Do you take pictures?

Do you take pictures? Of course you do, today everyone is a photographer, there’s a cameras in every cell phone and point and shoot digital cameras are cheaper and better than ever so just about everyone has a camera on him or her almost always.

But the real question is do you want to take better pictures? did you ever looked at a picture you took and it looked nothing like you wanted? Do you want control how the picture looks like and not just take whatever the camera gives you? Ever wondered how professional photographers do it?

And one final question - why am I asking this question on a blog that usually talks about productivity and technical programming techniques?

Well, it all begun just over a year ago, me and my wife were about to have a baby (our second), we were unhappy with the camera we had and my brother had a very nice DSLR (those big pro-looking cameras with interchangeable lenses) that was so much better than our camera in every conceivable way that we broke and bought a DSLR ourselves.

Right out of the box the new camera took pictures that were technically better than our old camera and was a joy to use – but the back screen, instead of showing the picture you are about to take shows an incomprehensible collection of numbers and icons (16 of them) I felt like the camera was mocking me and had to learn what all those things were.

And I did, while learning the technical side of photography I discovered two important things:

1. This is fun! From all the electronics devices I’ve bought over the years (and there are a lot of them) I’ve never enjoyed playing with any of them like this camera.
2. Photography is easy, it’s full of technical jargon and numbers that make it look complicated – but it’s not

Since then I’ve become one of the top 1% of users in a very active photo Q&A site and started a photography blog called useful photo tips – in this blogs I write in depth about specific techniques that let you control the picture you take.

Some of the techniques in the blog require a DSLR camera – but most is just as applicable to any camera and even camera phones.

So, if you want to take better pictures (and I believe that if you are reading this far you do) go over to www.UsefulPhotoTips.com and subscribe – and if you want to know anything photography related (for example how to take pictures of shiny objects) just send me a message and I’ll do the research, take test pictures and write an in depth tutorial for you.

www.UsefulPhotoTips.com is completely free, there are no ads on the site so I don’t get any money when you visit – actually I pay for the server, bandwidth and any e-mail I send if you subscribe via e-mail so my only motivation here is that I really enjoy writing photography tutorials.

See you there.