Wow what has happened to the last couple of months? They have just flown past. I am really sorry about how late this newsletter is with Schools, Kindys and Weddings along with a sick mum I have been well and truly overloaded with work and have not had time to get to the newsletter until now. So once again I apologise and will have to remember next year not to book so much in.

New Print Sizes and Options

Some of you may have noticed that we now have new print sizes and canvas print options. This is part of the ongoing improvements on the site with the new print sizes offering your customers more choice and the posters and canvasses offering customers the chance to buy landscape prints for their homes and offices. If you have not received the newsletter with the photographer’s commissions listed, please contact Admin for a copy of these prices.

News Page

Most of you probably already read the news section of the site but just a reminder that any new information is added to the News page to keep you informed as to what is happening along with useful information hints and tips etc. Any old information is stored here and can easily be accessed. If you have any information you would like us to add please email me and I will endeavour to put it up for everyone to see.

Also remember the Forum section to communicate with each other, ask questions or just have a general chat. There is also information on resizing photos etc.

Categories

I promised you all last time that the categories list was going to happen and yes it is now there to help people to find what interests them.

There was a huge amount of work sorting the categories out as some people don’t have their own albums categorised and some photos could fit into many categories. Could you please check that we have included you in all the appropriate categories and let us know if we have missed any.

The categories that we have used may be useful to you to sort your own albums into these fields. This will make it alot easier for us in the future as well as making it less confusing for people looking for specific images.

Competition

Congratulations to Gareth Hutton with his “Unknown Pass” photo taking out first place in our Winter photo competition.

The next theme for the competition has been posted on the site, it is Macro so remember you need to email us your photos before the end of November to be in to win.

Photography Tip

The histogram on the LCD of your camera and of course on your editing programs can be a very useful tool. It helps to learn and fully understand how the histogram works and what information it is telling you.

Histograms [by www.dcviews.com/tutors.htm]

A histogram shows how the 256 possible levels of brightness are distributed in an image. It could be compared to a horizontal line with 256 positions which represent all levels of brightness from pure black (0) on the left, to pure white (255) on the right.
Pixels of the same brightness are stacked together on the vertical axis. The higher the line coming up from the horizontal axis, the more pixels there are at that level of brightness.

A histogram can show if there is enough detail in shadow, midtone and highlight areas of an image. An image that uses the entire dynamic range of the camera will have a reasonable number of pixels spread out over all levels of brightness.

Low contrast images will have a narrow basis with many pixels stacked together in the midtone area, while a high contrast image will have high levels of black and white and fewer grays. RGB images have a separate histogram for each color.

In Photoshop the “levels” command will allow you to adjust tones in shadow and highlight areas. By dragging one of the three triangles on the horizontal axis to the left or right, various areas of brightness can be lightened or darkened independently without affecting other parts of the image or losing detail.

A feature that Findapic photographers can make use of that some of our photographers may not realise is the option to have password protected photo albums.

We have found this very handy for photographers who take photos of children at schools as well as wedding photos where the couple in question don’t want the whole world to see them in all their glory.

To enable this you need to contact Mark at webmaster and it can be set up.

How this works is that you then give a username and password to your clients and after they naviagte to your gallery, they then login with the appropriate details using the photographer login and the photos and protected album will then miraculously appear.

If you have any questions about this please contact Mark.