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Audrey Jones received her BFA in Photography at the University of Georgia in Athens. She has had multiple shows throughout Georgia and California. After graduating,...

Barry Umstead is proud of his distinction of being the oldest instructor at RayKo.  While it’s not true that he was Louis Daguerre’s...

Having your portrait taken can be an enjoyable and special event, but if you’re not used to being photographed, you might feel a little nervous out about your session. There’s no need to worry, though: when you choose a good professional photographer, it’s our job to make sure you look and feel great in your photos. But, with a little bit of planning, you can help make sure that you get the most out of your session.
Be fed, be relaxed, and BE RESTED. It’s in your best interest to be feeling energetic and in a good mood when you have a session with us. We want you to have fun during your session, and it’s no fun to pose for photos when you’re tired, stressed out, and your stomach’s growling!
Kids are even more sensitive to hunger and tiredness, so it’s even more important for family photos. Even if you’re willing to grin and bear a bit of discomfort, they might not be. If you’re including young children on your shoot, make sure to schedule around naps, and bring a quick snack just in case the shoot runs a bit longer than the kids are expecting.
Pick your perfect outfit. Start thinking about what you want to wear for your shoot before you get there. If you’re doing an individual session, it’s never a bad idea to bring a few different outfits, and shy away from heavy patterns or...

Exposure - Part 1One of the most frequent questions that I get during workshops and classes is: "What exposure should this scene be taken at?" That is sometimes a difficult question to answer because it the answer depends on so many variables. The simplest of which are calling out an aperture and shutter speed, and the most difficult aspects fall under what intent does the person asking the question have in making the photo in the first place. When the camera is set to auto exposure, it does the best job it can at rendering the scene presented before it as middle toned, however this might nit be what the photographer has in mind when making such a photo. For example in the previous technique in creating silhouettes, that last thing that you want is for the camera to render the scene as middle toned, for then the sky will be much brighter and the foreground objects that were supposed to be in silhouette are blotchy figures showing some detail but not enough to make them recognizable.So the first step in coming up with an exposure is to ask ourselves how do we want to render the scene before us. Is it to capture it as we see it, or do we wish to alter it so as to create a mood or stop motion or create blur. Once we have the intent in mind, we can go about working out the physical parameters needed to produce such an image.So to start, lets look at the physical parameters that we have to work with that will allow...

 
Ellie Brown- Two Girls: My Sisters 1996-2006
The Beginning
I began photographing my sisters in 1993 during my first photography class in high school. It wasn’t until I was a sophomore at Massachusetts College of Art that I began to take it seriously as a project and see its larger potential thanks to the urging of my professors Laura McPhee, Abelardo Morell, Nicholas Nixon, Virginia Beahan and Shelllburne Thurber.
I began trying to compare my sister’s very different lives to my own. We have different mothers; theirs being Jane my stepmother, but we share the same father I was fascinated by how I thought they were being socialized into Girls with a capital G. I loved when I could catch them staring in the mirror pretending to have breasts, playing with their toy ironing boards and dolls or playing dress-up in a princess dress. At the same time, I started photographing their friends.  What I discovered defeated my notion that there was an easy definition to what a girl is, as much as I wanted to find it.
At the time I began photographing seriously, Abby was seven and Emily was eight. Emily was adopted when I was 12 because my stepmother and father couldn’t conceive. As soon as they adopted her, Jane became pregnant with Abby. They are nine months apart where they were always in the same grade. I was absolutely thrilled to have two little sisters because I had always dreamed of having one, not to mention two.
When my sisters entered my life, I was going through some very rough pre-adolescent years. I had lost all sense of self-confidence due to mean female friends and male teasing. My mother didn’t know how to deal with my newly desired independence, which resulted in us fighting most of the time and my eventually being kicked out of her house and into my father’s. I strongly believe that the timing of their coming into my life during those years has everything to do with when I started photographing them and why I’ve continued for ten years. I always felt that their upper middle-class upbringing was privileged in many ways that I never could access in my own life. They had two parents, a stable household and many material...

 
May 1, 2009  Mission Statement
What is the difference between a community center devoted to photography and a photography school in the community? "Intent!" At Richard Stromberg's Chicago Photography Classes, we teach you how to get it right in the camera in the first place – “Plus”. What’s the Plus? We don’t just develop images we develop people through Photography. And that’s our Mission.
 
The journey from “Photo I” through to “exhibiting” in a show is one of challenge and personal growth. The operation of the camera will be demystified of course. More importantly you will learn to “see,” to see light, to see expression, to see the juxtaposition between yourself, your subject and others. On the journey to a group show you will gain perspective of yourself and others. You will be part of a group of people whose concern is for you to do your best, and your concern will be, for them to do their best.
 
We will provide you with a solid platform and resources that you will use for a one-person show – and on your journey of lifelong learning. Teaching is not our hobby, or part time job, teaching for growth is what we do, it’s who we are. "Learning will occur."
 
We are a Community Center in the spirit of Jane Addams who opened her Hull House settlement house in 1889. We don’t have a Hull mansion but we...

So you are going to buy a new camera!! Here is a suggestion to ponder: What is the items that make the best camera?? Answer: The lens!! Just like your reading glasses the camera lens is what make...

The Washington Photographer                                          by Eric Donaldson Tworivers
 
Summer Event Photos
In this column for the next couple issues we’re going to take a look at capturing photos of some of the great summertime events that happen in our part of the world.
We are fortunate to have a very robust activity calendar in the Pacific Northwest, including (but not limited to) racing (car, bike, foot, boat, you name it, we race it, it seems), fireworks displays, (smaller now, without our Fort Vancouver fireworks display, but there’s still a lot of fireworks out there), and lots of live music.
This issue we’re going to take a look at capturing an image of musicians in live performance, and we’ll compare what makes the difference between a ‘happy-snap’, and an image you could see in a national magazine, either of which YOU can create!
Every image we see has an ‘exposure range’ (the optical distance from the highest discernable highlight to the darkest dark that still has detail). This value is typically described in ‘stops’, which refers to the f-stops we use in exposure.
35-mm film  that makes prints from negatives...

Five minute fix
How To Remove Purple Fringes From Your Photos?
Purple fringing occurs in high contrast areas of photos, and gives the edges of dark subjects a horrible, hairy purple outline.
For ex. Foliage against bright, cloudy skies… Applying a...

This is a reply I wrote to an email I received at my MySpace Travel Writing and Photography page recently.  I wanted to share it with you here at TeachStreet.

Breaking into Travel writing

Eric:
 
Sorry I lost track of you message for a bit but finally remembered to answer your questions.
 
Travel writing is a bit easier to break into than travel photography so that is the good news.  Generally if you can do both the photography and writing you can begin getting published more quickly.
 
Major newspapers were once the best places to break into travel writing but these days the travel sections are nearly defunct.  They now buy very little freelance material.  The best places to break in now are online.  The problem with online is both the payment rates and getting your work seen among the hundreds of online travel sites is difficult.
 
My best...