Great photos are born in the camera.

You’re here because you love taking pictures. Read on and you’ll find helpful hints and tips for turning your snapshots into gallery quality photographs as we show you how to get it right in the camera.

All of these tips are short and right-to-the-point. Click on any of the photos to enlarge. We’re sharing these tips with you so in hopes that you’ll discover new ways to enjoy your picturetaking even more.

Click on tips in the Tag Cloud (sidebar).

At times when I’m on the job, I dutifully carry a camera and accessories so that I am ready for the shoot.

Most often though, when I’m off the clock, I leave the photo equipment behind. One incident from 1989, changed this habit. I was in West Berlin in early November of that year. To the surprise of much of the world, the East Germans started to dismantle the infamous Berlin Wall. At this historic time, I was regretfully camera-less.

This lesson nudged me from this time forward to carry a small camera so that I wouldn’t miss those “once in a lifetime” photo opportunities.
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I wrote this article almost two years ago. The purpose of this cross country journey was to deliver an auto to Phoenix. Whenever possible, I try to record my travels through photographs. Since I’m planning another repeat of the drive from the Midwest to the Southwest in a few weeks, I wanted to refresh my memory to see how I might stuff even more photos into my next trip to Phoenix.

Written: November 2008.

Here’s some rambling about nothing in particular.

When the weather starts cooling off in Michigan, Mom starts thinking about going to the warm environs of her Winter home in Arizona. Normally she waits until after the Christmas Holidays, but this year she decides to travel early.

Here’s where I come in. She flies and I drive. As the designated driver, I drive her car from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Phoenix, Arizona to use for the months that she is there. I don’t mind, in fact I look forward to the 2000 mile trip. After delivering the car to Phoenix I’ll fly back to Grand Rapids.
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Sadly, summer is quickly drawing to an end in our part of the world. We’ve been blessed with unusually hot and sunny weather which means that water sports have been a vital part of the our recent recreational activities.

For the most part, water and cameras don’t mix well. But by taking a few precautions, you can minimize any danger to your camera at the pool or beach when capturing the fun. And if you’re a serious outdoor fanatic, you can make a waterproof camera part of your photo gear.
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First a little background.

As an avid picture taker, I learned early on that unless I had a way to organize my pictures, I would find it increasingly difficult to keep track of my growing collection of photographs.

Although I’ve been taking pictures on film since the 1960’s, it wasn’t until 1998 that I began my digital collection. I discovered a software program called Thumbs Plus for the PC and have been using it regularly to catalog and manage more than 100,000 of my digital photos. By adding keywords to an individual photo, I am able to easily and conveniently locate and retrieve photos from the past. Thumbs Plus has dozens of other useful features but for my purposes, organizing is its most important feature. For the past decade Thumbs Plus (and 3 or 4 upgrades) has been one of the most used programs on my computer.
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We started using the Abacus brand name back in 1978. In these 30+ years, Abacus has become a recognized name as a maker of personal computing, books and software.

A few years back, we started dabbling in the photography arena. Although we have more than 40 years of background in photography, when it was time to get serious about bringing these products to market, we decided to use the Stay Focused name. We felt that this name brings clarity to the customer. We’re hoping the name says: “here is a brand for a company involved with photography”. Stay Focused is now one of our imprints.
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Portraits are one the most common type of photographs. We’d like to share some tips for taking better people pictures.

Direction of the Light Shooting people outdoors offers a wide variety of lighting. Observe and dtake advantage of the direction from which it is falling on your subject.
Here the lighting originates predominantly from behind the subject. This backlighting produces shadows on much of the girl’s face.	For this shot, we turned the subject slightly so that the light is coming from the side. By doing this, we have added a more “rounded” and fuller look to the facial features.

Two weeks ago, my wife, myself and two grandchildren in tow, visited one of our daughters and her family in the Portland, Oregon area. With excellent weather, it was a great time and place to vacation. Oregon is an “outdoor” state and we were determined to enjoy its beautiful natural resources.

On one of our vacation days, we took a two hour drive across the coastal mountain range to experience the Pacific Ocean and Columbia River. Our destination was the northwest corner of Oregon where Woody, my father-in-law, had served during World War II.

Woody tells us that his assignment back then was to observe the Columbia River looking for Japanese submarines that might enter the river from the Pacific Ocean. His station was Ft Stevens Army Base. While this area is no longer an army base, there is a museum in Ft Stevens State Park in tribute to the men and women who served there.

In particular, I recall Woody telling us two of his memories of his service at Ft. Stevens: the 6″ guns and the great width of the river where it meets the Pacific Ocean.

So we were interested to see how Woody’s memory has held up over nearly 70 years since his service.

We brought back dozens of photographs from our visit to Ft Stevens so that Woody could relive more of his memories from his service during World War II. This was a day well spent on our trip to Oregon.

By the way, although not very well known, Ft Stevens was the only place in the continental US to be bombarded by the enemy fire during World War II. In mid-1942, a Japanese submarine fired 17 shells at the fortification during the night. Luckily, no one was injured.

I have a lot of fond memories from my growing up years in suburban New York. Photographs have helped me to recall many of these memories.

About four months ago, I was preparing for our bi-annual family reunion. My project was to design an album of family members to be auctioned as part of the reunion fundraisers. I looked through hundreds of Mom’s “shoebox photos” from the 1940’s and 1950’s and found forty or so pictures for the album. I carefully scanned each photo, chose the layout for each album page through an online service, completed and ordered the album online and received the finished photo book by mail in plenty of time for the reunion.

This by itself is reason enough to demonstrate why photos matter, but this article goes a step further.

While looking through Mom’s photos, I found one that I put aside. A few weeks later when I had some free time, I again retrieved the photo. Here was a picture of Mom, my sisters and myself and a familiar face from the 1950’s.

We knew this lovely woman as “Aunt Rita”. Looking closely, you may notice that we are standing on a boat. To be precise, we were standing on “The Amoy”, a Chinese junk that she and her husband Alfred owned and lived on. The Nilson’s moored their boat a few blocks from our house. Somehow, Aunt Rita had befriended my mother and we would frequently visit the Nilsons on their junk. The photo also reminded me of the painting gifted by Mrs. Nilson. The still-life painting graced our living room wall for so many years with her signature neatly tucked at the bottom, right-hand corner of her artwork.

I searched the Internet by googling “The Amoy”. One entry linked me to a postcard of the same Chinese junk that brought back even more memories.

I bought the postcard which helped me recall the exact coloring of the junk and also reminded me of the boat’s dark teakwood finish and many “interesting” rooms below deck. I am now trying to track down the one or more of the Nilson’s three sons.

Postcard caption: Chinese junk moored at Echo Bay (New Rochelle, N.Y.). As an aside: the Nilsons later moved their boat from Echo Bay to the Bronx along the Hutchinson River Parkway near the defunct Freedomland.

Photos matter to be because they help me reach back to memorable times of the past. They’re a constant reminder to me to take lots of pictures and show them to the world!

Portraits are the most common type of photographs. We’d like to share some of our know-how for taking better people pictures.

Lighting Tricks Portraits are usually composed using soft, even lighting. However, you can put strong and high contrast lighting to good use by carefully posing your subject.
This photo was taken in the shade where the light was soft. This type of lighting made the young girl’s skin tones equally soft.	Here, I’ve placed the subject in a location that has strong side lighting. I like the effect on the highlighted side of the face. Take care not to overexpose the highlights.

Taking pictures of kids is one of the most popular uses for digital cameras. From time to time, we’ll present tips for taking better kids pictures.

Fill the Frame When shooting portraits, the usual tendency is to carefully frame the subject in the viewfinder.
In this snapshot, we’ve left an even border around the head and upper body of the child. It makes for a nicely framed shot although the background is a little distracting.	For this shot, we moved in closer to fill the viewfinder with the child’s head. There is almost no border around the photo, yielding a more dramatic view of the child.