How to Photograph Christmas Lights

From Wikihow.com

Christmas lights are beautiful to behold, and it's not every day of the year that you get to see them. But how do you capture their beauty in photos? Dim light, flickering lights and various backgrounds can all make photographing Christmas lights a little tricky. Nevertheless, you can overcome these obstacles with a little preparation.

Steps

1

Photograph outdoor Christmas lights while it's still daylight but not too sunny. It's much harder to get good photos when the lights are in the darkness. At least for outdoor Christmas lights, use late-afternoon light to provide some depth behind already switched-on lights. It can make for a highly desirable effect in your photos. Photograph in the late afternoon, in the "magic hour" just before it begins to get dark (dusk).

• Taking pictures during dusk will often get you a lovely atmosphere shimmering with vibrant background colors — from grays and blues to pinks and reds.
• Plus, the background will still be slightly visible, adding textural contrast instead of that swarming sea of black beside the Christmas lights.
• Photos taken during the brighter part of the day won't show the Christmas lights very well unless the day is very dark. Experiment a little with when you take the pictures.

Edit step

2

Fill your frame. Make sure your picture includes everything interesting and noteworthy that you can possibly fit in. Don't take a picture of a single, lit home far away and leave most of your picture wanting a subject. Fill your frame and your photos will instantly look more professional.

Rule of Thirds - Darren Rowse

The Rule of Thirds is perhaps the most well known principle of photographic composition.

The “Rule of Thirds” one of the first things that budding digital photographers learn about in classes on photography and rightly so as it is the basis for well balanced and interesting shots.

I will say right up front however that rules are meant to be broken and ignoring this one doesn’t mean your images are necessarily unbalanced or uninteresting. However a wise person once told me that if you intend to break a rule you should always learn it first to make sure your breaking of it is all the more effective!

What is the Rule of Thirds?

The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts. As follows.

21 Settings, Techniques and Rules All New Camera Owners Should Know - Darren Rowse

Some are very basic while others go a little deeper – but all have been selected from our archives specifically for beginners and new camera owners. Enjoy.

Introductions to Useful Modes and Settings on Your Digital Camera

1. Digital Camera Modes Explained – I spoke with a family friend recently who had just bought a new point and shoot camera. She came up to me with her camera when no one was watching and embarrassedly asked me if I could tell her what all the little icons on the dial on top of her camera meant. This article explains what each of these most common digital camera modes means and does. Knowing them can take your shots to the next level.

2. Aperture and Shutter Priority Mode – this introduction talks you through these two very useful settings that can be found on many digital cameras. Aperture and Shutter Priority modes take you out of Automatic mode giving you more control over your images – but don’t thrust you fully into manual mode – they are great settings to explore and master.

3. Introduction to White Balance – one of the most common problems that I see in beginner photographer images are shots with incorrect color. We’ve all seen them – portraits where your subjects teeth and eyeballs (and everything else) has a yellowish tinge. Learn what causes this and how to combat it with this tutorial on White Balance.

Digital Camera Modes - Darren Rowse

http://digital-photography-school.com/digital-camera-modes/

Darren Rowse is the editor and founder of Digital Photography School andSnapnDeals. He lives in Melbourne Australia and is also the editor of theProBlogger Blog Tips. Follow him on Instagram, on Twitter at @digitalPS or on Google+.

This week I did an informal survey on a few of my digital camera owning friends and asked them to nominate which shooting modes that they most commonly use on their digital cameras (they use a range of point and shoot and DSLR digicams).

The results of this little survey didn’t really surprise me – Automatic Mode was the overwhelming response from both beginner and the more advanced users alike (a little surprising to me). In fact three of the people I questioned responded by asking ‘is there any other non Automatic mode?’

As a result I’ve decided to take a run through the basic shooting modes that most digital cameras have (both point and shoot and DSLRs have most of these).

While this is pretty basic information for many readers I hope it will be helpful for those right at the beginning of their digital photography journey who are yet to venture out of Automatic Mode.

Automatic Modes

Automatic Mode

I suspect no one will need any introduction to this mode (as it seems most digital camera owners use it). Auto mode tells your camera to use it’s best judgement to select shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, focus and flash to take the best shot that it can. With some cameras auto mode lets you override flash or change it to red eye reduction. This mode will give you nice results in many shooting conditions, however you need to keep in mind that you’re not telling your camera any extra information about the type of shot you’re taking so it will be ‘guessing’ as to what you want. As a result some of the following modes might be more appropriate to select as they give your camera a few more hints (without you needing to do anything more).

Portrait Mode

When you switch to portrait mode your camera will automatically select a large aperture (small number) which helps to keep your background out of focus (ie it sets a narrow depth of field – ensuring your subject is the only thing in focus and is therefore the centre of attention in the shot). Portrait mode works best when you’re photographing a single subject so get in close enough to your subject (either by zooming in or walking closer) so that your photographing the head and shoulders of them). Also if you’re shooting into the sun you might want to trigger your flash to add a little light onto their face.

Students Learn A Powerful Lesson About Privilege

6 Money Goals You Should Conquer in Your 20s

Are you a twenty-something who feels overwhelmed by your personal finances? You're not alone. When you're just starting out and learning to manage your money, there's a lot to learn and many milestones to work toward. How do you know what to prioritize? What should you accomplish first?

From http://www.dailyfinance.com/

Use this as your guide to goals. Gaining these achievements will put you in a great position for financial success throughout the rest of your life. If you're in your 20s, start working now to accomplish these six money goals.

4 Reasons Why You'll Never Be a Millionaire, and How You Can Change That

From http://www.foxnews.com/

Relaxing vacations on the French Riviera, huge donations to your favorite charity and an early retirement. These are the kinds of things people think of when they hear the word “millionaire.”

It’s unlikely you’ll ever experience that. Sorry.

Unless, of course, you can overcome the following four roadblocks stopping you from achieving millionaire status. Each roadblock below also offers an “immediate action step” to help you overcome the things holding you back. Let’s get started.

1. You don’t understand how money works.

Money is not a complicated topic, but still, few seem to really understand how it works. Do you? Sure, you can blame the school system or your parents, but the responsibility is still on you to figure out how money is made, how it is held, how it is invested and how it is preserved.

Related: 4 Smart Money Habits to Help You Earn Your First Million Dollars

Millionaires understand that money is not something that is discovered, won, or created by chance.

As I stated in my previous column, 5 Powerful Books That Changed the Direction of My Life, wealth is not an accident, but an action. Building wealth is the world’s largest game, and if you want to win, you need to learn the rules. So start studying.

Immediate action step: Start by reading several great money books, such as:

• Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
• The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
• The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason

But don’t just read, internalize the knowledge. Debate it. Talk about it with your spouse, grandma and mail carrier. Personal finance can be learned, and by mastering it, you might discover that wealth is much easier to build you previously thought.

Li Ka-Shing teaches you how to buy a car & house in 5 years

from http://e27.co/

Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing shares some of his money wisdom, outlining an inspirational five-year plan to improve one’s lot in life

This article is translated from the original Chinese by Edmund Ng at CeoConnectz.

Suppose your monthly income is only RMB 2,000, you can live well. I can help you put money into five sets of funds. The first $600, second $400, third $300, fourth $200, fifth $500.

The first set of funds is used for living expenses. It’s a simple way of living and you can only be assigned to less than twenty dollars a day. A daily breakfast of vermicelli, an egg and a cup of milk. For lunch just have a simple set lunch, a snack and a fruit. For dinner go to your kitchen and cook your own meals that consist of two vegetables dishes and a glass of milk before bedtime. For one month the food cost is probably $500-$600. When you are young, the body will not have too many problems for a few years with this way of living.

Dạy về kinh tế trong trường phổ thông: Bạn trẻ đang học gì? – Nguyễn Vạn Phú

TTCT – Đọc thử sách giáo khoa (SGK) hiện nay có cảm tưởng như người lớn đã hình thành một số định kiến rằng học sinh phải học cái này hay cái kia để thành người hữu dụng.

Giả thử có hai chọn lựa cho một học sinh lớp 11: chọn lựa thứ nhất là học các khái niệm như “thế nào là sản xuất của cải vật chất?” hay “cơ cấu kinh tế là gì?”; chọn lựa thứ hai là học cách tính tổng số tiền sẽ nhận được sau 10 năm nếu bây giờ đem 1 triệu đồng đầu tư vào một nơi sẽ sinh lời 8% mỗi năm trong bài “Giá trị thời gian của tiền bạc”.

Diễn văn trong lễ tốt nghiệp của một tiến sĩ

Trong ngày vui này, tôi muốn chia sẻ với các bạn 3 điều với tư cách là một người bạn. Chỉ có 3 điều thôi, không có gì là lớn lao.

Tôi rất hân hạnh được có mặt trong buổi lễ tốt nghiệp ngày hôm nay của các bạn, những cựu sinh viên yêu quý của trường Cao đẳng Nghề Việt Mỹ. Trong ngày vui này, tôi muốn chia sẻ với các bạn 3 điều với tư cách là một người bạn. Chỉ có 3 điều thôi, không có gì là lớn lao.