I have often seen people taking point and shoot snaps without much thought into exposure. A little bit of experimenting with exposure, and you can dramatically improve your snaps.

Simply put, exposure is ensuring your photos have the right amount of colour, brightness and contrast. This ensure that the primary subject(s) in your pictures are neither too dark nor too bright. While its very easy to ‘photoshop’ your images to get unrealistic colour, it takes a good camera and a better photographer to capture colours as close to reality as possible.

Conditions like bright direct sunlight, snow, sea water, night photography, sunrise and sunsets etc. provide difficult shooting conditions. Some cameras have settings that let you preselect an environmental condition, others allow you to manually increase or decrease the exposure.

Most automatic cameras have one or more small highlighted blocks (usually a small red rectangle) that comes on screen/ viewfinder when you press the shutter release button. This block is also used to read the image information and make calculations required to ensure correct exposure.Often these also have a half-lock position that is used to lock the exposure information and then compose your focus to do a full click. Some of the expensive cameras also have a dedicated exposure lock button.

The simplest thing one can do is to ensure that this block collects information about the small area that you really want to show lighting and colours correctly for.  Remember, this is not necessarily what you want to focus on!

In the example of the sunset here, the exposure was set to reflect the setting sun – This helped in masking the trees (which were actually visible to the normal eye when the shot was taken). Thus the colours of the sunset and the brightness of the sun itself were captured accurately.

In the example of the sunflower, a flash and exposure compensation setting was used to override the harsh direct sunlight entering the camera. As you can see here, the background is completely white (overexposed) while the colours of the sunflower have been captured accurately.

It is possible to capture almost the entire image in its best form without really compromising on the exposure of the darker and brighter elements. HDR (High Dynamic Range imaging) is one such method fast catching up. We shall save that for sometime later.

Popularity: 17%

I am no whiz in photography, but have been earnestly trying out some of the great tips from the masters.

Here I share 7 of my best learnings for everyday photography. Trust me, the differences can be dramatic in certain cases.

Tip 1: Get Closer:

Easily, the single most important reason for not getting better photos!

No matter what the subject is, just when you have the subject covered, try this – zoom in or get closer.

Make sure you highlight the most important elements in the photograph – that’s what the photograph is for anyway! Real close up shots can yield dramatic results from portraits to macros, there is a whole world to explore out there!

So go out and click some stunning photos while I come back with more tips

on some great photography

The photographs on the side are examples of Close Up and  Normal photos. The one below is an example of a photo with the Macro feature.

Image Credit: Uttkarsh

Popularity: 14%

“Yet again the communal clashes in the city has left the streets  burning with the flames of hatred killing thousands of people all over “.

This is Naina Sahay reporting live from Mumbai, Kal Tak. 

Naina was a young, flamboyant journalist who had earned herself a lot of accolades for her brave reporting and blunt comments that supported the truth. Her parents passed away when she was barely the age of 12 in an accident leaving behind a lot of responsibilities and a younger brother to take care of.

As she grew up she started working at a very young age in order to give her brother the best of life she could. She gave him love of a mother, father as well as sister. And in the process earned a living through whatever jobs she could lay her hands on. Naina got introduced to the field of journalism through a friend and since then there was no looking back. 

Naina just kept on climbing the success ladder to earn herself a life she truly deserved. From scratch, today she owns a good house, car and everything. But what Naina truly cared for was Armaan, her younger brother. She could never live without him. A slight fever and the girl who could report under waist deep water during Mumbai floods would go paranoid.

A small wound on Armaan would make her go berserk  and a drop of tear from Armaan’s eyes would just make Naina depressed. Probably that’s the reason why Naina was unmarried because she could not live without her brother and would want to give him her undivided attention.

But then one incident shattered her life.

In the year 1993 communal riots broke out in Mumbai .People were behind each other’s lives. Dead bodies were lying on the roads. Injured unattended and bloody and gory sight’s everywhere. People were scared to get out of their houses yet Naina risked her life to deliver news to people.  So many times the bullets must have just missed her but even through such tensed situation she would remain calm and help the injured on the streets. While doing her duty her finger constantly clicked Armaan’s number at the interval of every half an hour to ensure his safety.  

Suddenly one day Naina heard a cry of help. On drawing closer to the sound she realized there was a man badly injured and was probably taking his last breadth. The man in a hushed voice called Naina closer. Naina hesitantly went closer. The man revealed a sensational news that would rock the nation and he also had photo evidence to back his story. Naina was shocked at the evidence. Before Naina could ask him any questions the man closed his eyes forever.

The man said that the current Chief Minister was involved in the clashes of Hindu and Muslim communities and he had started communal rights in order to degrade his political rivalry. Naina had a very important evidence and also the power to stop the future bombings that were planned to kill the leader of the opposition party which would leave the entire city burning and spoil the situation even more.

Naina hurried to her house and kept the photograph with Armaan. She went to her Head Office to make arrangement for her breaking news. But what Naina wasn’t aware of was the man who followed her to her house.

While Naina was in the office preparing for the prime event the man entered her house. Armaan heard the noise and went in the front room. The man attacked Armaan, Armaan resisted and tried to fight back but the man just removed a gun and shot down six bullets into Armaan. Armaan’s knees gave away, he fell down and instantly his life was snatched by the cruelty of the world. The man ransacked the entire house and found the photograph and ran away with it.

Naina with her boss returned to her house. Her feet trembled, beads of sweat trickled down her forehead, she collapsed the darkness was’nt only for the moment but for the rest of her life.  Seeing the pool of blood which Armaan was in, disturbed the mental state of Naina.

The news was’nt deliverd but the death of Armaan resulted in the suicide of the courageous self of what Naina used to be. Yet again the politics of our country silenced the truth. She lost her mental balance, she lost her voice and what was left was a silent suicide which was never recorded..

Statistics have shown thousands of people suicide due to different reasons but have we ever thought of the loss of individuality that people suffer at the hands of our ignorance…It is high time we follow the philosophy of LIVE AND LET LIVE… It is high time we understand that we are not divided on the basis of religion, caste, creed or sex but we all belong to a much higher sect that is Humanity.

We all have 2 eyes 2 hands 1 nose 2 feet, so why the heck are we fighting for our so called differences. Let’s all join in this human chain of understanding and love so that we make India, a better place to live in.

Popularity: 31%

Over the years, you would have collected tons of photos, music and video on your PC. Here is a quick how-to to get the content onto your PS3, Nintendo Wii, XBox 360, iPhone, PSP, iPod Touch, WAP 2.0 + Streaming supported mobile device like the Blackberry Curve, select DirecTV receivers, DLink DSM series, the Philips Streamium series, any media player supporting streaming such as Windows Media Player / Realplayer / Quicktime  and several other similar devices.

TVersity

The best part is that this will keep your content centrally, making it easy to re-organize and manage. What’s more – it even lets you stream different formats that may not be natively supported by the device. I found this to be an excellent way to share content across rooms wirelessly without hassle.

What you need:

1. Your Windows PC with admin rights
2. An amazing software called TVersity (download it here)
3. Wireless or wired router (depends on the streamed devices like PSP, iPod Touch etc)
4. 5-10 minutes of your time (if you have a good download speed)
Here is the How To:

Installing Tversity

1. Download Tversity. Its about 11MB in size
2. Install Tversity on you machine. The default options are good enough, unless you are the slightly smarter variety
3. This will be followed by an automatic install of FFDShow and various codecs. Again use the default options

Configuring your firewall to allow Tversity connections

4. Allow mediaserver.exe access through your firewall (Windows firewall, Comodo, Norton, ZoneAlarm etc.). If your firewall requires you to point out this file, you will find it in your TVersity program files folder (Usually

C:\Program Files\TVersity\Media Server)

Configuring your wireless router:

Usually you will have no blocks within your LAN and this may not be needed. However if you face issues, here is what needs to be done
5. TVersity is configured on port 41952 by default. (This can be changed in TVersity admin)
6. You will have to port forward  41952 to 41952 on your router. Please refer your wireless router manual for this if you are not sure

Configuring TVersity

7. Load up TVersity Media Server. The default settings are good enough
8. Click the + symbol on top or use the Sharing tab to add your folders to be shared. Depending on the content, TVersity takes some time to make a note of all the files there.
9. You may want to change some of the settings under the Settings tab. Most of the options are good by default. You may want to check “Automatically stat sharing the media when the computer starts” here
10. You can test TVersity by selecting any of the locally shared content under the Library in the left navigation panel. This should open up your browser and play in your default streaming client on your PC

Viewing in PS3 or other devices

11. Once you confirm that Tversity is running, switch on your PS3, Wii or other device. Some already on devices may require to be switched-off and restarted.
12. Check / configure for streaming content and you will now be able to view and listen to the shared content. Enjoy!

Note: Some devices may require advanced settings to be configured in TVersity. Please refer to the TVersity documentation for additional help.

Popularity: 100%