" title="Pare and Focus"> Pare and Focus

This video from expert village illustrates some of the ideas I covered in my last post, Color in Composition. It’s on colors in painting but the same ideas can be used for photography.

The oldest known painting was made around 32,000 years ago. Photography has been around for less than 200 years» . The extra years mean there’s a lot of great information on painting and composition. I use this to my advantage and apply the same ideas to my photography.

Do you have any favorite resources for ideas in your photography? I’d love the hear them and I know other readers would too. Help out your community and share them in the comments.

Coming up, cool techniques for altering the color in your photos. Stay Tuned…

That's me...Kat Landreth.

Joining Pare and Focus for the first time? Great!  If you want to take better pictures without a lot of headache, hair pulling, and money spent, you’re definitely in the right place.

Pare and Focus is a growing resource on beginning digital photography and photo editing. My goal is to make all of my recommendations simple, and inexpensive so your new hobby can be a blast, not a pain.

Check out the Who’s behind Pare and Focus? section in the sidebar for more info on what I do here.

Want to know where to get started?

If you’re interested in free photo editing,  check out “4 Differences Between GIMP and Photoshop that Matter” Or take a look at “Free Photo Editors Compared” for a comparison of 5 free desktop and online photo editors. Ready to take the plunge and get GIMP? Check out the GIMP Quick Start Guide at the top of this page.

Want to know more about digital photography? Learn about getting color right or choosing the best file format for your pictures.

Looking for a place to show off your photos? Join us in the Pare and Focus group on Flickr.

Have fun playing with the site too. There’s all kinds of buttons» , expanding notes, roll over image effects and interactive stuff going on. These things have practical uses -roll over effects let me show before and after images effectively, and expanding notes let me cram more information into every post- but I have to admit they make Pare and Focus really fun too.

My next post is part of a series on color in digital photography. This one will tackle color in composition. I’ve found some cool resources, and I think it’s going to be a really interesting post. Interested? Subscribe to stay on top of the Color Series and every new post.

Like the site? Think I’m missing something? Have a question or a suggestion? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for visiting,

Kat

eggs, originally uploaded by LandKat.

While I’m working on my posts about color in digital photography, I thought I would give you a taste of what I’ll be talking about.

This photo is nice because the colors are simple and correct. The eggs look like eggs, and the parsley looks like parsley. Imagine the same photo with a greenish tint. Or with a blue color cast. It might be cool for fine art, but it’s not as appetizing as the true to life colors are.

For this food shot, choosing the correct white balance, and getting the correct exposure were key. The white balance was set to “Sun” for bright south window light. This kept the photo from looking too blue, or too orange. If the eggs were too dark it might look unappetizing. I used a white foam board to bounce the window light back into the shadows and keep the photo nice and bright.

If you want people to think “Oh, Yum!” when they look at your food photos, and not, “Oh, No!”, taking a little time to get the color right will get you headed in the right direction.

More details to come. Stay tuned!