by Brittany Horton on March 8, 2010
I was going through 40-50 portraits taken by Louellen Coker at a recent event, and one stood out of the crowd. All of the images were taken around the same time of day, with the same lighting, for the same reason. Though, this one image still stood out. Why? I looked into this a little more, and I found these four photography tips to share to help you make a good photograph, excellent.
When photographing any subject, may it be your children, your dog, a landscape or building, or even your staff, there are four elements to keep in mind while shooting: the composition, the lighting, the gaze, and the equipment, all being equally important. If one of these elements is missing, you may only have a good photograph, not an excellent one. Today I will touch base on the first important aspect of an excellent photograph, the composition.
Composition, also known as the frame, according to the Mariam-Webster online dictionary is the “arrangement into specific proportion or relation.” When you begin to take your photographs, remember that you need to pay attention to your surroundings, you want to find the best spot for your images, that will allow for the best composition. Ask yourself a few questions while looking through your lens at your subject to find the best composition.
- Is anything important being cut-off, hands or even ears?
- Are there any objects directly behind the subject, pulling attention away from the subject?
- Are there any dark corners, or bright windows in the background that you should move away from (a good tip indoors with windows, have the window point toward your subject, not toward you)?
- Are their any objects in the frame that are unwanted, a loose sheet of paper or trash, a dirty coffee mug, or even a stranger?
All of these questions and the analyzing of your surroundings will help you frame your photograph, and arrange your subject to be the center of attention, while not having to be in the center. Which brings me to my next tip, the rule of thirds.
When it comes to photography, a lot of photographers will tell you that they dislike anything being directly centered, this is a common factor dating back to ancient paintings and artifacts. The rule of thirds, is a standard of dividing your image into thirds to help arrange your image, helping move the eye around the photograph and proportionally arrange your subject. This rule can be applied to both vertical and horizontal photographs.
Rule of Thirds
Photograph example using the Rule of Thirds
As seen in this example, we first have the rule of thirds alone, which divides the image into nine equal parts and into thirds. Then we have a photograph with the rule of thirds applied. You can see that the subject is aligned with one of the lines, and an important element on the subject, the bike, is centered on one of the points. Having the subject along the third rule, allows the eye to move across from the point of sight, to the rest of the photograph, the boy, the bike, and then to the puddle. One of our favorite photographer bloggers, Darren Rowse, stated “The theory is that if you place points of interest in the intersections or along the lines that your photo becomes more balanced and will enable a viewer of the image to interact with it more naturally.” Having this natural movement will allow the viewers to enjoy the entire photograph, not just small elements, making it an excellent photograph.
In my next few blog posts, we will discuss the other three important elements to a photograph, the gaze, the lighting, and the equipment.
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by Louellen Coker on March 5, 2010
Every week we have literally thousands of blogs come through our Google Readers that offer great information. While it’s hard to winnow these excellent posts about branding, social media, graphic design, writing, editing, or other topics pertinent to the services we provide at Content Solutions, here are a few posts that caused us to take pause around the water-cooler to discuss this week.
From the Branding Front
From the folks over at Women Entrepreneur comes a post reminding us that branding comes from within. Lynn Parker discusses five components that will help you define, live, and deliver your brand promise.
Yep, we spend a lot of time doing search engine optimization activities for our client websites and conducting ad campaigns on Google, so we were interested to see how Google rated itself in their SEO Report Card. This 49 page report based on a study of the main pages of 100 different Google products as a means of giving their product teams ideas on how to improve their products’ pages.
From the Social Media Front
This is a great little post from twitip that runs down some of the top reasons to join the twitterverse. I forwarded this post to my favorite client, Duane L. Coker (OK, he does happen to be my husband of nearly 20 years as well!); and after reading it and attending IgniteDallas #1, he became a convert.
Nick O’Neill shared on All Facebook that images on Facebook have been increased “by almost 20 percent to 720 pixels.” For those of us who like to upload pictures for our friends and family to see, this is great news!
Here at Content Solutions, we regularly work with our clients as they set up their blogs. Our discussions sometimes start with our clients staring at us glassy-eyed across the table. As we ease our clients into their new blogs, we address the fears that Michael Martine over at Remarkablogger addresses.
Just as an aside, two-thirds of our staff are professional writers and editors that hold master degrees and have extensive consulting and teaching experience focused on this exact subject! We love nothing more than helping you overcome these fears.
Know of other great posts? Let us know in the comments.
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by Sara Sherman on March 2, 2010
When we start online ad campaigns for our clients, we begin by explaining the difference between Google AdWords and Google AdSense campaigns. Both of these remarkable programs are designed to build up and strengthen your business. They get the public more familiar with your business, as well as help your business grow.
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is a free way to give your business the impressions (users actually hitting your site) it needs to help it succeed by providing popular ads on your business, organization, or personal pages. These ads can be put up in a variety of places such as your contact pages, your mobile site, feeds, and even on the result page of a search for your website. You can choose the location of the ads on your website. These ads would be relevant to your business, and they may either be an image ad, or text ad. The ads that are placed will earn you money for each valid click on one ad, and if you have multiple ads then you increase your chances of earnings. You will receive a check for all the earnings you receive at the end of each month.
When we performed a keyword search for the word computers. We found the MacRumors.com website that is using Google AdSense. Notice, below, the iTunes advertisement at the top center of the website, and also notice the Ads by Google icon at the bottom right corner of the ad which shows that the ad was placed by the Google AdSense program. Notice also that the ad is targeted at users who likely own an iPhone or iTouch and may also need something to help them clean up a messy music collection.
If and when a user clicks through to the product and makes a purchase, you (the owner of the website) will receive payment from the company. It’s a great way to make passive income.
AdSense will help you earn extra money through your website, may even help off-set the price of the domain and hosting, and gets your searchers to be more interested in your content. Some concerns of using AdSense on your website is that the ads that are placed may be ads of competitors, and why would you want to point your very own visitors to another website. Don’t fear, you are able to block certain websites and ads from appearing on your website. To get started with AdSense you will need to visit https://www.google.com/adsense, create an account, and follow the instructions on how to get the Adsense code onto your website. Then the easiest step yet, earn money!
Google AdWords
Google AdWords is a completely different program. Rather than adding an ad to your business, organization, or personal website, you will create ads specifically for your business to be displayed on Google search pages. These ads will be created and customized by you, and will include keywords that give good description of your business. These ads will be placed in the search results page that is related to your business.
You are charged each time a searcher/visitor clicks on your ad. No matter what your budget, you can choose how much to pay for AdWords, you are able to set daily limits as low as $10 per day. And for the individual ad clicks, you can spend anywhere from 0.1 cent per click or up to $10 per click for a suitable ad. Google AdWords determines the price of each click by the popularity of the search terms you decide to use . This program also provides keyword traffic and cost estimates so you can make informed decisions about choosing keywords and maximizing your budget. AdWords is a great way to make the ideal impression on your business, and put it out there for the world to see, and click on.
To find a Google AdWords advertisement for the same keyword, we searched “‘iTunes” from Google, and found the iTunes AdWords ads, as shown below. Notice the Target ad that appears on the upper right side of the screen highlighted in yellow. This ad relates to iTunes because they sell products that work with iTunes in their stores, Target create an ad campaign through Google AdWords and made their ad appear on the results page of a search of words, in this case, containing iTunes. You can also see the iTunes Official Store Ad in yellow under Sponsored Links on the top of the search results. These are the two locations you will find Google AdWords Ads.
To create an AdWords account, visit https://www.google.com/accounts and get started sending visitors to your website today! Google AdWords has been proven to expand your audience, and increase traffic to your website.
Google AdWords and Google AdSense are two very efficient and rewarding programs to help your business grow. With Google AdSense, you can earn the money from each and every click you receive. With Google AdWords, you never have to blow your budget, and you still get the results from the campaigns you create. AdSense and AdWords may be considered the perfect tool for those businesses who need and want the publicity. Google AdSense and AdWords differ in many ways, but they both have one thing in common; they are there to help your business grow!
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