PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography is an art. It takes practice, skill and an eye for the unexpected. Not all people take the time to study a landscape, animal, building or other subject to find the hidden depths within, but when they do, they often find great meaning in the photo they take. Photographers spend their lives looking for new and different ways to capture a subject. Digital photography is just another way to take a picture. There are many advantages to working with digital photography.

The darkroom is out, the computer printer is in for most of us who use digital photography. We can send our pictures to all our friends with just a few clicks. Digital photography makes taking a picture easy by taking some of the guesswork out of it. With the LCD screen on a digital camera, you can now see the photo you have just taken without having to wait an hour or more for the film to develop. We are no longer limited by the capacity of film, but by the capacity of memory cards. Most memory cards are 32MB or 1GB, depending on how much you've spent on equipment.

Digital photography can involve professional cameras with interchangeable lenses and manual controls, or it can be a simple point-and-shoot camera. Whether you are looking for a professional image or something that will make your friends laugh, digital photography has made taking photos easier. As I said, we can see the picture before we ever print it, and many digital cameras also allow you to crop and save the photo before printing.

Digital cameras come in all sizes, from the key ring camera to the professional. We have all had a bit of fun with digital on our mobile phones. If you are more interested in the professional side of photography, the first digital camera you choose should have high resolution interchangeable lenses. It can be automatic if you feel more comfortable with the lighting settings, but most also have ISO settings, aperture and shutter speed choices.

As with older photographers, setting up your shot is half the fun. Determining the settings you need to use for the light is the other. Setting up your shot still requires an eye for the unusual, or for making an ordinary scene unusual. Walk around the subject and look for every possible angle, you may even decide to take several shots to get the best angle. This is where digital photography beats film cameras every time. Once you have looked at all the angles and taken the photos, you can see if the effect you want is there. It is a quicker way to learn how to set shutter speed and aperture for a shot, and how to use lighting, because you can see the results while you are still looking at the scene.

Digital photography may seem like it doesn't use all the skills you learned on your old camera, but this is definitely not true. In fact, digital photography enhances your learning while you are still in front of the scene. Instead of spending hours in a darkroom or waiting in a queue, you can get the picture you want on the spot. It certainly makes for better holiday photos when you can see if your thumb is over the lens, or the camera strap is in the way, or worse, someone just walked in front of you. Digital photography, like everything else, has evolved to give us a new way of taking pictures.