photography

RECENT POSTS

Sourcing images: best practices and best sources

There's a whole universe of images out there, but you have to be mindful. (Courtesy of NASA.gov)

We consistently hear from the Argo-bloggers that the most difficult part of blogging is the visual component – telling your stories in pictures as well as words. It’s hard even before we get to the many legal and ethical pitfalls that most folks haven’t been trained on how to avoid. But we also know how incredibly valuable images are for storytelling, comprehension, punctuation, humor, delight and many, many other things. So each blogger has to figure out a strategy for acquiring and using images. Continue reading

Five good photography resources

Very few of our Argo editors have had any training in photography or photo editing. But I’m encouraging all of them to illustrate everything. Of course, I don’t harbor any illusions that on a full-time blogging schedule someone’s going to spontaneously evolve into the next Robert Frank or Laura Brunow Miner, but there are some key photographic basics that can make our sites look a lot nicer. Here are five resources – tips, tutorials, online courses, and more – to help you develop a better eye for photography:

  1. NewsU’s Language of the Image course: A free course that’s highly worth the hour of your time it’ll take to complete. It provides an intro to how to think about photography, how to visually process a scene or an image to find aesthetic greatness. If you’ve never heard of the “rule of thirds,” start with this.
  2. Jodie Coston’s Classroom: An in-depth series for budding photographers, taking you from the basics of composition to camera settings such as ISO and aperture.
  3. Lifehacker – Take better cameraphone photos: Despite the title, this post isn’t just about cameraphone photos. It features a good set of rules of thumb for on-the-fly photography, whatever your equipment might be.
  4. David Pogue’s Best Photography Tricks: There are two parts to this one – David Pogue’s excellent NY Times article with quick tips for amateur photographers and Lifehacker’s additional tips. Both are valuable to keep in mind.
  5. Digital Photography School’s Most Popular Tips & Tutorials: There’s a lot of good, specific advice here on some camera basics.