The Rule of Thirds is probably the single most important thing to learn when your start practicing your photography.  It will automatically make your photos more interesting.  I didn’t say it would make your photos great, but it will definitely make them more interesting to look at.  When we talk about The Rule of Thirds we are basically talking about Composition or the placement of key subjects in relation to one another in the photograph.  So whenever I use the word “composition” I am talking about “the rule of thirds” and vice versa.  Have you ever heard of people saying, “Well he/she has a great eye” when it comes to photography.  More than likely that “eye” they are talking about relates to how you compose your photographs.  You can be born with a great “eye” or you can develop and practice your composition and develop your “eye” for composing great photographs.  This is where The Rule of Thirds helps out those people who may be “Composition-ally Challenged” (by the way, I know I am using quotations waaay too much in this post already so I will try to cut back).

So, what exactly is The Rule of Thirds?  The wiki definition states: an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections.

Let’s simplify that shall we.  Have you ever played tic-tac-toe?  If you drew out a tic-tac-toe board across your photo like this you will have the guidelines for the rule of thirds:

So what should you do with those lines.  Well let’s go back to simplifying the Wikipedia definition.  I’ll break it down like this.  Don’t put your subject (in this case…your kids) smack in the middle of the frame.  The rule is you don’t want to split your subject in half (both vertically or horizontally).  Use these lines as guides to place your subject on one of the lines for a more pleasing composition.  This rule is especially helpful to those of you who like to dabble in a little vacation photos or landscapes.  The general rule is that you shouldn’t put the horizon line in the middle of your photo.  Place it closer to the top third or bottom third of the photo.

Now let’s go one step further.  The intersection of the lines on your tic-tac-toe rule of thirds are called “power points”…no…not the Microsoft software.  These are areas of a photo where your eye naturally falls.  So if you can compose your image to have one of the important elements landing on one of the power points your photo will be that much more compelling and interesting to look at.  Here are where those power points are at:

Allright.  Now it is time to show you some real world examples of some good uses of The Rule of Thirds so you can get an idea of how you can use it the next time you are composing a photo of your kids.  None of these photos are split down the middle.  In some of them the subject is just off to the center, but it makes a big difference.

This last photo is a good example of using the bottom 2/3 of the the image and leaving room at the top of the photo as interesting blank space.  And notice he isn’t split exactly down the middle of the photograph…so even a slight adjustment can make a big difference.

I also recommend you google “Rule of Thirds” and there are a ton of other great examples…these are just ones I happened to have taken over the past year or so.  You can also get some great examples of using the Rule of Thirds when photographing landscapes and other scenic vacation photos.  Now you can start to play around with your composition and keeping your subject out of the middle of the photo.

Keep in mind that this…like most other photography rules…can be broken, but it is better to understand the rule enough to know when you can break it.

Are you thinking about taking the plunge and making photography a hobby?  Congratulations, and on behalf of photo nerds everywhere…We would love to have you!  You are in the Christmas Day phase of the hobby…buying all your gear.  It is exciting and a little nerve racking at the same time because there are so many options out there.  From what camera brand to go with to which lens or lenses should I buy…it can be a little overwhelming.  One thing you should not neglect is what you are going to be lugging that camera gear around in.  Your Camera Bag.

Your camera bag is a very important piece of gear itself because not only will it house and protect your equipment, but it can also make a statement about your personality.  Again, there are a ton of different options and brands of camera bags out there.  But there are really only a handful of different styles and that is what you want to focus on.

1.  The good ‘ole shoulder bag – The tried and true bag used by camera enthusiasts and photojournalists for decades.  This is a Domke bag.

2.  The messenger / satchel bag – A relative newcomer.  The functionality of the shoulder back but a little more slim-lined.  This is a Crumpler brand messenger camera bag.

3.  The backpack – If you are into hiking, traveling, or more active type photographers.  This is a Lowepro camera backpack.

4.  The rolling case – Slightly more professional.  Great for traveling or for wedding and event photographers.  This is a Lowepro rolling case.

5.  The waist bag – Yes, the waist bag is a distant cousin to the fanny pack.  But, it will save your back and shoulders from seeing a chiropractor if you need to carry your equipment for long periods of time.  This is a Tamrac waist bag.

And ladies, you will be very happy to know that there are several lines of camera bags that are made especially to fit your lifestyle.  Purses and satchels with a more designer look to them have gotten pretty popular these past 2-3 years.  You may pay a premium price for them, but hey it can be a purse and a camera bag.  So you really are getting 2 for 1 when you think about it.  There are a few great brands out there.

Epiphanie – I have met the owner (Maile) and she is super cool and I think offers a fantastic product.

Kelly Moore Bags

Jill-E Designs

*Emera Bags

Now that you know the different styles of bags out there let me give you a few tips on what to look for in a good camera bag.

1.  Excellent interior padding.  (note: exposed foam will deteriorate over time and will leave nasty black residue on your gear)

2.  Buy a little bigger than you think you need.  You never know…you may need that extra room when you start expanding on your lens collection.  This is also a good idea because there is nothing worse than trying to pry your camera out of a stuffed little camera bag and you end up missing a photo-op.

3.  The ability section your bag based on your gear (ie moveable separators).

4.  Made of durable material.  Make note if the exterior is padded too.  You may not need that option, but in case your lifestyle is a little more rough and tumble it is good for the bag to be able to absorb those shocks.

5.  Accessibility – how quickly can you get into your bag and your camera and lenses without missing the shot.  This is where the shoulder and satchel bags have an edge.  You can quickly unbuckle and grab your camera as where a backpack you have to take off and unzip.

6.  Comfort – This is where backpacks take the cake because you are dispersing the weight across two shoulders rather than one.

7.  Style (the cool factor) – If style is important to you than don’t overlook this important option.  If you want to go really out of the norm than check out Etsy and look for some homemade camera bags.  Then you will really stand out.

There you go.  Now you are in the know when it comes to buying the bag that your camera gear will live in.  It can be a daunting choice so hopefully it was made a little easier or at least more bearable.

If you are thinking about buying a DSLR camera or maybe you just bought one to take better photos of your family, kids, or you just got bitten by the photography bug then this is a great post for you to read.  For those who don’t know what DSLR means that stands for Digital Single Lens Reflex.  They look like this…you know the ones that have all the dials, buttons, and you can switch the lenses.

They can range in price anywhere from $600 to over $5000 for the camera bodies.  If you are just starting out I would go closer to the $600 end of the range.  But this post isn’t about what kind of camera to buy.  I am going to tell you the one and only lens you will ever need in your bag in case you DO buy a camera.  When you buy a camera, the salesman will usually try to “package deal” you.  They will include a kit lens that in my opinion are the cheapest lenses the camera maker puts out.  When you go in to buy the camera body you will want to ask for a…are you ready…a 50mm lens.  That’s it.  That is the only lens you will need…for a while.  I bet you are wondering, “What is his reasoning behind this claim?”  Let me lay it down for you.

1. They are super inexpensive so you aren’t going to break the bank with some super expensive pro caliber lens.  They run about $120…the cheapest BEST lens you can buy.

2.  Most pros have this very lens in their bag.  So that should tell you something.

3. It is a super fast lens.  A fast lens means that you have the ability to shoot in low light situations.  It does not mean that it will make you run faster.  With a maximum aperture of 1.8 – this means it can let a lot of light in to have higher shutter speeds in darker situations, and higher shutter speeds equals less blurry photos.

4. The 50mm f1.8 lens has fantastic bokeh.  This may be a new vocab word for you.  Bokeh is the portion of the photo that goes out of focus while leaving your subject sharp and in focus.  I have also heard it been referred to as “that fuzzy part of the photo.”  Whatever you want to call it, this lens will make your portraits look more interesting and professional.

5. It is small and light so you aren’t clunking around with some big lens on your shoulder (saves in chiropractor bills).

6. This lens is the absolute best lens to train your eye with (in my humble opinion).  If you are just starting out then grab this lens and use it…use it all the time and you learn composition and lighting faster.

I know what you are thinking.  But I want a zoom lens so I can take wide photos and close-ups with one lens.  That is exactly what the 50mm is…you just have use your manual zoom feature (your feet) to zoom in and out.  You are just going to have to trust me.  I have been a professional photographer for 11 years and it is by far my favorite lens of all time.  Here is what they look like so you know what to look for.  I included both the Nikon (my brand) and the Canon as not to play favorites.  I hope that you found this helpful.  We love to talk photography and anything creative for that matter here at Canvas Press.  Give us a shout if you ever have questions about photography.  Especially if you want to turn one of your stellar photos you just took with your 50mm into a canvas print.

For this blog post Caroline tell you a little bit about how Canvas Press can turn some low quality, low-resolution images into some stunning canvas prints.  Take it away Caroline!

Have you ever finally tried to actually PRINT one of your digital photos, only to be told it isn’t high enough quality or to get it back and find out it looks pixilated and distorted? It happens way too often and most people don’t understand why.

Your computer screen (or cell phone) might show a sharp, clear photo but the display is actually a very low resolution since it’s based on a projected light source, as opposed to a print of ink on paper.

Most digital cameras today have very high resolution capabilities (LOTS of MegaPixels) but they can take lo-res images, it just a setting you can choose. Once an image has been saved in low resolution you can’t go back. That’s why we always stress to check your camera settings and make sure you start by taking the highest resolution possible. You can always shrink down copies later for sharing online and via email.

However, life happens. Maybe your camera settings are off, or maybe, you are like me. Yes, I have a degree in photography and all the latest and greatest high quality gadgets, but I make mistakes too. My mistake? Not doing a backup! After formatting images from a family get together I uploaded lo-res copies to Facebook to share with everyone and left the high quality versions on my hard drive. Which promptly crashed.

So now, I was left with only those tiny, poor quality copies on Facebook. You can upload (and download) hi-res images to Facebook and other online sites, but for privacy, security, and my own impatience I sized the images to 600 pixels before uploading, so that’s all I’ve got now.

Of course, one of the best pictures I’ve had with my little sister happened to be from this collection of photos. I was crushed because I knew it would make the PERFECT gift for our Mom’s birthday. It would seem like a lost cause, or something that you print as a 4×6 and slap in a cheap frame.  However, I knew that at Canvas Press we were doing some pretty amazing things with up-sampling images for printing on canvas, and I had hope!

At Canvas Press, we’ve developed a method that goes way beyond filters and plug-ins for enlarging digital files. Images that in the past we would have turned away are suddenly looking pretty good and pretty big sizes! By using our professional eye and experience in photo retouching we can take a low resolution, pixilated image and actually turn it into a beautiful photo on canvas. What is great about the canvas too is that the texture of it blends the ink which hides some grain and imperfections you might see on a photo print. Plus, a slightly soft, smooth photograph printed on canvas  can give the impression of a painting- what a bonus!

So I let our image specialists work their magic on my image and I was stunned by the results.  Here, you can see the original image:

On this site it might not look so bad, but it is only 600×400 pixels. For just an 8×10 canvas we print at least at 1800×1440 pixels.  Here is a close-up to show you what happened when we first blew it up to that size:

…and after our enhanced techniques for restoring a low resolution image, here is a close-up of the results:

Pretty amazing! Sure it is a little soft and lacks in some detail but it was certainly good enough for what I wanted to do. We turned it into a canvas and it was the perfect gift for Mom.

I know many people have been broken hearted to find out their favorite photo isn’t good enough and when it’s all you’ve got, that can be tough to hear. If you’ve had your favorite image turned away by another printer that said it wasn’t large enough, or you had poor quality results, please give Canvas Press a try! We’ll give it our very best and we won’t turn you away until we’ve exhausted all the possible options.

What you will need: Your iPhone, Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and Canvas Press

Difficulty: eh…a little Photoshop knowledge helps and a little math (nothing crazy)

iPhones and smartphones are fantastic.  I mean you don’t have to worry about a thing when you leave the house as long as you have your iPhone (except maybe getting mauled by a lion…maybe that’s just me).  But seriously, you have your phone, email, web, navigation and camera all in one amazing device.  Let’s concentrate on that last mention…the camera.  Gone are the days of going to the supermarket to buy one of those cardboard disposable cameras for your upcoming vacation.  Now you have a pretty amazing tool that lets you take awesome photos no matter where you are (grocery store, amusement park, restaurant, bathroom…ok I hope you aren’t taking too many photos in the bathroom) you get the point.

The question then becomes, “I have 400 photos of my kids, family, friends…now what do I do?”  You could hold onto them forever…trapped in your phone only to be seen when you endlessly scroll through your photo library as you try to find that one photo you took of Cher walking through the airport OR you could transform your phone photos into a very unique piece of collage wall art (minus that photo of Cher).  Let’s go through the steps to making your summer vacation photos, birthday party photos, Christmas photos, or even the entire year’s photos into an awesome collage that can serve as art, a photo album, and family history all in one very cool canvas print.

1. The first step is to download all of your iPhone photos to your computer.  Easy enough.

2. Sort through them putting them into separate folders by their orientation: horizontal and vertical.

3. Open Photoshop and create a new file sized to however big you want your photo canvas to be.  We will use 36”x24” as an example. 180dpi is perfect, if it’s only 100 dpi we can work with that too.

Canvas Press iphone photos to canvas. Opening new file in Photoshop.

4. Now you will use your math skills.  You will have to resize your photos to fit evenly into your final 36”x24” image.  For my example I am going to resize all of my horizontal photos to 6”x4” at 180dpi(which will fit 6 photos across my final image).  Perfect fit.  Ok so what do I do about my Vertical photos?  I am going to use my crop tool and crop them all to 4”x4” at 180dpi.  Now I have consistent building blocks for my collage.

Canvas Press iphone photos to canvas cropping the vertical images to 4″x4″ for this project

5. Here is the fun part.  Drag and drop your resized photos into your final 24×36 image and move them around to where you want them (ie chronologically, or whatever looks best…there is no wrong answer).  I like to do mine straight across and kind of chronologically…especially for an entire year of photos.  It helps me relive those memories even more.  Here is what mine looks like so far…I love the patchwork look of this.

Fantastic, now you have an almost complete photo to canvas personal work of art from your otherwise unused iPhone photos.  The last step to transform your photos on canvas is go to the Canvas Press website – www.canvaspress.com and upload your finished image.  For this example you will probably choose either the solid border or mirror border option so you can make sure you see all of those beautiful photos you took with your iphone.

We at Canvas Press are always here to help if you have any questions about this or any other project you may have.  Soon you will have your very own gallery wrapped canvas print hanging in your house.  Take a look at this example.  It is just a tiny bit bigger than 36×24 inches but how cool is that to have as a conversation starter in your house?

A year's worth of iPhone pics transferred to a canvas print with a float frame

image courtesy of house love

How do I order my photos on to aluminum metal prints? Here’s a quick tutorial from Canvas Press on how to get your favorite photos onto our beautiful AlumiPrints. Enjoy!

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With millions of people anxiously awaiting for that coveted invite to get into Google’s new social network, we wanted to give you a preview and let you decide if Google+ is a good fit for you.

First off, if you’re wondering why in the world would anyone want to have to worry about updating their status on yet another social media site, let me begin by saying that this one is different. With features similar to Twitter and Facebook, Google+ takes a different approach. You can update your status, but more so Google+ allows you to select audience you want to see that update. By allowing you to categorize your network by “Circles”, you can choose what group of people see what you post. For example, let’s say you run a small business. You have your family and friends on Google+, but you also have clients and potential customers in your network as well. Rather than letting everyone in your network see your latest product or service ad posted on Google+, you can choose to only have your clients and future clients see the post. On the other hand, you may only want your family and friends to see your latest vacation photos. With Circles, you decide who gets to see what by simply dragging your contacts and dropping them into the appropriate circle.

Much like Facebook, Google+ has profiles with photos and videos. But a feature unlike anything currently out there is Hangouts. Similar to Skype or FaceTime, Hangouts are a way to video conference with people in your network. Unlike Skype and FaceTime, Hangouts allow anyone in your Circles to join in the video chat. Literally, you just start a Hangout, choose individual users to join, open it to a particular Circle, or make it public for anyone to join in the video conference. Hangouts allow up to ten people at a time, and can be a great way to catch up with friends, say hello to family, or video conference with coworkers. Whichever reason you choose to use Hangouts, you’ll see it’s a pretty cool feature unlike anything out there. Also as a technical guy, I’m really impressed with the video and audio quality in Google+ Hangouts.

My overall impression is that the early adopters on Google+ seem to be working on keeping the site more focused on relevant information and networking, rather than personal or chatty. It’s refreshing to have a site where there seems to be less noise and more sound. It’s still a little early, and I’m sure that eventually the spammers will have their try at infiltrating the site. Currently, Google will not allow profiles for businesses or companies, only individuals. But so far, I think Google+ has great potential.

Click here to connect with Dustin Meyer on Google+

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Lately, we’ve been asked this question quite a bit, “Does Canvas Press offer gift cards?”. The answer is a definite “Yes”.

People love the idea of putting their photos on canvas. But it can really prove difficult when you want to get a canvas for someone as a gift. Especially if you don’t know what kind of image they would like to have us print for them.

And unlike other gift cards from other retailers, a Canvas Press gift card lets your loved one create something they’ll enjoy for years. Order your Canvas Press Gift Card today.

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We at Canvas Press understand that everyone has different computers and software they like to use for editing and sorting their digital images. So, we’ve created a series of videos to help you make sure you’re getting the best images from your photos.

This video is about using iPhoto for all you Mac users out there. So sit back, relax, and enjoy!

Here is a quick tutorial to guide you through our online ordering tool on CanvasPress.com. It covers everything from sizing and cropping on our site, to selecting the right borders for your Gallery Wrap canvas. Click here to order your photo on canvas today…

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