That first published picture

It started about 2 months ago. I had just been playing around with my Raynox 250 macro lens on my Panasonic fz28 and I had taken my first picture where I actually though… “hay, thats pretty good”. Im a bit of a harsh critic on myself so thats a rare moment for me.

Macro Wasp

A few weeks after, I was looking at the digital photographer forum and there was a post from one of their sister magazines, ‘Digital Camera Essentials’. They were asking for people to send in their photos if they fancy being featured in their readers images section. I wasn’t going to bother but I suddenly thought “what the hell, I may as well give it a shot”. I sent an email with 3 of my macro shots, one being the wasp above. I hit send expecting that to be the end of that and never hear from them again.

A couple of weeks passed and I had almost forgotten I had even sent the email. I logged into my email account as I do most mornings and there was an email from them. They apologized for the wait as a lot of images had been sent into them but they really like the wasp image and would love to use it. I actually got a little excited, they said they would be featuring it in the magazine 2 issues away. I went straight on-line and ordered it.

2 months later I get home on my lunch break and the mag was sitting there waiting to be opened. I open it up and there it was, my name next to my picture in a big glossy magazine.

I was very happy because my picture was also printed larger than all the other ones on the page.

Now its only a readers gallery but it sure is a nice feeling that a magazine thinks one of your pictures is good enough to print. Not only that but a picture taken on a point and shoot superzoom like the Panasonic fz28.

So why write this article? To show off? maybe a little, but mainly so that anyone out there new to photography who doubts their own work gives it a shot, you never know. You can hate your own work as much as you want but the people out there might love it. We all have to start somewhere. Now send off your images and get that confidence boost that will spur you forward.

A focus on exposure

This tutorial has been moved to http://www.digidiversity.co.uk/2009/08/a-focus-on-exposure/

Focus and exposure are the two most important technical parts of photography. If the focus is off you get a blurred shot and if the exposure is off then your image can have detail loss that you may not be able to recover…..

Selective Colour

This tutorial has moved to http://www.digidiversity.co.uk/2009/08/selective-colour/

Selective colour, also know as ‘selective black and white’ as well as ‘colour pop’, is when you make all but part of an image black and white to make the colours really stand out.

It is a fairly popular technique and can create some really impressive results with not to much effort.

There are many methods to create this effect but i will be showing you the 2 i use most. The reason i will be showing you 2 methods is because it depends on the image which one works best…….