Teaching Through Photography

Photograh taken by a child taking part in CHOSA's photography workshops.I was recently contacted by Ellen Rosenberg who runs CHOSA, a small NGO based out of Cape Town that provides support for children’s homes, creches and outreach projects for orphans and vulnerable children. They work with communities to provide support, primarily in Khayelitsha, Nyanga, Mfuleni, Delft, etc.

Since 2006, they have been running photography workshops with the youth in their after-school program. They use point-and-shoot 35mm cameras and teach everything from “which way to hold the camera” to composition, lighting, subject and more. These workshops have been featured on NPR’s The Picture Show. Ellen says

The kids LOVE the workshops we run and are consistently improving their technique and developing their own styles behind the lens.

We are constantly searching for talented local South African photographers who are willing to lead a workshop or series of workshops for our budding young photographers.

I hoped that some of our club members and other readers might be able to offer their assistance with these workshops. If you can help, send Ellen an e-mail.

Beware of buying used equipment

One of our members, Gerald Knight, recently lost some equipment to theft. He writes;

I had my camera with flash and a lens nicked today.

I thought that perhaps it would be useful to post the information on the club site and any other club sites as it may prevent the thief/ves from trapping someone into purchasing stolen property.

The camera is a Canon EOS 5D with 580EX speedlight flash and a Canon 100-400 zoom lens f 4.5-5.6 IS.

Camera serial number is 1531004622. I’ll need to wait till Tues to obtain the other serial numbers from my insurers.

I dont know of any other way to make the information generally available.

Regards

Gerald Knight

23 Digital Photography Book Reviews

23 Digital Photography Book Reviews [RANKED]

Looking for a digital photography book? It struck me today that we’ve reviewed a lot of photography books here at DPS over the last couple of years… but we’ve never listed them all on the one page. So here’s a complete list. I’ve ranked them in order of the number of books purchased by our readers at Amazon. I’ve linked each book both to Amazon and to the full review of the book.

Things Your Mother Should Have Told You

These two articles from the Adobe Experience Design team give some nice tips you may not know about Photoshop and Lightroom.

10 Things Your Mother Should Have Told You about Photoshop

Several years ago, we ran a longitudinal study of home users and Photoshop. We gave them a box of the product and then visited them every few weeks to see how they were progressing. Based on that study and our continued visits with home users, here are the top ten things that can help you get more of the power, flexibility and efficiency out of Photoshop for your personal photography. (BTW, this advice has been updated to Photoshop CS4, so if you don’t know what we are referring to, it may be a feature not found in your current version!).

8 Things Your Mother Should Have Told You about Lightroom

Last year, we ran a study on 75 new home users of Lightroom and listened in as they tried to work with their photos. From that, we’ve distilled the top eight things that can help you get more quickly set up and working with your images with Lightroom.

Simple Lightroom Image Fixing Workflow

Simple Lightroom Image Fixing Workflow

Whether it’s a photograph of mom that you’re sending to her or an image that you’re preparing to print, most photos can use some fixing before they’re ready to be shared or used.

Here’s a quick and easy Lightroom workflow that I apply to most every day images before sending them to family and friends, posting them to Flickr or my blog or printing them for a paper based photography project.

If you’re new to photo editing or to Lightroom, this step by step process should get you on the way to fixing your images.

Connecting the Dots – DPI Tips that Matter

+Connecting the Dots – DPI Tips that Matter | x=blog+stay+informed

Output resolution is one of the most misunderstood topics in digital photography.

What is the correct DPI or PPI to export an image to produce beautiful prints or display on a screen just right?

Unfortunately there is no simple answer; resolution, DPI and PPI are all different terms, and although inter-related are each distinct concepts in the photographic world. So let’s dig deeper into a basic primer on output resolution and DPI.

How to Use Textures to Enhance Your Photographs

How to Use Textures to Enhance Your Photographs

If you’ve spent anytime at all exploring sites like Flickr, I’m sure you’ve notice a good many photographs that have a certain “vintage” look to them, a patina if you will. There are many variations to this theme, ranging from simple toning to full blown distressing of the photograph complete with film like grain or scratches and surface variation resembling an old or imperfect photo. Up till now you might have thought that achieving this look was difficult and time consuming, but in fact it is remarkably easy, and it is done using textures.