DPI

The answer to the sizing problem has to do with pixels. Unless you’ve been living in a bunker for the last five years, you’ve probably heard of them. You may even have an idea what a pixel is: the smallest element of a digital image - a single square (rectangle, actually) of a single colour.

The resolution of an image is expressed in PPI, or Pixels Per Inch. This is often confused with DPI (Dots Per Inch). Strictly speaking, DPI actually relates only to printers, but in practice, the terms are often used interchangeably.

Resolution essentially determines how large the image can be reproduced. This also depends on the output device (computer screen or printer). It’s important to understand the difference between size and resolution. The best way to do this is with an example…

Let’s say we have an image which is 300 pixels wide by 150 pixels high. This is the size or pixel dimensions of the image. Simple enough. But here’s the tricky bit (so pay attention):

The typical computer screen size, in pixels, is 1024×768 pixels. The resolution is usually 75 PPI (which means every square inch of screen ‘real estate’ is 75 pixels wide by 75 pixels high).

Therefore if we look at our 300 x 150 pixel image, it will be four inches (10 cm) wide and two inches (5 cm) high. Fine so far. But what if we now want to print that image?

Different printing devices can print at different resolutions. But generally, for an image to print well, it needs to have a resolution of at least 200 PPI, or preferably 300. Any less than this, and it will start to look chunky, fuzzy, or pixellated. Or all three!

You may have heard of printers which can print at 1200 DPI or more, but this is separate from the size of the image itself - there’s really no need to send a 1200 PPI image to your printer.

So you can see that our 300 x 150 pixel image will only print at a size of about 1 inch (2.5 cm) wide by half an inch high. Big difference!

By now you’re probably thinking, “OK, enough geeky explanations, how big should I size my image?!”

Here are some guidelines, then:

• On-screen viewing: height 500 to 700 pixels, width 700 to 900 pixels
• Print - 200 to 300 PPI. So for a 4×6″ (10×15 cm) print, the pixel dimensions should be 800 x 1200 at the smallest, or 1200 x 1800 at the largest. Obviously for a larger print, you need to increase the pixel dimensions accordingly.

The good news

Most imaging programs do all the calculations for you in the “resize” function. Here’s how to resize images in the most popular image editing applications:

In Photoshop (including Photoshop Elements), go to Image –> Resize –> Image Size, where you can either specify the new size in pixels; or in centimetres or inches. Don’t forget to set a suitable resolution for your end use (75 PPI for on-screen viewing, 200-300 PPI for print).

The procedure for PaintShop Pro is very similar: Go to Image –> Resize, where you can resize either as a percentage of the original size, specify the new pixel dimensions, or specify the absolute size in cm or inches and PPI.

If you don’t have either of these programs, you can even resize in Windows Paint. Choose Image –> Stretch, and then enter the new size as a percentage of the original size.

It’s also worth checking out Irfanview, a free image viewer which has been around for years. It supports every imaginable image format (and then some), and includes batch processing (allowing you to resize or otherwise adjust multiple images in one operation) as well as slide shows and a bunch of other features.

In Windows XP (and possibly some other versions) you can also check the size of your image without opening it, by hovering the mouse pointer over the file within Windows Explorer. A box soon pops up with all of the details.

Formats

OK, the last thing to think about is image format. Not only does this substantially affect the size of the file (in bytes), but also whether other people can open it!

You may have noticed that the most common format is JPEG (which stands for Joint Picture Experts Group, if you must know), often abbreviated to its three-letter Windows file extension, jpg.

Most likely your images are already in JPEG format if they have come from a digital camera, although some digital cameras can capture images in TIFF or RAW formats (which are beyond the scope of this article).

There are a couple of good reasons for the popularity of JPEG. The main one is size. A postcard-size, 300 DPI image takes up about 6 MB in it’s ‘native’ format. That’s one big e-mail! The same image saved as a JPEG takes up around one-tenth of that when saved as a JPEG at a decent quality setting.

(The other reason JPEG is a popular format is because it’s extremely widely supported - as well as digital cameras, every image editing or viewing application can handle it - which in turn ensures its popularity!)

So by ‘compressing’ the image, JPEGs take up a fraction of the space of most other formats. There must be a catch, right? Well, yes and no. Let’s explore a little deeper.

JPEG uses an algorithm (mathematical formula) to compress the image. And it does this essentially by “summarizing” parts of the image with less detail in them. In order to do this, and achieve the incredible ratio of compression which it does, it actually “throws away” some of the data (technically, it’s known as lossy compression - as opposed to lossless compression. An example of a lossless compression algorithm is zip).

Well, “throwing away” bits of your picture doesn’t sound too good, does it. Actually, it’s not as bad as it sounds. When you save an image as a jpeg, you’re presented with a choice of quality setting (exactly how this is presented varies from program to program). As you would expect, the higher the quality, the less compression is achieved, and vice versa. However, even at fairly high quality settings, the amount of compression is still substantial, yet the degradation (in the form of compression artifacts) is barely perceptible.

By the way, if you do need to send an image file which is larger than about 1 or 2 MB, a file transfer service like yousendit.com or megaupload.com is a much more elegant way to do it than e-mail. It saves clogging up both your own e-mail as well as the recipient’s. All you do is browse to the file on your computer and enter the recipient’s e-mail address, and the file transfer service does the rest.

Hopefully you’re now ready to give it a try! In summary:

1. Know your goal

2. Resize the image to the appropriate pixel dimensions, if required

3. Save in JPEG format with a reasonably high quality setting

Now go ahead and e-mail some pictures around the place!

Steven Pam is the founder of SmartShots Commercial Photography, based in Melbourne, Australia.
He specializes in photographing people, cars, and anything to do with aircraft.

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How to Choose Your Photo Paper Wisely

Posted by admin on July 23rd, 2008 filed in entertainpanel-photography

Choosing the right paper for printing is one of the most important factors in producing great prints. Be it pictures or text, you usually just borrow what’s in the copier. But the right paper makes an immense difference in print quality. To make the right choice, we must know the basics of selecting and printing on paper for general use and pictures.

Paper Basics:

To choose the right paper for the required print keep in mind -the opacity, brightness, weight, caliper and finish. First, it is important to know what you are printing. Black and white documents are very different from full color photos. There are some multipurpose papers which are good for both. But if you want crisp, vibrant photos that will last a long time, then of course you need to use paper which is designed just for photos.

Opacity:
This means how see-through is the paper? The more the opacity, less of the printed text will bleed through to the other side. This is especially important for double-sided prints. High opacity paper is considered good for documents such as brochures, newsletters and calendars. Photo papers have high opacity of about 94-97 usually.

Weight:
Paper weight is expressed in pounds (lb.) or as grams per square meter (g/m2).This ranges from light weight newsprint to very heavy cardboard. Mostly quality business paper is 20 to 24 pound bond; the greeting card paper is heavier - usually in the range of 60 - 65 lb.

Brightness:
Brightness basically means the amount of light reflected from the surface of the paper. Higher brightness will produce crisper text with better contrast and a brighter background for color and images. It is expressed in numbers 1 to 100. Photo papers have brightness number in high 90’s. But then not all papers are labeled with their brightness rating. You will simply have to compare two or more papers side by side to compare their brightness.

Caliper:
This is basically the thickness of the paper. Thickness affects its handling; whether the paper is stiffer and will resist creases and tears etc. Its unit of measure is ‘mil’. Photo paper is usually 7 to 10 mils thick.

Finish:
The finish of the paper can be matte glossy with lessening degrees of glossiness as semi-gloss, soft-gloss or satin-gloss. It is the coating on paper as glossy photo paper gives the printed photos the look and feel of photographs. Glossy papers take time in drying as the coating keeps the paper from readily absorbing the ink. However, quick dry gloss finishes are available nowadays. Mirror-like finish of high-gloss media is preferred for color photographs and smooth matte finishes for black and white photographs and business documents.

Paper has come a long way in the last decade. Choosing the right paper for printing is one of the most important decisions in creating great pictures. It is also important to know that the paper designed for your printer looks and performs better every time. The print depends upon what happens when the ink hits the paper. The wrong amount of ink can lead to jagged images that are too saturated or sometimes too light.

The synergy of ink, paper and printer is important so as to create color photos that are as bright as your memories. The latest coating technology prevents photo jams, curling and printed pages from sticking together.
Lastly, you know how sunlight damages a printed page. Special photo inks and special coating premium photo papers are available that resist the effects of indoor halogen and glowing light. You will be able to frame your photos and display them proudly as they will resist fading longer than most traditionally developed photographs.

Therefore, the right printer paper will not only give better results, it will also be more economical in the long run. There will be fewer paper jams and the output will look great every time.

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