Here are some of our favourites

Source : http://www.thephotoargus.com/

Almost any object can be made into a silhouette, however some are better than others. Choose something with a strong and recognizable shape that will be interesting enough in its two dimensional form to hold the interest of those viewing your image. Silhouettes can’t draw on the colors, textures and tones of subjects to make them appealing – so the shape needs to be distinct.

2. Turn off your Flash

If you have your camera in automatic mode your camera will probably want to use its flash which will ruin the silhouette. Basically you want as little light on the front of your subject as possible – so the flash has to go (basic – but I’ve seen a few attempted silhouette shots with the flash firing).

3. Get Your Light Right

When it comes to lighting your subject you’ll need to throw out a lot of what you’ve learnt about normal photography and think a little backwards. Instead of lighting the front of your subject, in silhouettes you need to ensure that there is more light shining from the background than the foreground of your shot – or to put it another way – you want to light the back of your subject rather than the front. The perfect light for this is placing your subject in front of a sunset or sunrise – but really any bright light will be able to do the trick.

4. Frame your image

Frame your shot so you are shooting with your subject in front of a nice plain, but bright background. Usually the best backgrounds will be a bright cloudless sky with the sun setting. You want to position the brightest light source behind your subject (either so that they hide it or so that its in the background somewhere).

5. Make silhouetted shapes distinct and uncluttered

If there is more than one shape or object in the image that you’re attempting to silhouette, try to keep them separated. ie if you are silhouetting a tree and a person don’t have the person stand in front of the tree or even leaning on it as it will merge them into one shape and as a result your viewers could be confused about what the shape is.

Also when framing you’ll probably want to photograph silhouetted people as profiles rather than looking straight on. This means that more of their features (nose, mouth, eyes) are outlined and they are more likely to be recognized.

6. In Auto Mode

Most modern digital cameras have automatic metering which are pretty good at sensing how to expose a photograph so that everything is well lit. The problem with this is that most cameras are so smart that they will light up your subject instead of underexposing it to get a silhouette so you need to trick it. Most cameras work out the exposure levels in auto mode when you push your shutter half way down (at the same time that they focus). So point your camera at the brightest part of your picture and then press the shutter halfway down (don’t let go). Then move your camera back to frame your shot with the subject where you want it and then finish taking the shot. With most digital cameras this will result in a silhouetted subject. In effect what you’re doing is tricking your camera into thinking that the bright part of the image is the mid tone of it so that anything darker than it will be exposed as a nice dark shadow.

Some digital cameras also have ‘spot’ or ‘centered’ metering modes that you can switch on which helps with the above technique as they will set the metering on the central spot of your frame rather than multiple spots. This means you can accurately tell your camera exactly which bit of the bright background you want it to set the exposure on.

7. Manual Mode

If this technique doesn’t work and your camera has controls to allow manual exposure or exposure compensation you might like to try some of your own settings. The beauty of digital is that you can experiment to your hearts content until you get the result you’re after.

A simple way to start using manual mode is to look at the shutter speed and aperture that it suggests in automatic mode and to start from there. If in auto mode your subject is too light (ie you need to make it darker) stop down the shutter speed a stop or two and see what impact that has. Use the ‘bracketing’ technique that I described in my previous tip on sunrises and sunsets to get a variety of shots at slightly different exposures.

8. Focusing

In most cases you’ll want the subject which is silhouetted to be the thing that is in focus most crisply. This can mean that the process described in point 4 can be a little tricky as pushing your shutter half way down to get the metering right also means that you’ll focus on that spot in the background. To get around this you can use two strategies. Firstly if your camera has manual focusing you might want to try that. Pre focus your shot before you meter your shot.

The other strategy is to use Aperture to maximize your depth of field (the amount of your image that is in focus). Set a small aperture (ie a larger number) to increase the depth of field – this means you’re more likely to have a sharper foreground and background in your shots.

One last tip on Silhouettes – while a total silhouette with a nice crisp and black subject can be a powerful shot, also consider the partial silhouette where some detail of your subject is left. Sometimes a touch of light on them makes them slightly more three dimensional and ‘real’. This is the beauty of bracketing your shots as it will leave you with total and partial silhouettes to choose form.
Source : Digital Photography School

Great nature photography explores the natural setting, records natural history and the facts and phenomena of nature. Nature photography should not contain images of man or man’s presence, such as power lines, automobiles, radio towers, etc. Nature photography records organisms, weather, animals, natural landscapes and any aspects of the natural environment.

For a photograph to be a “nature photograph” it must completely fit the rules for nature photography. Nature photographs cannot be “arranged” in any way. There should be no manipulation of the scene to convey a message. The content of a nature photo can be purely pictorial or can relate a story or information about nature or natural history. Nature photography’s subject may be an abandoned beehive or the reflection of trees in a stream.

Subject or theme: To compose a nature photograph, it is helpful to see the order present in the disarray of the natural scene. Look for rhythm and pattern, and what doesn’t fit the rhythm and pattern. What stands out in a sea of fallen leaves?

Format:  Decide on a format for your photo – horizontal suggests expansiveness, vertical suggests height, and square is neutral.

Fill the Frame: Fill voids with clouds, branches or other naturally occurring objects. Try to allow enough space around the subject that the viewer can explore around the subject in the frame. Aim to capture the whole of the subject in the photo. If not possible, aim to convey a sense of completeness in the image you capture.

The Rule of Thirds: Imagine dividing your picture area into thirds horizontally and thirds vertically. Where the lines intersect are the “thirds” – the area next to the direct center of the frame. Center your subject on one of the “thirds” to give more interest and movement to your photo.

Look for Lines and Shapes: A meandering stream, a curled fern frond and a row of corn all give strong lines to the composition. Some items are triangular, round, square, etc. A butterfly is triangular, a leaf oval. Look at the scene you want to photograph in terms of balance of line and shape.

Texture and Pattern:  Texture and pattern add dimension and can sometimes give an abstract quality to the photo.

Perspective:  Create the illusion of distance and depth through capturing close foreground objects within the scene depicting distance, or vice-versa.

Viewpoint: Take the photos of the acorns at ground level, or climb the tree and capture the squirrel at branch level. Take photos with the viewpoint of the insect or bird. Use the zoom feature to get close to the leaf spores or the sand crab.

Color: Pay close attention to both the subtleties and drama of color in nature. The same scene saturated in green in the early morning turns brown, green and blue at noon.

Equipment: Great nature shots have been taken by observant photographers with nothing more than just a simple instant camera. Equipment that is recommended, however, for the serious-minded consists of an SLR camera, light filters, lens shade, tripod, and light meter.

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A key to good landscape photography is knowing when to use a polarizing filter. If water, foliage or sky is in your shot — and at least one of them often will be — then your color can almost definitely be improved by using a polarizer.

But sometimes predicting the exact results of a polarizing filter can be tricky, and the only way to do so is to put it on a lens and have a look. However, if your filters are in the bottom of your bag under thirty pounds of camera gear or in the car a hundred yards from where you’re shooting (shame on your for leaving them there), then you may lose your inspiration to try the filter, especially since you know it may not deliver enough of the effect you’re hoping for.

To avoid that temptation, wear polarized sunglasses when you’re shooting outdoors. A good pair will approximate the effect of a polarizing filter. Also, when wearing the sunglasses, if you tilt your head to the left or right you will increase or decrease the polarizing effect, and you’ll see changes in the sky, on leaves and on the surface of water — just like when you rotate a polarizing filter. If you don’t like the effect you see through the sunglasses, you can feel comfortable moving to a different angle or location. And if you do like the effect, you’ll feel more inspired to rummage through your gear to find your filters.

I use Native Eyewear’s F2 sunglasses with polarizing lenses, but many other companies make polarizing sunglasses, too. Use neutral lenses, though; any sunglasses that also warm the scene will change the color much more than your good warming filters will.

We all know the value of using tripods: Regardless of the situation, they will keep your camera more still than any other standard photography tool.

But sometimes you may not have your tripod handy. After all, if you’re just out for an afternoon errand, you may carry a camera with you, but not a 10-pound tripod. Or maybe your tripod broke. Or perhaps you just can’t access your tripod before a fleeting photographic moment is over. Whatever the situation, there are alternative methods for holding your camera more stable than you could with just your hands.

Use a monopod

They’re more portable and quicker to set up than a tripod, but they’ll still keep your camera relatively still. In fact, it will add about two stops to the 1/lens-focal-length rule for hand-holding a camera. For example, it you’re using a 60mm lens, you may feel comfortable hand-holding your camera for a shutter speed as low as 1/60; in that case, figure a monopod will let you use as slow as a 1/15 shutter speed and give the same results.

You can make a monopod even more stable by leaning against an immobile object, such as a wall or a tree.

This effectively gives you a pseudo-tripod: One leg is the monopod, the second leg is the wall, and the third leg is the friction between the wall and the camera body that will keep the camera from moving forward or backward. You can bolster that “third leg” friction by gently pushing the camera into the wall.

Rope support

Keep an 8- to 12-foot piece of rope with you. If you need a makeshift camera support, tie the ends of the rope together to form a loop. Hang the rope over your lens near where it mounts to the camera body, and let the rest of the rope fall. Next, place each foot along the rope on the ground, so that you can pull up with the camera to make the rope tight.

The upward tension you apply to the rope should be enough so you can shoot with some stability.

Put your camera down

Find a firm surface that’s at the same level you want to shoot at. You can use a table, a rock, the ground, etc. If the surface is dirty, put something on it to protect your camera, such as a jacket or a magazine. Now rest your camera on the surface and frame your shot. You’ll almost always find that you need to adjust the height of the lens or the camera body; for that you can use almost anything, such as a wallet, or a small book.

Apply pressure

If you must hand-hold the camera, find something immobile that you can lean against. Again, a wall or a tree will do. Hold the camera against the wall to create some friction that will help the camera stay still.

Use your body

If none of the other options are available, position your body to give yourself a lower center of gravity, thereby making your stature more stable. If you need to stand, spread your legs to shoulder-width and shoot sideways; your stance will give you a wider base, and your shoulder joints are less vertically mobile in that position.

An even better option, if you can work from a low angle, is to put one knee on the ground, put your elbow on the other knee with your arm sticking straight up, and use your hand on that arm to support the camera (Figure 5). This will give you more support because you won’t be using your muscles to hold the camera up, only to keep it from moving from side to side with your other hand.

Final tricks

Whatever you do to give your camera more support, take other measures, too. Use a cable release to avoid the minor shake caused by pushing the shutter release. If you don’t have a cable release, use the camera’s self-timer set at a couple seconds; by the time the shutter opens, any shake caused by pushing the release will have stopped. Also, fire off a few frames at a time using continuous-frame mode; one of the frames is likely to show less motion than the others.

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Android is proving out to be wonderful platform to perform and innovate new options. On the other hand Photography is passion and innovation in terms of specific field. Only best camera cannot give you perfect picture all time it’s your imagination and creativity which fills life in that photographs. Now mobiles are coming up with beautiful cameras and large pixels it is much easier to do certain things with photographs. There are lots of photography applications available in market for android which contains various features and some of them are as follows:

1. Pudding Camera : Pudding camera offers many kinds of camera, and kinds of film settings. You can use any combination of these options by FREE so enjoy many kinds of stylish photos with this
2. PicSay – Photo Editor : Spice up your pictures with the free edition of this powerful Photo editor
3. FxCamera : FxCamera enables you to take a picture with various effects.
4. Adobe Photoshop Express : Meet Pulse. A beautiful application that makes reading news fun and engaging. Pulse takes your favorite news websites and blogs and transforms them into a colorful and interactive mosaic. Tap on a news article to see a clean and elegant view of the story. Sharing it via Facebook, Twitter and Email is as easy as two taps.Featured in New York Times, Wall Street JoEdit and share photos virtually anywhere. Access them all on Photoshop.comEdit and share photos virtually anywhere. Touch to crop, rotate, adjust color, and add artistic effects. Access all your photos and videos directly from your free Photoshop.com account. Quickly share with family and friends. Requires SD card. By downloading you agree to the Terms of Use at www.photoshop.com/misc/terms.htmlurnal, Fortune Magazine, BusinessWeek, TechCrunch and others. Experience Pulse today – you will never look at news the same way again.
5. PhotoWonder : Show your perfect image with PhotoWonder ANYWHERE ANYTIME!PhotoWonder is a fun app to edit pics on mobile.
6. Retro Camera : Take delicious old-school pics on your Android.
7. Camera 360 : Newly added a function for Effect Classification, in which you can select different styles of LOMO Effect by photographing with LOMO Effect in Effect Camera.And Enhancement can make your pictures much better at different levels of the environment,and keep the pictures original.
8. QuickPic : Smaller! Faster! Clearer! The best picture viewer/browser you are looking for!
9. Photoid : It’s time for LOVE! Valentine Day is near, and we hope you will enjoy it, including our very cute valentine items!
10. Camera Fun Free : The ONLY Android app to apply LIVE Photoshop lens directly onto your Android camera. See Photoshop effects right through your device camera BEFORE you click a picture.
11. AnDrawing! : Play the Best Drawing app in the Market!
12. Funny Camera : Make Awesome Funny Photos with Funny Cams!
13. Liquid Face Lite :: nstall Liquid Face NOW, make your friends look funny and laughable!
14. Camera illusion : “Camera Illusion” live camera with filters/effects/masks
15. Dash of Color Free : Give your black and white photos a Dash of Color for Free!This application allows selective coloring to give black and white photos a Dash of Color. We kept the user interface and features simple, yet intuitive, to give users exactly what they wanted when giving their images a little spunk. Choose any image and Dash of Color will convert it to a black and white image. You can begin painting in color right away with your fingers. Don’t worry about mistakes, this application keeps track of every single step from the moment you selected which picture to edit. You can undo every step along the way! Choose your brush size and paint in either color or black & white to edit your photos in detail.FEATURES: Simple, yet refined user interface Undo (saves your every move from the very beginning) Paint in color