Black and White Anyone?

Many people have asked me questions like,"Which is the best camera to get", and my immediate reply is "The one you have in your pocket!" Needless to say, I get looks which suggest they question my sanity and intelligence.

Even a cursory glance at the list of cameras that are available today is staggering. Vendor after vendor offers cameras that seemingly have a never-ending amount of pixels packed into the chip. It's easy to get so caught up in the sales hype, and the draw of owning a bigger, better, faster, smarter, face-recognizing camera that you completely forget about practising your art and developing your eye.

When was the last time that you ignored the reviews on the latest and greatest, and headed outdoors to take photographs of ducks or flowers or statues in the cemetery or even the signs that clutter rail-road crossings?

A photographer is an artist who paints with light. There is no right way or wrong way to take photographs but a good photo is one that is well-composed, breaks a few rules, captures an emotion and grabs your attention. Very few photographer's are able to put down their camera, pull out the digital card, print off the image and be totally satisfied. Just as analog photographers (who used film) had to know the ins and outs of developing, dodging, burning, printing, fixing and mounting their images, so digital photographers must be familiar with their modern day darkroom. It doesn't matter if your darkroom is Photoshop, Phase One, Lightroom, Aperture or Picasa available on Google, whatever you use needs to be mastered.

The last time I went to a book store, I was overwhelmed at the selection of books available on Photoshop. What's more, they start at $20 and go up from there, and are often rehashed versions of an older book.

What to do? A Canadian photographer David duChemin is not only passionate about photography, but capturing gorgeous images without spending a ton of money on equipment or books. Consequently, he has created graphic rich PDFs or eBooks which cost a mere $5 each that guide you in subjects as diverse as the Business of Photography to creating incredible black and white images. These eBooks can be purchased at PixelatedImage.com

The latest is a 51-page Ebook by Andrew Gibson. This is Part 2 called “The Magic of Black and White” and helps you convert your color digital images into spectacular-looking black and white images.

David (and his team) are inspiring, encouraging but most of all have a heart for people who want to have better photographs but struggle on how to achieve the best image. Take a look and see what you think. OF COURSE there’s a special offer:
For the first few days only, if you use the promotional code MAGIC4 when you checkout, you can have the latest Ebook for only $4 OR they can use the code MAGIC20 to get 20% off when they buy 5 or more books from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST June 1, 2010.