Welcome to Photography 101!

Our first lesson today is on exposure compensation.

What the what?

Don’t work, it’s much easier than it sounds!

First, you need to pull out your DSLR, and find the exposure compensation button. It looks like a plus sign (+) over a minus sign (-).

On the Nikon it’s usually up top…

On the Canon it’s generally on the back…

Find it? If you’re having trouble, pull out your camera booklet.

I am seriously excited to talk about this button today. It’s one of my absolute favorite tools and I use it all the time on my camera. Especially when I am shooting pictures of my kids and don’t have a lot of time to think about exposure.

So what I am going to do is tell you about it, show you some samples, and then I want you  to give it a try!

Before we begin, you need to take your camera off auto. That’s the little green camera or square on your settings dial.

Green does not mean go!

Ever!

You should NEVER shoot on auto. It’s totally bad karma. Shooting on auto has been proven to make individuals gain weight and show signs of significant hair loss…

Okay, maybe I am going too far, but you should seriously never shoot on auto. Pinky swear you’ll stop so we can move on, o’kay?

Turn your dial to P. (P stands for Program Mode. Trust me, it’s good stuff.)

Now, with your dial on P, stick your kid or pet or weird neighbor in front of a window so we can take  some pictures.

Set your ISO to something good for indoor lighting. Somewhere around 400 is great.

Tell your subject to look out the window and watch for the ice cream truck.

I know, I know, it’s mean, but it works every time.

(Be sure and dress your subject up in some ridiculous outfit that they will adore and thank you for later.)

Now this picture above is straight out of the camera. Scouts honor.

See how dark it is?

Let’s try again.

What’s happening is my light meter is reading all the light in the whole frame. It doesn’t know who is a window, and who is the cutest baby in the whole wide world.

Hello? Isn’t it obvious?

My camera light meter knows to expose the image to what it thinks is a good, nuetral, evenly well-lit image. But the light coming in from the window is so powerful, it’s causing the subject to appear too dark.

(Also, if you notice, I am shooting at an angle towards the window. If I turned and shot with the window directly behind my subject, aka adorable babe, she would appear a dark silhouette.)

You have had this problem before, right?

Now here’s how to correct it. Enter: exposure compensation!

Your exposure compensation dial can be rotated be adjusting the plus (+) and minus (-) to over or under expose your lighting. If your subject is appearing too dark, you will want to use the plus (+) and increase the stops. (Stops are usually measured in third steps, like +.3, +.7, +1.0) Every camera is different, but my camera will let me go all the way to +3.0. Every time you rotate or adjust your exposure compensation, you are over or under exposing your image one stop.

Here’s where the coolness comes in: I just took a picture. The picture is too dark. I have learned in the past that I should think about my shutter speed, iso, and aperture, and adjust them so my picture isn’t so dark.

Nope.

By the time you figure out all that stuff, your kid has moved on and the image opportunity is lost.

Just make a quick adjustment with your exposure compensation and you’re good to go.

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t learn about exposure, and aperture, and film speed, and all that good stuff.

You totally should. But, you should learn about this too.

Okay, let’s get back to the adorable babe before she looses interest.

I am now going to take another picture with the same settings, except adjust my exposure compensation two stops to +.7

See! It works! Man, I love it when that happens.

And it helps to have a baby who is well rested, well fed, and dressed in pink pom-poms.

Now go try out your exposure compensation button on your DSLR. You can even try a self portrait if your kids won’t hold still.

If you are having a hard time figuring our your exposure compensation button on your camera, leave a comment on this post or on our Facebook page and I will try and answer as soon as I can.

On side note, we are creating a photo group on Flickr where you can upload your pictures after trying out this tutorial. Go here to join the fun! All you have to do is sign in to your Flickr account (create one if you don’t have one already), go to this link, and click on “join group” to start uploading and sharing your pictures.

Alright, I know I said I was done with giveaways, but when T-Mobile twists my arm, I am just so flattered that I had to say yes.  Plus it’s packed in with some fantabulous information, which is what I’m all about anyway.  So first the awesome information I learned when I attended an amazing event put on by my friend Stephanie and T-Mobile last week.

People are constantly asking me what phone to buy, which carrier to use, which operating system is the best, etc.  My personal bias aside, the real answer is that it really just depends.  So what is going to be the right answer for ME is not necessarily the right answer for you.  The trick is to ask the person who will be selling you the device specific questions to make sure that it’s going to end up being the right choice for you.

Tips for buying and giving a mobile device

Key questions to review with your sales associate:

• What does my rate plan cover?  Basically  you are going to want to know if you will have unlimited text messages (essential these days I think), how many minutes you will be allowed if there are any overage fees for going over your plan limit, etc.
• What kind of speeds/data am I getting?  Will it be important for you to get information to your phone at lightning fast speed?  Maybe you want to hook your laptop up to the phone, so you can use the internet wherever you are.  Speed will be very important for you in that case.  If you won’t be a heavy internet user on your phone, it will be less essential, obviously.  T-Mobile has a great calculator for you to check out http://www.t-mobile.com/Tools/MBCalculator.aspx
• What is the exchange/return policy?  Sometimes a phone can be like getting married to someone you met on the internet.  You really don’t know the phone until you pick it up and actually use it.  Maybe after you’ve used it for a few days, it just doesn’t feel right in your phone, or the volume button keeps getting in your way.  Whatever it is, you should have an escape clause!
• How much will my monthly payments/charges be?  You will for sure need to know if you are going to be able to pay your bill every month!
• What are roaming charges?  Roaming charges can occur when you are out of range of your network.  Once (many years ago) I came to Utah for Thanksgiving, and my husband was still home, we chatted often on our cell phones, not realizing I was racking up some serious roaming charges.  A $500 bill later, you learn to ask about these things.
• What are your warranty/insurance policies?  I’ve dropped many-a phone.  Sometimes in the toilet, sometimes in a parking lot, and sometimes the phone just doesn’t work right out of the box.  Whatever it is, even though sometimes you can get a phone for super cheap, the actual phone is much more expensive.  Buying one while you are still within your 2 year contract can be super expensive.  Cover yourself, and make sure you know what you can do when things go wrong.

• DriveSmart Plus-Distracted driving is dangerous, especially with new drivers.  DriveSmart manages distractions by silencing incoming notifications, sending callers to voicemail and auto responding to text messages.  There is automatic driving detection and parents parental control options.  (including notification of cell phone use while driving)
• FamilyWhere- It allows parents to track the location of any phone on their plan.  You can set reminders to check where your kids are and see activity up to 7 days back.

When my husband and I started our family a few years ago, I took a brief break from photography. Upon returning I was shocked at how much had changed when it came to post processing an image. Suddenly, giving someone images straight out of the camera just didn’t cut it anymore.

It was the birth of Photoshop actions.

What the what?

Actions are shortcuts for photographers. When a photographer uploads an image from their camera, traditionally they will process the photo in a program such a Photoshop. The editing process can be time consuming. Often photographers will use actions to speed up the editing process.

Still with me?

Actions are basically a series of recorded steps. They are created, saved as an “action”, and each action manipulates the photograph in whatever way it was designed. For example, let’s say I have a series of photographs that all require adjustment in the same way. They all need to be sharpened, have the color adjusted, and contrast tweaked a bit. If I create, or use an already created action, I am saving myself potentially hours of post processing time.

My favorite thing about actions is they eliminate a lot of guesswork. If I am trying to copy a specific style or trend an action is a quick way to get the artistic approach I am looking for.

Want a look that says Mid-Century black and white?

Looking for a little somethin’ with some 70′s high contrast, heavy earthy tones?

Kodachrome!

(Sorry, I’m getting a little carried away here.)

Before we can try out an action, the first thing you need to learn is how to install one. After downloading an action onto your computer, open an image into Photoshop that you would like to work on.  The first thing you need to do is open your Actions folder. Go to the WINDOW button on the top, and click on ACTIONS.

Your actions palette will pop open on the screen. Next, you want to click on the drop-down menu and select LOAD ACTIONS.

Find the location where you downloaded your actions to, and open them into Photoshop.

Your actions should now appear in the palette. To use an action, simply click on the play button as shown below.

If the scroll down list seems a little intimidating, try using your actions in Button Mode first. Click on the drop-down menu again, and select BUTTON MODE.

When in button mode you just click on the action you want to try. That’s it! In a few seconds the action results will appear on your image.

(If you want to see a quick before and after, just click on the History panel to see what the image looked like before you started.)

If the action results appear too strong, you can always adjust the opacity within the layer.

That’s it! Pretty simple. Now that you know how to use an action, let’s take a look at what an action can do for your image.

In the photo below the first image is straight out of the camera. The second image is an action used to sharpen the image. The third action is intended to adjust the contrast and levels of the photo, and the fourth gives me the desired color.

(For a quick reference, the actions used above and below are from Totally Rad actions. #2: Sharpen Like a Ninja, #3: Oh snap at 55%, #4:Pool Party at 40%.)

One of my favorite things about actions is the versatility they offer with black and white images. The first image below is straight out of the camera. Image 2 and 3 are different black and white actions, and the fourth image has a second action applied to add color back to the image.

(The actions used above are #2: Magical Black and White, #3: Bitchin’ Black and White, #4:Boring Old Black and White with Lux Soft at 30%.)

Be careful using actions when processing your images. It is possible to get carried away and over process an image. You can also become overly dependent on them, therefore hindering your ability to grow and learn when using photo editing software.

Where can you find Photoshop actions?

My favorite brand is Totally Rad. They are by far the most versatile and easy to use. Their image library on their website is also incredibly helpful in finding a look or style I want to imitate.

There are also many free actions available online. DeviantArt has a large database of actions that other photographers have uploaded to share.

Another site offering free actions is the much loved Pioneer Woman. These easy-to-use actions are great for beginners.

And lastly, if you don’t have access to Adobe Photoshop, do not fear! There are specific actions made for Photoshop Elements. Using Adobe Lightroom? Look for “Presets” to use on your photos for a similar outcome.

Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go create an action that will unload my dishwasher.

I’ve seen a lot of people reach my page using searches about the Facebook Ticker.  Many of whom are unable to see the ticker on their account.  The ticker appears to be missing from certain accounts, while it annoys other people’s accounts.  I personally don’t mind it.  Here’s the official word from Facebook’s Help area….

“Ticker only appears when your network of friends and connections meets a certain threshold of activity.Ticker will appear as you connect to more friends, subscriptions, and pages.”

What does this mean?  Well, say you only have 50 friends on Facebook (like my husband who is constantly purging his account, even deleting all of my siblings, because they don’t interact much on Facebook).  If those 50 friends don’t do a whole lot on Facebook, as in they aren’t “liking” pages or statuses, or even commenting on statuses and things like that, then Facebook has decided that you don’t really NEED the ticker, as there will barely be any activity to display in the ticker.

The ticker is to see these interactions in real time so it doesn’t cloud up the news feed.  Prior to the ticker, in your news feed you’d see, “so and so likes Technology for Moms”, or “so and so is now friends with Sarah”.  This would make actual status updates get buried for people who had a lot of friends that interact on Facebook.  Now that data moves fast and does so over on the ticker.  For people that have a lot of friends this is very helpful, as it can be ignored over there on the sidebar, or you can hide it.

To hide the ticker when it’s in your chat sidebar, you have to hide the entire chat sidebar.  To do this, you simply click on the icon located at the bottom right of the chat sidebar that says “Hide Sidebar”.  To get it back, you just click on the bar at the bottom that says “chat” (almost in the exact same spot as where you initially clicked to hide it.

What happens now is that the ticker will move to your homepage.  When you click on the “Facebook” button on the top left of the screen it brings you back to your homepage.  This will have your newsfeed, and of course your ticker if you have hidden the chat sidebar.  If you do like I do though, and have separated your friends status updates from the pages you follow, and just use those lists (refer to how to separate your newsfeed here) You won’t ever see the ticker, as you are no longer using the homepage as your source for status updates (unless of course the Chat Sidebar is open)

If you don’t want to see someone’s updates in the ticker, go to their profile, and put your mouse over the “subscribed” link at the top right of the page.  From here you can select exactly what you want to see from the person.  You can unsubscribe from everything (which will NOT unfriend the person), or you can just select to see Status Updates by unchecking everything BUT the Status Updates.  Customize exactly what you want to see from people, to make the ticker less cluttered.  Unfortunately, there is no way to “mass unsubscribe” from all of your friends.  You have to do it individually.

So, if you are missing the Facebook ticker, and you would like to have it, find more people to friend on Facebook, or make your current friends interact more.  Simple as that, right?

Do you have certain folders that you need to access on a regular basis?  For me it’s my stock photography folder.  As I download or create stock photography, I store it in a specific folder within my pictures folder.  This way, when I’m looking for just the right picture of a kid using a cell phone I just have one place to search.  When I’m uploading these pictures to my blog and it brings up the little window with all of my favorite folders it requires some digging in order to get to this particular folder.

Luckily you can fully customize this menu!  All you need to do is open “Computer” or “My Computer” and navigate to the frequently accessed folder.  Then simply click the folder and drag it to the “Favorites” folder.  You will see the text change to “Create link in Favorites”.  Release the folder and enjoy your super quick access to this folder.

In Windows 7 you can also set up easy access to the folder by dragging the folder to the taskbar along the bottom of your screen.  It will then “pin” the folder to your windows explorer in the taskbar.  When you want to access this folder you right click the folder icon in the taskbar, and your folder should be listed at the top of the menu.

This pop list is called a “jump list”.  You can pin just about anything to your jump lists.  A favorite website, a file you access frequently, and of course your favorite folder.

So customize YOUR menus today and get to everything you need super fast!

I love hanging out with my friends, because they always figure out something that I didn’t know that people don’t know.  Ya know?  I can usually glean about 4-5 posts from any given Girls Night Out, or as we are calling it now “Book Club”.  For those that REALLY know me, you know I’m not an avid reader.  Joining a “Book Club” is so far from what I would do on a normal occasion.  I like books.  I mainly read books that start with “Windows Server 2008: Managing and Maintaining”.  It doesn’t leave room for, you know, books that my friends would also want to read.  I digress… the question came up about what the @ symbol means when deciphering communication over Facebook.  Or, if you happen to come across a friend’s status update that happened to have been posted originally from Twitter and then automatically posted to Facebook, it may look a little strange to you.  So let me break it down for you.

The @ means you are talking directly AT someone or some business.  In twitter when you write @Tech4Moms, I will see that tweet in a special spot in my Twitter account called “mentions”.  This will show me everyone that has mentioned my username and is talking at me, or about me.  People have translated this over to Facebook, because in Facebook, comments are not “threaded”.  Threaded means that you can see a reply to a comment under and slightly indented to the person they are replying to.  In Facebook, the comments are just one big lump under the status update or link or picture.  So, if I’m going to respond to a comment that someone else made, it may be hard to tell that I’m responding to a specific person.  So people use the @ symbol to respond to a specific person.

The # means you are adding your message to a specific category.  Again in Twitter, and  now this works in Google+ as well, whenever you add a # (or hashtag) to a word or phrase it becomes clickable.  When you click the #keyword it will show you all of the tweets that also have that specific category.  If you were keeping up with a TV show in real time, you would follow the # for the TV show, such as #psych.  If you were part of a Twitter party, such as the weekly Microsoft Twitter chat you would follow the “hashtag” #win7tech.

Something else you may see is a URL that looks strange.  It looks awfully fishy using all those letters and gibberish.  Using Twitter you are limited to using 140 characters in any given tweet.  This means that a long URL can take up all 140 characters!  Twitter, and other places use a URL shortener to make that long ugly URL into a tiny little link that doesn’t take up a lot of space in your Twitter status update.  Typically these are safe to click, and there are websites that will let you see the full URL of a shortened URL to see if it’s going to a site that is legitimate.

The last thing will be the texting talk.  Again, this is because of the limitation in Twitter’s status characters.  In order to make a tweet shorter sometimes you just have to say R instead of are.  I try not to do it often, but I will go back and edit some words if I’m over my limit.

So now, when you see someone’s Facebook status that looks like a bunch of gibberish, at least you’ll know what they are saying!

Now that smartphones are getting smarter and smarter, the amount of things we can accomplish on the road has grown tremendously.  As we now use our phones to access our bank accounts, our Facebook page, and any number of other accounts that a malicious person is just itching to get their hands on.

Don’t be under the false assumption that malware (aka viruses) only infect PC’s.  Really it all depends on the platform the malware creators decide to write the programs for.  Malware creators want to infect the largest number and broadest scope of people.  They will even have contests on who can infect the most people.  If the majority of the people use a PC, that’s what they will write the program for.  As more people use smart phones for their computing needs, more viruses will start to be written for the most popular phone’s platform.

News hit this week that a fake Netflix app hit the Android Marketplace.  Android users have been quite anxious to get Netflix on their phones.  The real Netflix app arrived, along with a not so legit Netflix app.  They look almost identical.  They will both ask you for your login information right away.  On the fake app it will then tell you (after you login) that your hardware is incompatible, and you need to reinstall.  This is when the rogue app will grab your Netflix username and pass.  While the most you’ll really lose is your Netflix username and password, it’s easily fixed by logging into Netflix on your computer and changing your password.  Other malware apps may not be so nice though!

When you are installing an app from any marketplace, make sure to read the reviews first.  Even if it’s not malware, you may just find that the app is horrible and you shouldn’t waste your time on installing it anyway.  If you are finding an official looking app, make sure to read very closely who has created the app.  For a Netflix app, the developer should be Netflix, Inc.  I say read it carefully, because if you read it fast, you could be seeing an l when really the letter is a number 1 (L and One).

Another way to make sure you aren’t installing something malicious is to read the fine print.  Does that To Do list app really need access to all of your contacts?  Read what you are granting your applications access to, and make sure it makes sense.

A friend of mine asked on Facebook, if I recommended any particular security software for Android?  Well, as a matter of fact I do.  In researching for another project I found Lookout Mobile Security.  I loved their feature set and user interface.

So good luck and stay safe out there!

Thank goodness for my walks with my friend Brittney, and thank goodness for friends and family that have very limited technical knowledge.  I’ve said before, that it’s somewhat hard for me to understand what exactly people don’t know, since I just figure people know how to do things that I know how to do.  It’s a ridiculous thought, because if my crafty friends thought that I knew how to do the things they know how to do, they would be sorely mistaken!  Seriously, they say words like Modge Podge and I get completely glassy eyed.

So I asked my friend if she had checked out the super new design to my website (which if you are reading this post in an RSS reader, definitely click over to check out my new site design!  I LOVE it!).  She said she saw the post about it on Facebook, but wanted to finish reading the rest of the status updates before clicking on it, and then forgot!  I was so hurt (or you know… not hurt, but I can pretend to be in pain, right?)  I then told her what I do in that situation, and she said she had no idea you can do that!  And thus a post was born…

1. Set your homepage.  Your homepage is the first website that pulls up when you open up the internet browser.  This should typically be the set to the sites you typically visit first, or most often, such as www.facebook.com and such.  I actually have 3 website open in 3 different tabs for my “homepage”; Facebook, Google’s Homepage, and the program I use for my family budget.  How to do this will vary from browser to browser.

• Internet Explorer 9 – Click the cog looking icon in the top right corner of the window right under the red “x”.  Select Internet Options.  On the “general” tab you can paste the address of your homepage in the text field for “homepage”.  If you want it to open more than one site in other tabs just put each web address URL on it’s own line.  Click Apply.

• Chrome – Click the wrench icon on the top right of the window.  Select Options.  If you only want one page to load when you open the browser, click “open homepage” next to “on startup.”  Then set your homepage by putting the correct web address URL in the field for “open this page” next to Home page.  If you want more than one page to open when you first open Chrome select “open the following pages” next to “on startup” and type in the addresses of the various pages, and continue to enter addresses until you have entered them all.

• Firefox – Open Firefox and then press the “alt” key.  You will see a menu pop up at the top of the window.  Click “tools” and then select “options”.  On the General tab there is a field for you to add the address of the homepage you would like to use.

Now that you can get to exactly where you want to go EASILY, what happens when you are reading something in your Facebook news feed, or reading an article somewhere, and a link strikes your fancy, but you don’t want to actually read the link until you are done with your current task?  What I do is right click on the link.  When you right click the link you are given the option to open the link in a new tab, or in a new window.  When you select one of these options, you can continue on with your current article or status updates, until you are done and then click over to the article or page you were intrigued enough to visit.

Another thing I do, when I don’t even have time to read an article that looks interesting to me, and I don’t want to keep the webpage up forever until I finally do end up reading it.  Once I open the site that has the article I want to save for later.  I click my little Evernote Chrome Extenstion, and I can either clip just the article or even the whole page to Evernote, so I can read it whenever I want, from my phone or my computer.  If it’s a recipe I want to try, I’ll pin the page to Pinterest instead of Evernote.  The recipes I put in Evernote are my tried and true recipes.  If I make a recipe from my Pinterest page, and then it turns out good, THEN I’ll clip the recipe to Evernote to save forever and ever.

So there you have it.  Some quick easy things you can do to get the most out of your web browsing experience!

I’ll just let the video do the ‘splainin!

Many people are expressing concern about Facebook’s new ticker (some people are affectionately dubbing it the sidebar from hell, but to each his/her own).  The concern people have is about privacy.  They are concerned that they are seeing what people are posting on other people’s pages that are not their friends, and therefore are concerned what is going on the ticker that people can see from people that post on  your own profile.  I definitely understand the concern, but really nothing has changed, it’s just more in your face now.

Say you were to go to that person’s profile (the person that your friend just posted something on their wall).  If you click on their wall, and they don’t have their privacy settings to hide their wall, then you would have seen that post whether you were their friend already or not.  So it’s no less hidden than it has been in the past, it’s just now displaying it on your homepage as opposed to you having to browse to the person’s page.

So now that we’ve got the privacy issue cleared up, and you want to check and see if your privacy settings are such that when your friends post on your wall, THEIR friends don’t see it…

1. Click on the down arrow next to Home in the top right corner of the page.