iPhoto 5: The Missing Manual

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Apple's marketing team came up with a cute slogan for iPhoto 2: "Shoot like Ansel; organize like Martha." Today, of course, that slogan would never fly—and the reference to Martha Stewart is only half the problem.

The truth is, iPhoto doesn't help you shoot like Ansel Adams, either. In fact, it does absolutely nothing for your photography skills.

But this book will. The first three chapters cover both the basics and the secrets that the pros use to take consistently good photographs. After all, if you're going to the trouble of mastering a new program, then you should be rewarded with stunning results. Or, put another way: Beautiful pictures in, beautiful pictures out.

When you use a film camera, your pictures are"memorized"by billions of silver halide crystals suspended on celluloid. Most digital cameras, on the other hand, store your pictures on a memory card.

It's a special kind of memory: flash memory. Unlike the RAM in your Macintosh, the contents of flash memory survive even when the machine is turned off. You can erase and reuse a digital camera's memory card over and over again—a key to the great economy of digital photography.

At this millisecond of technology time, most digital cameras are slightly slower than film cameras in almost every regard. Generally speaking, they're slower to turn on, slower to autofocus, and slower to recover from one shot before they're ready to take another.

Once you've captured a picture, however, digital cameras provide almost nothing but advantages over film.

You can view a miniature version of the photo on the camera's built-in screen. If there's something about the picture that bothers you—like the telephone pole growing out of your best friend's head—you can simply delete it and try again. Once the shooting session is over, you leave knowing that nothing but good photos are on your camera. By contrast, with traditional film photography, you have no real idea how your pictures turned out until you open that sealed drugstore envelope and flip through the prints. More often than not, there are one or two pictures that you really like, and the rest are wasted money.

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When you use a film camera, your pictures are"memorized"by billions of silver halide crystals suspended on celluloid. Most digital cameras, on the other hand, store your pictures on a memory card.

It's a special kind of memory: flash memory. Unlike the RAM in your Macintosh, the contents of flash memory survive even when the machine is turned off. You can erase and reuse a digital camera's memory card over and over again—a key to the great economy of digital photography.

At this millisecond of technology time, most digital cameras are slightly slower than film cameras in almost every regard. Generally speaking, they're slower to turn on, slower to autofocus, and slower to recover from one shot before they're ready to take another.

Once you've captured a picture, however, digital cameras provide almost nothing but advantages over film.

You can view a miniature version of the photo on the camera's built-in screen. If there's something about the picture that bothers you—like the telephone pole growing out of your best friend's head—you can simply delete it and try again. Once the shooting session is over, you leave knowing that nothing but good photos are on your camera. By contrast, with traditional film photography, you have no real idea how your pictures turned out until you open that sealed drugstore envelope and flip through the prints. More often than not, there are one or two pictures that you really like, and the rest are wasted money.

Instant feedback becomes a real benefit when you're under pressure to deliver excellent photographs. Imagine the hapless photographer who, having offered to shoot candid photos during a friend's wedding reception, later opens the envelope of prints and discovers that the flash had malfunctioned all evening, resulting in three rolls of shadowy figures in a darkened hotel ballroom. A digital camera would have alerted the photographer to the problem immediately.

In short, digital photographers sleep much better at night. They never worry about how the day's pictures will turn out—they already know!

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Citizens of the world bought 53 million digital cameras in 2004, and analysts predict that those sales could climb as high as 82 million by 2008. Already, digital cameras outsell film cameras—a shift of culture-jarring proportions.

The major players in this market are Sony, Olympus, Nikon, HP, Kodak, and Canon. They're not alone, however. Every company ever associated with electronics or cameras—Panasonic, Casio, Leica, Kyocera, Minolta, Konica, and so on—also has a finger in the pie. Each company offers a variety of models and a wide range of prices, which compete fiercely for your dollars. Some of these companies release new models every six to twelve months. And, exactly as in other high-tech industries, each generation offers better features, improved resolution, and lower prices.

If you're in the market for a new digital camera, the rest of this chapter is for you. It's dedicated to helping you find that diamond in the rough: the camera with the features you need at a price you can afford.

Don't worry about the different marketing categories for cameras: entry level, consumer, prosumer, pro, whatever. Just read about the features available in the following pages—presented here roughly in order of importance—and consider how much they're worth to you.

The first number you probably see in the description of a digital camera is the number of megapixels it offers.

A pixel (short for picture element) is one tiny colored dot, one of the thousands or millions that compose a single digital photograph. You can't escape learning this term, since pixels are everything in computer graphics.

You need at least one million pixels—that is, one megapixel—for something as simple as a 4 x 6 inch print. Thus the shorthand: Instead of saying that your camera has 4,100,000 pixels, you'd say that it's a 4.1-megapixel camera.

What you're describing is its resolution. For instance, a 5-megapixel camera has better resolution than a 3-megapixel camera. (It also costs more.)

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If your eyes are bleeding from the technical underbrush of Chapter 1—bells, whistles, megabytes—switch on your right brain. This chapter has little to do with electronics and everything to do with the more artful side of photography: composition.

What follows are four tips that photographers have been using for years to create good pictures regardless of the camera type. These time-honored secrets do wonderful things for digital imaging too. Good composition is just as important with a $199 digicam as it is with a $3,000 pro digital SLR—and just as enjoyable.

This chapter offers suggestions that will immediately improve your pictures. But first, a few words about composition itself.

Composition is the arrangement of your picture, the interplay between foreground and background, the way the subject fills the frame, the way the parts of the picture relate to each other, and so on.

Will the shot be clearer, better, or more interesting if you move closer? What about walking around to the other side of the action, or zooming in slightly, or letting tall grass fill the foreground? Would the picture be more interesting if it were framed by horizontal, vertical, or diagonal structures (such as branches, pillars, or a road stretching away)? All of this floats through a veteran photographer's head before the shutter button clicks.

It's easy to think, "Hey, it's a picture, not a painting—I have to shoot what's there." However, the fact is that photography is every bit as creative as painting. You have more control over the composition than you realize.

If the primary thrust of your photographic ambition is to take casual vacation pictures, some of the following suggestions for professional composition may strike you as overkill.

But read them anyway. If you let some of these tips rub off on you, you'll be able to apply them even in everyday snapshot situations. There's no law against casual vacation pictures being good casual vacation pictures.

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Composition is the arrangement of your picture, the interplay between foreground and background, the way the subject fills the frame, the way the parts of the picture relate to each other, and so on.

Will the shot be clearer, better, or more interesting if you move closer? What about walking around to the other side of the action, or zooming in slightly, or letting tall grass fill the foreground? Would the picture be more interesting if it were framed by horizontal, vertical, or diagonal structures (such as branches, pillars, or a road stretching away)? All of this floats through a veteran photographer's head before the shutter button clicks.

It's easy to think, "Hey, it's a picture, not a painting—I have to shoot what's there." However, the fact is that photography is every bit as creative as painting. You have more control over the composition than you realize.

If the primary thrust of your photographic ambition is to take casual vacation pictures, some of the following suggestions for professional composition may strike you as overkill.

But read them anyway. If you let some of these tips rub off on you, you'll be able to apply them even in everyday snapshot situations. There's no law against casual vacation pictures being good casual vacation pictures.

Most people assume that the center of the frame should contain the most important element of your shot. In fact, 98 percent of all amateur photos feature the subject of the shot in dead center.

Figure 2-1: Top: When shooting a head and shoulder portrait, frame the shot so that her eyes fall on the upper imaginary line a third of the way down the frame.
Bottom: When shooting a landscape, put the horizon on the bottom—third line if you want to emphasize the sky or tall objects like mountains, trees, and buildings. Put the horizon on the upper third line to emphasize what's on the ground, such as the people in the shot.

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There you sit, surveying your boxes of old photos. Snapshots of your family. Snapshots on vacation. Snapshots of tourist attractions. But they're all snapshots.

Then the professional photos in some magazine or newspaper hit you. There's the brilliant close-up of a ladybug on a leaf, with the bushes in the background gently out of focus. There's the amazing shot of the soccer player butting the ball with his head, frozen in action so completely that you can see individual flecks of sweat flying from his hair. There's the incredible shot of the city lights at night, with car taillights drawing colorful firefly tracks across the frame.

You can't help but wonder: "How do they do that? And why can't I do it too?"

Actually, you probably can. Some of these special shots require special gear, but most of them involve nothing more than good technique—and knowing when to invoke which of your camera's special features. With a little practice, you can take pictures just as compelling, colorful, and intimate as the shots you see in the magazines.

This chapter is dedicated to laying bare the secrets of professional photographers. May you never take another dull snapshot.

Everybody's seen those incredible high-speed action photos of athletes frozen in mid-leap. Without these shots (and the swimsuit photos), Sports Illustrated would be no thicker than a pamphlet.

Through a combination of careful positioning, focusing, lighting, and shutter-speed adjustments, this kind of photo is within your reach. As a handy bonus, mastering the frozen-action sports picture also means you've mastered frozen-action water splashes, frozen-action bird-in-flight shots, and frozen-action kid moments.

Don't get frustrated if, despite learning all of the following techniques, many of your pictures don't come out well. Sports photography produces lots of waste. Pros shoot dozens, sometimes hundreds, of frames just to get one good picture.

In short, a very low good-to-bad ratio is par for the course in this kind of shooting. But what the heck? It isn't costing you anything, and one great shot can make the entire effort worthwhile.

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Everybody's seen those incredible high-speed action photos of athletes frozen in mid-leap. Without these shots (and the swimsuit photos), Sports Illustrated would be no thicker than a pamphlet.

Through a combination of careful positioning, focusing, lighting, and shutter-speed adjustments, this kind of photo is within your reach. As a handy bonus, mastering the frozen-action sports picture also means you've mastered frozen-action water splashes, frozen-action bird-in-flight shots, and frozen-action kid moments.

Don't get frustrated if, despite learning all of the following techniques, many of your pictures don't come out well. Sports photography produces lots of waste. Pros shoot dozens, sometimes hundreds, of frames just to get one good picture.

In short, a very low good-to-bad ratio is par for the course in this kind of shooting. But what the heck? It isn't costing you anything, and one great shot can make the entire effort worthwhile.

If your digital camera has a zoom lens, it's probably a 3X zoom, meaning that it can magnify the scene three times. Unfortunately, if you're in the stands at the football game, hoping for action shots of an individual player, 3X is not powerful enough. What you really need is one of those enormous, bazooka-like telephoto lenses that protrude three feet in front of the camera (see Figure 3-1).

Figure 3-1: If action photography is going to be a regular part of your shooting, consider a digital camera with an 8X zoom or greater. Better yet, look into digital SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras (DSLRs), which can accommodate a telephoto lens. This shot, for example, was captured with a 200mm lens on a DSLR.

But that doesn't mean you can't still capture good shots. Find a position on the sidelines that puts you as close to the action as possible. Zoom in with your camera and then use the trick shown in Figure 3-2.

If it's a bright, sunny day, the standard "automatic everything" setting of the camera might work just fine. Take a few sample shots, trying to get the action as it's coming at you.

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You may have noticed that in most professional photo portraits, the background is softly out of focus. Unless you have the cheapest camera on the planet, you can create a similar great-looking effect yourself.

In photographic terms, a shot with a soft-focus background is said to have a shallow depth of field. The term "depth of field" refers to how much of the picture is in focus. When you're photographing your family in front of the Great Wall of China, you'll probably want a deep depth of field, so that both the people and the background remain in focus. But in typical headshot-type portraits, you'll want a shallow depth of field—and a blurry background. Figure 3-5 should make this more clear.

So how do you control the depth of field? Here are a few ways.

It might not seem logical that you'd want to use your camera's zoom lens (if it has one) for a portrait. After all, you can get as close as you want to the subject just by walking.

But thanks to a quirk of optics, zooming in helps create a shallow depth of field, which is just what you want for portraits. (Back up if zooming puts the camera's vision too close to the subject.)

The farther away your model is from the background, the softer the background will appear. If you choose an ivy-covered wall as your backdrop, for example, position your subject 10, 20, or 30 feet away from the wall—the farther, the better.

You may remember that two factors determine how much light fills a shot: how long the shutter remains open (the shutter speed) and how wide it opens (the aperture).

Figure 3-5: Top: The trick to creating a soft background, whether for a portrait or a landscape, is to use a large aperture setting, like f-2.8 or f-4. (Quirkily enough, low f-numbers indicate larger aperture settings; see the table on page 42.)
If your camera has an aperture-priority mode, then you can lock in this setting; the camera sets the correct shutter speed for you. Also, note that the farther away the subject is from the background, the softer the background will appear.

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Cameras love light, that's for sure. And in general, you need the flash for indoor shots.

But not always. Some of the best interior photos use nothing more than light streaming in from a window. Images that use only ambient light without adding flash are called existing light or natural light photos.

This technique isn't right for every situation. But when it's appropriate, existing-light photos have these advantages over flash photography:

More depth. The problem with the flash is that it illuminates only about the first ten feet of the scene. Everything beyond that fades to black.

In existing-light photography, on the other hand, your camera reads the lighting for the entire room. Not only is your primary subject exposed properly, but the surrounding setting is too, giving the picture more depth.
Less harsh. The light in an existing-light photo generally comes from a variety of sources: overhead lights, windows, lamps, and reflections off walls and ceilings. All of this adds up to softer, more balanced light than what you get from the laser beam generated by your built-in flash.
More expressive. Too often, flash pictures produce the "deer in the headlights" look from your subjects—if indeed the close-range flash doesn't whitewash them completely. Existing-light pictures tend to be more natural and expressive, and the people you're shooting are more relaxed when they're not being pelted by bursts of light.

An existing-light indoor portrait has a classic feel, because it's reminiscent of those timeless paintings by great artists like Rembrandt.

In a natural-light portrait, keep the flash turned off (that's why it's called natural light). The camera's shutter will have to remain open for a relatively long interval to admit enough light for a good picture. As a result, you'll need to keep the camera very steady—which often means you'll need a tripod.

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Sometimes it's easier to take your own picture than to hand the camera to someone else—especially when you're practicing with your camera.

The preceding discussion about blurring the background applies to pictures you take of yourself, too, of course. But there are a few other considerations.

If you're on vacation, the natural scenery might be all the backdrop you need. If you're shooting a picture to use on a resumé or to post on your Web page, however, find a well-lit room with some open wall space. The blank wall (preferably light-colored) will serve as your backdrop. Natural light coming in from windows is best for this setup.

Find a stool or a low-back chair without arms, and position it about five feet in front of your backdrop. If possible, it should face the brightest window in the room.

Next, you'll need a way to position your camera. A standard tripod is best, but you can use a pocket tripod (page 53) on top of a table if necessary. Either way, position the camera about five feet from your stool.

In a pinch, you can use a standard hotel-room lamp as a tripod. The threads that are designed to secure the lampshade to its support bracket are exactly the right diameter for your camera's tripod socket!

Turn on the flash. The ambient room lighting is often bright enough to provide overall even illumination, but the flash will provide a little burst of front light to smooth out facial blemishes and put a twinkle in your eyes.

The best cameras for self-portraits have a flip screen and a remote control. The flip screen lets you preview how you look in the frame before you shoot the shot, and the remote control lets you actually take the shot while sitting comfortably on your stool.

If you don't have these options, put your camera in self-timer mode. To help you frame the shot while you're not actually on the stool, use a table lamp as a stand-in.

Check your hair and clothing in a mirror, press the shutter button to trigger the self-timer countdown, and then sit on the stool (preferably

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Children are challenging for all photographers. They're like flash floods: fast, low to the ground, and unpredictable. But with a little patience and perseverance, you can keep up with them and get the shot (Figure 3-9). Here are some tips:

Be prepared. Rule one for capturing great kid pictures is to have your camera handy at all times, charged and with memory-card space to spare. Great kid shots come and go in the blink of an eye. Parents don't have the luxury of keeping their equipment snugly stowed away in a camera bag in the closet.

Figure 3-9: If you want great-looking kid shots, you've got to play on their turf. That means getting down on your hands and knees, or even your tummy.
Get down there. The best kid shots are generally photographed at kid level, and that means getting low. (Flip screens are particularly useful for kid shots, because they let you position the camera down low without actually having to lie on the ground.)
Get close. Your shots will have much more impact if the subject fills the frame, plus you won't have to do as much cropping later in iPhoto.
Prefocus. Shutter lag will make you miss the shot every time. In many cases, you can defeat it by prefocusing—that is, half-pressing the shutter button when the kid's not doing anything special. Keep your finger on the button until the magical smile appears, then press fully to snap the shot.
Burst away. Use your camera's burst mode to fire off several shots in quick succession. Given the fleeting nature of many kids' grins, this trick improves your odds for catching just the right moment.
Force the flash. Indoors or out, you'll want the flash to fire, since it provides even illumination and helps freeze the action. Switch your camera's flash setting so that it's always on.

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Capturing stage performances is difficult even for professional photographers. What makes theater lighting tricky is that the bright main light on the actors is often right in the same frame with a subdued or even darkened background. If you photograph this composition "as is" in automatic mode, then the camera calibrates the exposure, brightening up the image enough to display the dominant dim background. As a result, the spotlighted actors turn into white-hot, irradiated ghosts.

Your built-in flash is useless under these conditions (unless you climb right up onto the stage beside the actors, which is generally frowned upon by the management). The typical range for the camera's flash is about ten feet, after which it's about as useful as a snow-cone machine in Alaska. Turn your flash off at theater performances—because it's annoying to the rest of the audience, because it's worthless, and because it's usually forbidden.

To overcome this challenge, use the other tools built into your camera. If you have a spot meter mode, you have a fighting chance. As noted previously, your camera generally gauges the brightness of the scene by averaging the light across the entire frame—a recipe for disaster when you're shooting the stage.

Spot metering, however, lets you designate a particular spot in the scene whose brightness you want the camera to measure. (You indicate what spot that is by positioning a frame marker that appears in the center of the frame.) Point the spot-metering area at the brightly lit actors. The camera then sets the exposure on them instead of on the vast expanse of the dimly lit set.

Figure 3-11: You can buy an underwater housing for your digital camera for as little as $100. Olympus and Canon make housings for nearly all of their compact cameras. Other manufacturers offer underwater gear, too.

Not all cameras have a spot-metering mode. But even basic cameras generally offer some kind of exposure compensation, an overall brightness control. For theater situations, try lowering the exposure to–1 or–1.5, for example. The objective is to darken the entire scene. The background will be

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Water is the mortal enemy of digital cameras. Still, you can buy waterproof enclosures for many camera models, which opens up a whole new world of photographic possibilities.

Sometimes these enclosures are made by the camera manufacturer. Canon, for example, makes clear plastic cases for a number of its digital cameras. For other models, you can often find enclosures for sale at Web sites like www.ikelite.com or www.uwimaging.com.

The good news is that these enclosures protect the camera at depths down to 100 feet, for example, and provide access to the camera's controls. The bad news is that the underwater housing can cost as much as the camera!

When shooting underwater, force the flash to turn on; it's dark down there. You might also want to play with the color balance adjustment to help offset the bluish tint of the water. If your camera has a dial that lets you call up different lighting presets, try the Cloudy setting to warm up the tones.

Oh, and don't try to change the batteries while you're down there.

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Digital cameras are perfect vacation companions. Memory cards are easy to pack, there's no film for airport X-rays to wash out, and when the day is done, you can review all of your images on the camera's LCD screen, on your laptop, or on the hotel room TV.

Shooting on the road presents unique photo opportunities that simply aren't available at home—like museums, fjords, and Cinderella's Castle. Here's how to master those moments and add a little spice to your vacation slideshow.

Digital cameras may be small and compact, but they're often accompanied by just as much accessory junk as film cameras. Here's a pre-trip checklist:

Batteries. The laws of photography dictate that you'll run out of juice at the precise moment the perfect shot appears.

If your camera comes with its own proprietary, rechargeable battery, consider buying a second one. Charge both batteries every night, and take them both with you during the day. (Pack the charger, too.)

If your camera accepts AA-type batteries instead, you have much more flexibility. Bring your set of NiMH rechargeables, as described as page 17, and their charger. Also pack an emergency set of disposables, like alkaline AAs or Duracell CRV3 lithium disposables, if your camera accepts them.
Memory cards. Nobody ever said, "Oh, I wish I'd bought a smaller memory card." You'll be grateful for every last megabyte.

As a rough rule of thumb, figure that you'll wind up keeping 36 shots a day (not including the ones that you delete right off the camera). If you have a 3-megapixel camera, a 64 MB card might be enough for one day of shooting. If you brought a laptop on the trip, you can rush back to the hotel room each night and offload the pictures into iPhoto, freeing up the card for the next day's shooting.

If you don't plan to take the laptop along, buy a much bigger memory card (or several). If you're on the road for a week with that hypothetical 3-megapixel camera, you'll need at least 448 megabytes to hold those 36 pictures a day. It's generally cheaper to buy two 256 MB cards than one 512 MB card, but shop around to get the best deal possible (

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Everybody knows what the camera's built-in flash is for, right? It goes off automatically when there's not enough light.

Unfortunately, everybody also knows how ornery and feeble these flashes are. If you're too close to the subject, the flash blows out the picture, turning your best friend into a ghost face that looks like it was photographed during a nuclear test. If you're farther than about eight feet away, the flash is too weak to do anything useful at all.

No matter what kind of camera you have, however, you'll take your best pictures when you decide to use the flash, not when the camera decides. Believe it or not, the camera's automatic mode is wrong about half the time.

Outdoor portraits represent a perfect example. If you leave the flash setting on automatic when you shoot outdoors, you can guess what will happen: The camera will conclude that there's plenty of light and won't bother to fire the flash.

The camera has correctly concluded that there's enough light in the entire frame. But it's not smart enough to recognize that the person you're photographing is, in fact, in shadow (Figure 3-14).

The solution in this situation is to force the flash on—a very common trick. Provided you're close enough to the subject, the flash will provide enough fill light to balance the subject's exposure with that of the surrounding background. (If you're using your on-camera flash, stand within about eight feet of the subject so you can get enough flash for a proper exposure.)

Camera-toting tourists are prime targets for thieves–and digital cameras make delicious loot. When you're on the road, keep in mind the following tips, which are designed to help you bring home more than just memories:

Consider packing your camera gear in a backpack or a fanny pack instead of a traditional camera bag. That way, you're not walking through the streets of India with a bag that screams, "I'm an expensive camera–steal me!"

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Over the years, you've probably seen plenty of indoor flash pictures that have a pitch-black background and an overexposed, practically nuked subject.

Many factors conspire to produce these stark, unflattering shots, but one of the major contributors is, once again, your camera thinking on its own. You're letting it decide when to turn on the flash and which shutter speed to use.

First of all, you don't always need the flash. Indoor photography offers many opportunities for stunning existing-light portraits and moody interior shots, as described earlier. And when you do have to turn on the flash, you can make certain adjustments to preserve the ambiance of the room so that your background doesn't fall into a black hole.

There are two reasons why your flash shots often have a pitch-black background. The first problem is that the light from a typical digital camera's flash reaches only about eight to ten feet. Anything beyond this range, and you've got yourself an inadvertent existing-light photo.

If your camera has a manual mode that allows you to dictate both the aperture (f-stop) and shutter speed, you can easily overcome these problems. Once in manual mode, try this combination as a starting point for flash photography indoors:

Set your film speed to 100 (page 22).
Set the aperture (f-stop) to f-5.6.
Set the shutter speed to 1/15th of a second.
Use the forced-flash mode. (Don't use the red-eye reduction feature.)

Now hold the camera as steady as possible. At these slow shutter speeds, your shots are more vulnerable to camera shake, and therefore to blurriness. Your flash will help freeze everything in its range—but the background, not illuminated by the flash, may blur if the camera isn't steady.

Take a shot. As you review the picture, you'll see that it looks much different than what you're accustomed to. Specifically, it has more room ambiance and background detail.

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Twilight is a magic time for photographers. The setting sun bathes the landscape in a warm glow, providing a beautiful backdrop for portraits. This is an ideal time to shoot any type of shot.

First, you'll need a tripod or some other means to steady the camera. There's far less light during this time of day, and therefore the shutter slows down considerably.

Figure 3-16: Tired of having your flash subjects lost in a black hole of darkness? Try using what photographers call slow-synchro flash. Set your camera's shutter speed and aperture manually to control the exposure of the background. The camera's flash ensures that the subjects are exposed properly.

Now inspect your camera's flash options. Look for an option called either Slow-synchro or Nighttime—a setting that synchronizes your flash with the very slow shutter. Look for a "stars and mountain" or "stars and person" icon.

Now position your model in front of the most beautiful part of the landscape and take the picture.

When you push the button, the camera opens the shutter long enough to compensate for the dim twilight lighting, capturing all of the rich, saturated colors. The flash, meanwhile, throttles down, emitting just enough light to illuminate the subject from the front.

The result can be an incredibly striking image that will make your travel pictures the talk of the office. It's a great technique when shooting somebody standing in front of illuminated monuments and buildings at night, sunsets over the ocean, and festive nighttime lighting.

If your subject is rendered too bright (overexposed by the flash), move back a few feet, zoom in, and try again. Conversely, if your subject is too dark (underexposed by the flash), move in a couple of feet.

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Unlike portraiture, where you have to arrange the lights and the models, landscape photography demands a different discipline: patience. Nature calls the shots here. Your job is to be prepared and in position.

For years now, camera manufacturers have been inflicting red-eye reduction mode on their customers. It's a series of bright, strobing flashes that's not only annoying to the people you're photographing, but it doesn't even work.

What causes red-eye? In a dimly lit room, the subject's pupil dilates, revealing more of the retina. On cameras where the flash is close to the camera lens (as it almost always is), the light from the flash shines through the dilated pupil, bounces off the retina, and reflects as a red circle directly back into the lens. (The same thing happens to animals, too, except that the color is sometimes green instead of red.)

The solution is to move the flash away from the camera lens. That way, the reflection from the retina doesn't bounce directly back at the camera. But on a camera that fits in your pocket, it's a little tough to achieve much separation of flash and lens.

Since camera makers couldn't move the flash away, they went to Plan B: firing the flash just before the shutter snaps, in theory contracting the subjects' pupils, thereby revealing less retina. Alas, it doesn't work very well, and you may wind up with red-eye anyway.

You have three ways out of red-eye. If you can turn up the lights, do it. If you have that rare camera that accepts an external, detachable flash, use it. And if none of that works, remember that iPhoto has its own red-eye-removal tool (page 155).

Photographers generally covet the first and last two hours of the day for shooting (which half explains why they're always getting up at five in the morning). The lower angle of the sun and the slightly denser atmosphere create rich, saturated tones, as well as what photographers call sweet light.

It's a far cry from the midday sun, which creates much harsher shadows and much more severe highlights. Landscape shooting is more difficult when the sun is high overhead on a bright, cloudless day.

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Your camera usually does a good job of exposing the sky during sunset, even in automatic mode. Keep the flash turned off and shoot at will.

Keep an eye on your shutter speed (if your camera shows it). If it goes below 1/30th of a second, you may need a tripod or some other steady surface to prevent camera shake. Activate the self-timer or remote control to avoid jiggling the camera when you press the shutter.

The biggest mistake people make when shooting sunsets has nothing to do with the sky—it's the ground that ruins the shots. Your eyes can make out much more detail in the shadowy ground than your camera will. Therefore, it's not worth trying to split the frame in half, composing it with the sky above and the ground below. The bottom half of your photo will just be a murky black blob in the final image.

Instead, fill your composition with 90 percent sky and 10 percent ground or water. This arrangement may feel funny—at least until you look at your prints and see how much more dynamic they are with this composition.

Many photographers make the mistake of leaving the scene right after the sun dips below the horizon. Hang around for another 10 minutes or so; sometimes there's a truly amazing after-burst of light.

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Weddings dominate special event photography, not to mention being the primary income source for a huge percentage of professional photographers.

If you can shoot an entire wedding, then you're prepared for any other event that comes your way. For example, graduations are just weddings without the reception. Birthday parties are just weddings without the ceremony.

If you're a guest, one critical element of successful photography at a wedding is not interfering with the hired photographer's posed shots. Introduce yourself to the photographer and ask if it's OK to take a couple of shots right after the pro has finished each setup. You'll generally receive permission—and the opportunity to capture the highlights of the day.

As a digital photographer, you can bring a new dimension to the celebration that most pros don't even offer: immediacy. If you like, you can hook up your camera to a TV to play the pictures back while the reception is still going on. Or, thanks to iPhoto, you can have shots on the Web before the pro even gets his film to the lab. Put your favorites together and add a little music; suddenly you have a QuickTime movie for downloading.

In part, your success at shooting a wedding depends on your ability to anticipate the action. If you've been to any weddings recently, you probably know that you can expect classic photo ops like these:

Before the wedding. Bride making final dress adjustments, alone in dress, with mother, with maid of honor, with bridesmaids, and so on. The groom with his best man, with his ushers, with his family.
During the ceremony. The groom waiting at the altar, his parents being seated, the bride's mother being seated, the processional, the bride coming down the aisle, the vows, the ring ceremony, the kiss, the bride and groom coming back down the aisle. Oh, and of course the obligatory adorable shots of the flower girl and ring-bearer boy walking down the aisle looking dazed.

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Most people usually photograph people and places. Every now and then, however, you'll need to photograph things: stuff you plan to sell on eBay, illustrations for a report, your personal belongings for insurance purposes, and so on.

More expensive digital cameras offer serious photographers a wonderful feature: a place to plug in an external flash attachment.

An external flash moves the light source away from the lens, which reduces red-eye, especially if the flash is on its own separate bracket rather than a hot shoe right on the camera. The external flash makes your camera's battery last longer, too, because it has its own batteries. You'll be grateful during long events like weddings.

The most versatile way to attach an external flash is with a standard hot shoe right on top of the camera, as shown here. You can either connect the flash directly, or you can use a dedicated flash cord that allows you to move the flash away from the camera, but still retain communication between the two.

Some cameras just aren't big enough to accommodate a hot shoe. To circumvent this problem, some camera makers have engineered a system that uses a tiny socket on the camera that connects to the flash via a proprietary cord and bracket. This system isn't the height of versatility, but it does allow you the flexibility of an external flash on a very compact camera.

A wedding is one key example of a situation where you'll find this useful. When you're not the primary photographer, you won't get the prime shooting locations during big events (like the cake cutting). Therefore, you'll need all the flash power possible to get the shots even when you're out of position–another advantage of an external flash unit.

Finally, a detached flash attachment gives you more flexibility, because you can use it to bounce light off the wall or ceiling to provide fill lighting for certain shots.

A good external flash with a dedicated cord costs at least $200, and, of course, only the fancier digital cameras can accommodate them. But as you become more serious with your photographic pastime, you'll find that external flashes help you capture shots that on-camera flashes just can't get.

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Because photography is the art and science of capturing light, you wouldn't think that nighttime would present many photo opportunities. But in fact, nighttime pictures can be the most spectacular ones in your portfolio. City lights, river lights, sky lights, and even car lights can stand out like bright colors on a black canvas.

Unfortunately, you won't get far in this kind of photography without a tripod. You can practice the following techniques by bracing the camera against a wall—but you'll find the job infinitely easier with a true tripod.

You've seen this shot on postcards and in magazines: neon bands of light streaking across the frame, with a nicely lit bridge or building in the background. The trick to these shots is to keep the shutter open long enough for the cars to pass all the way from one side of the frame to the other (Figure 3-18).

When using film cameras, photographers rely on the camera's B setting, in combination with a cable release (a shutter button on the end of a cord). The B setting (short for bulb) keeps the shutter open for as long as you hold down the release. Many a photographer has stood out in the cold, thumbs pressing down on icy cable releases, softly counting: "One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three…"

Your digital camera probably doesn't have a B setting (although a few do have Bulb modes). But you can capture these dramatic shots if your camera offers a shutter-priority mode (see Figure 3-3). In this mode, you can tell the camera to keep the shutter open for a long time indeed—four seconds or more for car-taillight photos, for example.

A tripod has two parts: the legs and the pan head. The camera attaches to the pan head, and the legs support the head.

You can buy a tripod with any of three pan head types. Friction heads are the simplest, least expensive, and most popular with still photographers. Fluid heads are desirable if you'll also be using your tripod for a camcorder, as they smooth out panning and tilting. (This means you, iMovie fans.) They're more expensive than friction heads, but are well worth the money if you're after a professional look to your footage. Finally,

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Time-lapse photography is an effective way to depict a subject changing from one state of being to another: a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, the unfurling of a rose bud, and so on. Obviously, the result you want is a movie, not a still picture—but that's just fine with you. You've got a Mac, and the Mac has QuickTime.

The idea is that you'll take a picture at regular intervals—once an hour, for example. At the end of eighteen hours, you'll have eighteen images that you can upload to iPhoto for processing. (You'll also be very tired, but that's another story.)

You'll then be able to use iPhoto's Export to QuickTime command, which turns your still frames into a live-action movie at the frame rate you specify. Chapter 11 details this process.

When setting up for a time-lapse shoot, keep these things in mind:

Use a tripod. You want every shot to have precisely the same angle, distance, and composition.
You don't want a lot of changing background activity in your sequence of shots, since it will distract from the main subject.
Keep the camera plugged into a wall jack (an AC adapter is an extra purchase with most camera models). Changing the batteries once the time-lapse process has begun is sure to alter the camera's original positioning.
Focus manually (if your camera allows it) to ensure sharpness in every frame.
Avoid the flash. Close-range flash shooting generally blows your subject into blinding white.
Experiment with exposure intervals. Try one shot every fifteen minutes for one project, and then repeat the project again using 30-minute intervals. With a little trial and error, you'll find the perfect setting for your subject.

Once you've captured your sequence of shots, upload them to iPhoto. Chapter 11 has the full details about creating QuickTime movies of your slide shows. For time-lapse movies, the process is just as described there, with a few additional suggestions. They include:

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Movie making probably wasn't what you had in mind when you bought a digital still camera. Even so, most cameras offer this feature, and it can come in handy now and then.

Movie mode lets you capture QuickTime video, often with sound, and save it to your memory card right alongside your still pictures. Some cameras permit only 30 seconds of video per attempt; others let you keep recording until the memory card is full.

Black-and-white photography no longer dominates the print world as it did during the heyday of Life magazine, but it's still popular. Black-and-white shots impart a special artistic feeling that's often lacking in color shots.

Unfortunately, many of the tricks used by expert black-and-white artists aren't readily available to casual photographers employing digital means without a visit to high-end image editors like Photoshop. There is, however, a powerful black-and-white alternative that doesn't require an advanced degree in photo editing: infrared photography.

Infrared photography deals with the spectrum of light that you can't see but your digital camera can. It's an option only if your camera accepts filters—and if you're willing to buy an infrared filter, which eliminates the visible spectrum and captures only the infrared rays.

The first thing you'll notice in infrared photography is that the blue sky goes dark and that most trees turn very light. Glare is minimized, as you can see by the road in the before-and-after examples shown here.

The most popular filter for digicam infrared photography is the Hoya R72. If your camera accepts filters, then go to the camera store, attach the R72, and look at a brightly lit scene on the LCD screen. You'll know right away if your camera is suitable for this kind of photography.

Older digital cameras, like the Nikon CoolPix 900, often work better for infrared photography because they don't have the wave-blocking infrared filters of newer models. But even today, certain specialty cameras, like the Canon EOS 20Da, perform well for infrared and astrophotography because they don't have the infrared cutoff filter.

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There's an old photographer's saying: the best camera is the one you have with you. The day you're faced with a photo op and your multi-megapixel wonder machine is stashed in your sock drawer at home, you'll be thankful if there's a cameraphone in your pocket—a cellphone with a tiny, built-in lens that takes tiny, built-in pictures.

Of course, cameraphones don't have all of the whiz-bang settings that you've come to adore on your digicam, but you can still take perfectly good shots (see Figure 3-19). Here's a look at the most common cameraphone settings and how they can help you take better pictures.

Picture size. This option gives you the choice between two resolution settings: large and small. (They would be more accurately labeled <

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