Digital Photography in Today’s Society

 

Digital photography today has developed over the years. Photography once started life as a pinhole camera. A small box with a pinhole incision whereby photographic paper was placed behind the hole. The result a silhouette image that was black and white. Photography later progressed on to taking lifelike images. After a century of progression towards still photography, computer technology was developed and making improvements towards making people's lives easier for living.

Digital photography uses electronic devices to capture and store images via an optic or lens. An electronic sensor converts and transduces light onto a solar cell, which records images in the camera's internal memory. This then transforms data to a storage facility such as a memory card.

The Digital Camera can record shutter speed and exposure. It will also tell you how many pixels it has captured the image at. These images can then be transferred and stored to a computer. Taking out the middleman (the developer) processing images by printing them out on photographic paper, which is easily placed in the printer connected to the computer.

The advantage of digital imaging cameras is that, wherever you go, running out of film is not an issue. Back in the day memory cards started from around 16mb to 256mb, which means on average if you had a 64mb card over 200 images can be stored, of course nowadays memory cards can go up to 2Gb, 4Gb plus and is increasing all the time.

In the professional world, digital imaging has already become well established in press photography. Fast transmission of images with the use of mobile phones, via internet and email, news desks can receive images taken the same day and transmitted in minutes of events taking place to link up with a major story. The main highlight of this technology is saving time having images processed and then choosing the ones that are needed.

Today most digital cameras have an LCD screen, which displays all the images taken. If an image wasn’t up to standard it could be deleted, giving up space for further images.

Today’s photography is far different from early 20th century. The famous quote that everyone has heard “The camera never lies” times have changed in today’s society, photographs are not always what they seem. The photograph can lie. Page 3 models in the sun newspaper have most likely been adapted on the computer with the art of photo manipulation, to try and get rid of unsightly moles and blemishes. It’s like taking a photograph of Bournemouth beach, when the sun wasn’t out. Simple techniques on photo art computer software packages make people warm to photos.

The art of computer technology and some artistic skill can give the “to die for” summer appearance, that the image was longing for. The most common used image software is Adobe Photoshop or its cheaper version, Photoshop Elements. These two programmes can produce various manipulations.

To give a photo a sky, which would be a good technique to use, should for some unknown reason the blue had disappeared to white. Simple instructions and some creative flair can give the image an up lift.

This is how to get a coloured sky in the photograph, by being a bit creative clouds can be put into the sky to show depth of field and not just a paint bucket full of paint tipped into the space, where the sky should be.

To start with, open the picture that requires such a technique from the computer's, or camera's memory into Photoshop / Elements.

Then open the picture

Use the zoom tool to fit the image onto the screen. Crop out anything that makes the photo image cluttered or is no longer required by using the crop tool, draw a marquee around the designated area and then double click to get rid of it, once that’s gone go to Layer, » new layer, which is where the sky will take shape.

Rename to desired name for this exercise (sky or clouds)

Next go to Filters, » Render, » Clouds. There should now be patchy colour on the screen. If the colour doesn’t represent sky or cloud then change it by double clicking on the two squares at the bottom of the tools pallet. In this case, it appears to be orange. Use the colour picker and change the colour to a nice blue. Repeat the process again of Filters, » Render, » Clouds. Make the Opacity 50 percent. This is on the top of the layer box. By using 50 the image now seems to be covered in a transparent blue.

Next we need to use the lasso tool. The magnetic one is ideal, if you need to get accuracy. Set the feathering to 50px. Then select a rough edge between the sky line and trees, moving from left to right, taking the cursor around the outside of the picture and join at the start point. Then go to Select » Inverse selection. Next, Edit » Cut.

Looking at the image above. There are a couple of things that are noticeable and that is the white spaces near the trees. These can be easy rectified.

Here you see the clouded render has now been cut from the bottom. If we look closely at the skyline, I have started to use the clone tool . Click on the clone tool, Press down Alt, don’t let go until you have left clicked with the mouse where you want to clone from. Then move to the place where you want to clone and then click on the area and drag with the mouse. This effect will replace some patches in sky that still remain white like this.

Although there is an easier method although a bit long winded and that is fill the whole area with the cloned blue and then use the eraser tool and erase out the areas where the blue doesn’t have to be. A bit time consuming but the effect can be precise as using the magnifying glass the small area seems to be larger to work on.

This is the final image and then the nest image (which will be in the next issue) is done with filter paint daubs.

Marie Stuart.