Unlike some school programs that are offered in all state universities and colleges, photography, as a full-pledged course, is not as common. In fact, only a handful of art schools have such a comprehensive program.

This can be both an advantage and a disadvantage for students who are interested in taking up photography as a course and not just as an elective in college. Finding the right school can be crucial and with only a few to choose from, it will either be easy or hard depending on your priorities and resources.

Location Having so few photography schools can be a disadvantage, as most will probably be offered in New York or in other key cities in the country. Finding a good photography school will then create a problem with students who live far away from major cities.

Expenses

Spendings during school year should also be looked into as students will probably have to reside in dormitories. Also, one must remember that photography requires a lot of additional expenses for materials and projects. Students may need to buy their own camera and spend a fortune in films and developing. Look into the curriculum and if possible ask if equipment and other materials are already provided or included in the tuition fee.

Specialty

Before you submit your requirements and enroll, make sure that you have thoroughly research the program in photography that the school offers. Remember that there are schools that specialize in photography as a course. Look for that school and try your best to get in. The reputation that the school has will eventually serve you in good stead when you apply for a job.

Professors

College is not just the time to develop your skill but also to establish connections in the profession and perhaps, if one is lucky to also find a mentor. Research on the professors that would be teaching the course. It would be good if they are giants in the field and even better if they are people whose work you really admire.

Curriculum

Photography has different subfields. If you have already identified the sub-field that you want to concentrate in, you should look into the curriculum and make sure that it is included. If not, try to look into other photography schools, that do offer the subject. This way, you will be able to learn more about it and eventually concentrate on it. Still, it is also important to look into the overall curriculum and see what other areas of photography will be taught.

This content is provided by Low Jeremy and may be used only in its entirety with all links included. For more info on Photography, please visit http://photography.articlekeep.com.

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Photographers have been trying to utilize the light of the moon in their landscape photography ever since the photographic process was invented. It was not until World War II, however, that technology had improved enough to make night photography possible.
Today, despite technological advances, knowing the phase of the moon during a nighttime photography shoot is important as it will affect everything from the type of equipment that you’ll need to the actual composition of your photos.
When embarking on a night photography trip, there are standard types of equipment that you will need to take with you.
- A 35mm camera that will allow you to manually set very long exposure times is a must
- A good, sturdy tripod is mandatory
- A cable release
- A good carrying case or a vest with a lot of pockets for your equipment
- Extra batteries for your camera
- Many rolls of slow or medium film (60 or 100 ISA–NEVER use 400 ISA even if it’s what happens to be in your camera. Your photos will turn out much too grainy to be useful).
- Lenses with which you are already comfortable
- A stopwatch rather than a wristwatch to record exposure lengths is preferable. Stopwatches are more accurate and will give you more reliable information for future moon photography shoots.
- A notebook and several pens for recording exposure times and other important information
- A flashlight so that you can easily record your information
Remember that if this is your first attempt at night photography by moonlight, you will largely spend your time experimenting. The resulting photographs and your records will help you plan your next venture more effectively.
The best times for landscape photography without additional light sources, or looking at it in a different manner, away from city lights, is either when the moon is full, the two days before the full moon and the two days after the full moon. Any clouds in the sky will also affect the amount of light available for your night photography, just as they would if you were shooting during the day.
You will have to experiment with your exposure times as so many elements will affect the outcome. The degree of available moonlight; any other light sources; clouds; rain; light reflective surfaces; each of them can make a huge difference to the amount of exposure time needed.
In general, during night photography, one can say that on a night of full moon, with optimum conditions, 8 seconds at f/8 using ISO 100 film will be about right. If there’s a crescent moon and conditions are also optimal, you’ll need as much as 10 hours on one shot! So you see, experimentation while photographing the moon is really the only way to go.
Repeat your shots with different exposure lengths so that you can get a feel for what your camera will do for you.
A very nice composition for a moonscape might include the moon with beams bouncing off of a river, stream or creek.
As the moon moves through its different phases, you can still enjoy landscape photography at night although you may have to bring some “extras” and move locations.
Different moonscape compositions to experiment with during your moonlight photography shoot include:
- A waxing crescent, or a small portion of the moon, hanging in the sky over sparkling city lights.
- Bring a flash or a flash unit to your moon photography shoot in order to illuminate an abandoned house, use colored gels to get different color effects and have a muted last quarter moon lurking in the background.
- As the moon goes from full to new, you can play with light effects from the stars or allow car lights to streak through your composition.
When photographing the moon, be sure to record not only the length of time that you exposed your film, but also general weather conditions and what phase the moon was in. This will help you to produce better photos in the future.
Night photography becomes easier when you’re able to plan properly so knowing how much natural light is likely to be available will help you pick the right time to go out and what kind of equipment to take.
Nighttime landscape photography is a creative, rewarding challenge that every keen photographer should try.
About the Author
David Rose is a nature photographer and creator of the popular moon software, QuickPhase Pro, the fun and easy way to view the phases of the moon. To learn more, visit http://www.quickphase.com

Technorati Tags: senior portraits, graduation photography, graduation photographer, high school photography, graduate photographer, senior portrait photographer, graduation photography, richards photography

Digital photography printing has opened a completely new world for amateur and professional photographers alike.

For most photographers, the backup of digital photography printing offers unprecedented freedom to get the best digital shots. No more worrying about that precious piece of film running out too soon - all without you knowing for sure that anything worthwhile is on it!

However, when it comes to getting the actual digital photography printing done, there are some things to keep in mind to prevent wasting too much of your quality photo paper - not to mention your costly printing ink.

With digital photography printing in mind, the first thing to look at is to ensure that you download the pictures at their full resolution. If you end up with 72dpi (dots per inch) pictures, your print quality will be useless. A 72dpi resolution is only good for viewing on your computer screen, but 200 - 300dpi will give a good quality 8×10 print.

Large prints are usually viewed from a greater distance, therefore for a 13×19 inch print 200 pixels per inch is probably enough, whereas for a 5×7 inch print you might need around 300 pixels per inch.

By looking at the file size you will quickly learn to be an expert judge on quality. A picture of 100kb (kilobytes) or less, is most probably too low-resolution for good quality digital photography printing. Once you get up to a minimum of 400kb, you are working with a more useful resolution for an 8×10 print.

When doing digital photography printing, you will mostly work with the JPEG file format. Keep in mind that every time you open and save a JPEG file, you lose some of the image information. You’ll therefore want to do all your changes in one sitting, and then save them only once.

If you’re proud enough of your photographic effort - or if you want those family shots to be available for the next generation - you’ll want your prints to be done on decent paper, just like you were used to in the ‘old days’ of photographic paper! In the end, your digital photography printing will be only as good as the paper you are using.

There are many new coated papers available specifically for this purpose, and you should look at what is recommended for the printer you are using.

These digital photography printing papers don’t come cheap, so plan carefully. Print only after final cropping, or on completion of other changes, such as adding a border with your imaging software.

The longest-lasting paper is acid free, usually called archival paper in the world of inkjet printing.

Regular color inkjet and laser printers are good for text and charts, but not always great for digital photography printing. Printers which are PictBridge-enabled, allow you to do digital photography printing directly from the camera. Portable printers, such as the HP Photosmart 320 series, allow you to take a snap and print out 4×6 digital photography pictures anywhere on the move.

Incidentally, for smaller 4×6 inch prints, dye-sublimation printers give excellent quality prints, and they are usually waterproof - like the film prints you were used to! However, the materials for such digital photography printing do not come cheap!

If you can’t get good enough results with your own digital photography printing, especially if you’re printing larger than 8×10, you may want to try one of the brick-and-mortar, or even online photo labs which make use of dedicated photo printers with excellent results.

Photo labs can handle digital files directly from your memory card. Take your homemade CD, your digital camera, or your memory card along for professional quality digital photography printing.

For more information visit Best-Digital-Photography.com

Rika Susan of Article-Alert.com researches, writes, and publishes full-time on the Web. Copyright of this article: 2006 Rika Susan. This article may be reprinted if the resource box and hyperlinks are left intact.