Photography is an art. There are many factors involved in getting the right picture. However there are certain things one must keep in mind. When you pick up the camera to take a picture, you have something in mind. You want to preserve the moment, capture that beautiful smile of your child and so on.

Below are some tricks that would put you on the path to take pictures like a professional.

Watch the background
You and your girl friend are out on a tour to Canada, Niagara Falls. Your girl friend wants you to take a picture of her in the garden with the falls in the background. Imagine how awesome the picture would be. She chooses a place in between the lovely flowers with the falls in the background. You with your Point and Shoot \ Digital SLR camera position yourself and say “cheese” and click. You find out, there are roses in the background but a stem of 1 rose is right at the center of your girlfriend’s head. You must be like shoot, if only I saw what was in the background.
Next time when you are taking the picture and looking at your subject by the viewfinder make sure the background is clear and nothing is protruding from behind of the subject that is not needed in the picture. Spend some time to choose the background for the picture.

Use the zoom, Fill the viewfinder with the subject to make the subject prominent in the picture, thereby eliminating the less prominent items that would likely to appear in the background. Imagine a picture with yourself and 10 other things in the picture and the person who is looking at final print wanders his \ her eyes towards other things except you in the picture. Would you call that a nice picture, Naah!

Lock the focus
Many a times you just pick the camera, point it towards the person and shoot without locking the focus.

Pay attention to the light and shadows in case of indoor \ outdoor photo shoot:
Make sure the shadows are not causing the picture to look ugly. You can read my post on “Understanding Hard light and Soft light for Flash Photography” for controlling shadows.

Move it from the center:
Think out of the box. Change the level of the camera from horizontal to vertical \ slanting. Take vertical shots, slant the camera for that retro look. Moreover, try moving the subject away from the center.

Photojournalism:
Photojournalism is a form of journalism that creates images in order to tell a story. Create a story from the picture.

The next time you take a picture, try to keep these basic secrets in your mind.
The pictures you take will be admired and you will become more confident with your results.

Send in your comments – let us grow this basic list.

I know, I know – you are thinking what in the world is Hard light or Soft Light.

Hard Light:

Hard light is a light that generally casts dark shadows and produces high contrast pictures with deep blacks and bright highlights. The shadows have a very distinct or hard edge, so that the outline of the object closely reflects the shape of the shadow.  Light that comes from a single, point source, such as a bulb, and falls directly on the subject from one direction, without being reflected of another surface, is known as hard light. Hard light tends to produce sharp-edged shadows.

Soft Light:

Soft light, as the name suggests, is the opposite of hard light. It means that the light that falls on the subject comes from multiple sources, from multiple directions or from a single, very large light source (Ex: Sun).  It does not cast deep shadows,  and where it does,  it has a soft edge,  rather than an abrupt transition from dark to light. In short Soft light is that light which lacks distinct shadows.  Soft lighting is light which originates from a large area. Think of an overcast day, when the sun’s light is filtered through clouds covering the entire sky – shadows are very soft.

An easier way to find out if the light is hard or soft for an outdoor shoot is to notice your shadow. The light on a sunny day, when you are not standing in the shade, is quite hard, and you will be able to spot a clear outline of your shadow on the ground.  But step into the shade, and your shadow disappears. This is because you are now lit by reflected light, rather than by the sun directly.

The easiest way to create soft light is to bounce the light of a surface before it reaches the subject, or, where the light shines directly on the subject,  to bounce some of it back from the opposite direction.

Light can be bounced by redirecting it off a highly reflective medium, such as a white wall or ceiling or anything that reflects light without adding a color cast to it will make a good reflector for most situations. Most professionals carry a reflector with them for the same purpose. They come in all shapes, sizes and colors and made from a variety of materials.

The easiest way to soften the lighting in your flash photos is to bounce the light from the flash unit off a large white surface. White walls and ceilings work very well for this, as do large portable folding reflectors. You can also buy Diffusers that attach to your flash that can help as well, either by distributing the light in more directions so the light can bounce off walls and ceilings, or by increasing the light-producing area somewhat. One could also use Softboxes, or an Umbrella lined with white or silver reflective material to bounce the light.

Last but not the least, remember that colored surfaces will add a color cast to the light. This is something you should always be aware of, when bouncing light in interior spaces.

This concludes my short course on Lighting Techniques,  Light Types to consider during Flash Photography.  I hope reading this will help you take better pictures with Flash.

Need

You need to deliver individual file(s) to the customer. You need a mechanism to be certain that the file(s) provided by you are the same file(s) that the customer downloads at their end.

Solution

Create Checksums for the file(s). The customer downloads the file(s) and verifies the checksum supplied by you.

What exactly is a checksum and why do you need it?

A checksum is a way to ensure that the file provided is the correct file.  Checksum acts like a ‘biometric match’ of a file, if a file gets corrupted or is of a different version the biometric match will fail and help the user identify that the file being used is not the correct one. A HASH is generated for the file(s). This method of validation will make sure that the file(s) provided by you are the same file(s) that the customer downloads at their end.

MD5 is the most widely used checksum algorithm to generate a HASH for the files.

Example of a MD5 checksum:

c728b4eefda87e3efce436f021564a8c *testApplication.exe

The long string at the front of the file is the MD5 Hash for the testApplication.exe

CheckSum Generation and Validation Process

Process for generating checksums

There are various utilities available to generate MD5 checksum. Some of the well known utilities are listed below:

1. Microsoft’s FCIV (File Checksum Integrity Verifier): This is a command line utility with no graphical interface.
2. MD5Summer: MD5Sums is a simple GUI tool to generate checksums. One can download it from http://www.md5summer.org/download.html

For the purpose of explanation I am using the MD5Summer tool.

The next sections will explain how to generate and verify checksums using the MD5Summers tool.

Steps to Create Checksum using MD5Summers

Download the tool and install it to c:\MD5 folder.

Once the installation is completed, launch MD5Summers using the md5Summer.exe

The following screen will appear:

Highlight the folder that contains the files you want to generate checksums for. In my example, I want to send files under “MessengerFiles” folder

and click Create sums button to generate the MD5 hash value. When you click the Create Sums button the following screen will pop up.

Select the file(s) and click Add.

Click OK to generate the checksum, depending on the size of the file it could take from a few seconds to a few minutes for larger files.  It will ask you to save the generated file.

The file gets saved as MD5.

Example: testApplication.MD5.

The contents of the file are as below:

# MD5 checksums generated by MD5summer (http://www.md5summer.org)

# Generated 6/22/2009 11:49:18 AM

754b9db19f79dbc4992f7166eb0f37ce *testApplication.exe

The final screen shows the checksum and the files

You will send the file(s) and the generated Checksums (MD5 Hash value) to the customer. The customer needs to validate the checksum at their end.

CheckSum Validation Process

The Customer would have to verify the HASHes provided by you.

They would use MD5Summers to generate the checksums at their end and verify it with the checksum provided.

After a gruesome visual string comparison, it can be validated that the two MD5 hash values are equal and the files provided are legit.

Conclusion

By using the above MD5 Checksum generation and validation process you will be certain that the file(s) provided by you are the same files that the customer downloads at their end.