Tips on children photographing

I thoroughly enjoy photographing children and have opportunity to do quite a bit of it lately after many of our friends have had babies.
Probably the most important tip I’ve learned in photographing them is to get on their level. So many of my friends show me photos of their kids which are taken from 4 or so feet above the child which does nothing but dwarf them and make them look almost toy-like.
Getting on your hands and knees or crouching down before you take a shot of a child takes you into their world and helps you to engage with them through the images you take.

How to resize picture in MacOS

If you used blogger or google page, or wordpress... you will see sometimes you need to change your image size because most of the websites only accept very small image.
This is a step-by-step instruction with illustration for you.
Step 1: Open Finder and navigate to your image folder

Step 2: Open your image with Preview application by right click and choose open with Preview

How to make your image searchable on the web

Today, I want to show you how to make your photo searchable on the web with picture illustration
Step 1: Insert your image to your Blogspot by clicking "Insert image" icon from Compose or HTML mode. Click on your image, a menu will appear with many options such as: Resize, Allignment, Add caption, Properties and Remove

Step 2: Click "Add caption" and type in the caption for your image. This information will be visible when the image is loaded

Step 3: Click "Properties" and add information for Title text (this text will appear when readers move their mouse over the image) and Alt text (this text will help search engines recognize your image)

Those are 3 simple steps to make your images searchable, especially with google. Enjoy blogging and share this post for other blogger.

@Lam Hoang

My sunrise weekend

I am a hobbyist photographer and usually go out with my camera on weekends. Last weekend, as usual, I was ready for my sunrise shoot in Mentone beach. Every thing was ready for the wonderful morning, the weather was forecast to be partly cloudy which is my favorite. I love to shoot sunrise landscape with clouds patterns in orange and colorful sky. Tripod ready, filters ready, and certainly my best friends, canon 60D and Tamron 17-50mm f2.8. I am absolutely ready to go.

Canon 60D	Tripd	Tamron 17=-50mm f2.8

My best friends

Got up at 6.30am, leave home around 6.45am and got to the beach at 7.15am. I have about 15 minutes before the sun comes up. The sky turns to wonderful colors, many sea gulls and pelicans there. I took the first photo of the sky. DO NOT forget to check the settings which is: aperture priority - f9, ISO 100. That's great.

Three Lenses You Should Own

It’s a question I hear a lot from new photographers: “what lenses should I buy?”

And while there are a lot of different types of lenses appropriate for many different situations and needs, time and time again I find myself primarily relying on three lenses in my bag: a fast general purpose zoom (18-50mm), a macro lens and a telephoto zoom (70-200mm). These three lenses will give you enough versatility to shoot in almost any conditions. Also, these three lenses are available for just about every camera system and lens mount on the market.

The general purpose zoom

This is the lens that sits on my camera the most. For APS-C cameras, something in the 18-50mm range is best… for 35mm format cameras, a 24-70mm will work. This will give you the ability to go fairly wide while also being able to zoom into objects off in the distance. This lens might be your kit lens, but it should preferably be fairly fast (a fixed f/2.8 if possible) to give you greater control over depth of field. It makes a great “walkabout” lens when you aren’t sure what you will be shooting.

Tamron 17-50 2.8 VC

Seven Secrets of Highly Successful PhD Students

 

The conference “The 7 secrets of highly successful PhD students” given by Hugh Kearns, who works at Flinders University in Australia, introduced psychological and educational research to develop workshops and materials to help PhD students, academic staffs to be more effective in their daily life.

I was fascinated of how well he describes our daily routine and the tips he gave to us in order to improve the quality of our working life. So, I want to share some of his ideas.

Canon EOS 7D Mark II First Impressions

This is a personal thought on 7D mark II from Laszlo Pusztai

When I first picked up the 7D Mark II at this year's Photokina show, it struck me how similar it feels to the 5D Mark III. I thought that if image quality is there, I would definitely buy one. Due to this similarity with the 5D Mark III, I instantly knew that ergonomics and handling will be great. The only haunting question was image quality, but lacking any useful reviews, I had to place my order without knowing anything about it. My primary goal was to certify the camera for my ShutterCount app - and actually using it for photographing birds came as second. Purchasing blindly wasn't that big risk, because if it somehow turns out to be something I don't like, I would be able to easily sell it given the high demand.

And as you may guess, I really like the 7D Mark II. But being a perfectionist, I don't think everything is as glorious as marketing materials may suggest. Some of my observations may look strange, or don't even important to you and your style of photography, but this is what I think of the camera.

Handling

As I mentioned, handling is virtually identical to the 5D Mark III. I can switch between them effortlessly. The 7D is a tad smaller, and is on the edge of being comfortable in my large hands. Buttons and dials are almost the same on the two cameras, with two notable differences.