Photography Composition - Understanding the Golden Ratio

Improving your photographic composition skills can be a long and arduous task, yet there is one technique, developed thousands of years ago that can be put into effect in a matter of minutes, that can give you a dramatic improvement in the artistic value of your work almost instantly.

What is the Golden Ratio?

The ancient Greeks were clever people who were extremely adept at seeing the relationships between different things. For instance, they are the ones who discovered the relationship between different sides of a triangle and thus developed the Pythagorean Theorem. They also found the relationship between a circle's radius and its circumference pi: π. In the arts they noticed a similar relationship between great works of art and a particular mathematical formula (the longer part divided by the smaller part is equal to the whole length divided by the larger part) This formula actually derives at number, or more accurately, an approximation: 1.61803... the mathematical constant phi:φ. It is interesting to note that this constant is seen all through the world of science and mathematics as well as in the art world.

Over the thousands of years since the Greeks developed this theory, there has been a great deal of evidence to support it. What does this mean to you as a photographer? It means that there are certain areas within the frame where your subject is likely to draw the most attention. Photographers commonly call this the "Rule of Thirds" but it has its roots in ancient Greek mathematics.

How to Start a Tattoo Business at Home - Instructions

Especially for starting a tattoo business, you must be a skilled artist, who has enough time to spend for running the business in a professional way. This is a business which takes much time and effort as well as a significant amount of investment to start with. Tattooing being an art which is applied on the skin directly, the most important point is that you must be aware on how to sterilize the tattooing equipment properly as well as you need to educate your customers on how to care about the new tattoo applied onto their skin in order to avoid infection. In addition to the excellent artistic skills to draw the business owner must be totally business oriented and health concerned.

Below are some instructions that help you to become a successful tattoo business owner.

Instructions
Approach your city planner and clarify what are the formalities to be completed in order to start a tattoo business from home. If you stay for rent and planning to buy a home in the coming days, you must ensure that you buy a home in a city that is famous for its residential apartments and commercial establishments.

Get trained well and try to become an excellent craftsman in the art of tattoo. It may take several years of apprenticeship or training to become a master of tattoo art. Find out the nearest and affordable training institute and gain knowledge on the great art of tattooing. If you practice drawing, while you attend training you would be able to improve your skills and also to build your portfolio. As an extracurricular thing, you may attend expos and workshops that have been conducted by the tattoo artists in your area.

What Is Real? Photoshop Is Used Everywhere You Look

Electronic photo retouching is an ever-expanding field. Wherever you look you can see the evidence of this craft. Most of us are familiar to some extend with Adobe Photoshop in some form; as there are many variations of this program available on different platforms.

Before computers and Photoshop, photo-enhancement was done by retouching the actual photograph with ink or paint. Other technique involves in-camera double-exposure, or working with negatives in the darkroom. Do you remember Polaroids? Scratching the surface of Polaroids used to be very popular.

Airbrushes were also used, whence the term "airbrushing" for manipulation. Darkroom manipulations are regarded as traditional art rather than job related skill.

One of the most famous cases of photo tinkering is a photo of Abraham Lincoln from the 1860s. It was altered using the picture of the body from a portrait of John C. Calhoun, and the head of Lincoln from a famous seated portrait by Mathew Brady.

The photo manipulation industry has often been accused of promoting distorted and unrealistic image of self, most specifically in younger people. The fashion photography is one specific industry, which has been heavily involved with the use of photo manipulation - this is obviously a concern as many people look up to celebrities in search of embodying the 'ideal figure'.