Vintage Photos Are Here to Stay

Vintage photos are making a big comeback these days or maybe not. Maybe it's us getting older and thinking about the good ole days and as the Baby Boomers age and become vintage photo collectors, the numbers are rising. Regardless, old photographs of family members scenes of locations, automobiles, technology from the past strike a reminiscent chord with everyone.

In the beginning, photos were in monochromatic tones of light and dark in dark brown sepia tones, dark gray tones and in black and white. The quality of the images was murky at best. As photography evolved in cameras, film and processing, the images had more definition and photography was becoming an art form.

Black and white photography flourished for many years because even 50 years ago, color film, processing and printing was a lot more expensive than black and white. Basically, color reproduction in books and magazines did not really progress until the early 1980s. During that era we've seen brilliant black and white photography from Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, and Alfred Eisenstaedt just to name a few artists who mastered composition and light with contrasting shadows to achieve their final product.

Today in the world of digital photography, black and white can be achieved through the camera but probably the best method is through a digital rendering through a photography computer application such as Photoshop. But even with new technology nothing can replace old New York City photos or other locations that are long gone, the victims of progress.

It is still a pleasure to take a look at the past through the original lenses and technology of that time. Vintage photos are here to stay.

Bill White Photos (http://www.billwhitephotos.printroom.com/) is a site has numerous memorable, mostly pre-World War II, old New York City photos, New England photos and Minnesota photos, made by Hubert W White, also made many old vintage train photos.
Billings Farnsworth is a freelance writer.

Canvas Bags - Cool Slogans to Add to Your Bag

Walk down any street and you'll come across many plain, boring looking canvas bags. We can thank bag manufacturers for that problem. Initially they thought for the bags to sell it had to stand-out, so they designed bags in many bright colors. Today people are moving away from the bright looking canvas bags and getting a little bit more creative in their tastes.

A trend that first started on t-shirts and is now been applied to bags involves the use of slogans. Eye catching slogans are either painted or printed onto canvas bags. What works even better is the use of environmentally sensitive slogans which attracts a re-action from people. How many times have you passed an eye catching phrase on a person's t-shirt the same policy can be applied to canvas bags. I've done some research and come up with a list of my favorite slogans that could transfer your boring canvas bag in to a trendy item.

• There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all, Robert Orben.
• Don't blow it - good planets are hard to find, source the Time.
• We never know the worth of water till the well is dry, Thomas Fuller, 1732
• Your grandchildren will likely find it incredible - or even sinful - that you burned up a gallon of gasoline to fetch a pack of cigarettes! Paul MacCready, Jr.
• Newspapers: dead trees with information smeared on them, quoted Horizon, "Electronic Frontier"
• They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers, James G. Watt, 1982.
• The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun, Ralph Nader, 1980.
• Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress, John Clapham, 1957.
• Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them, Bill Vaughn.
• For 200 years we've been conquering Nature. Now we're beating it to death, Tom McMillan, 1990.
• It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment, Ansel Adams.

There are heaps more slogans and sayings that you could place on canvas bags these are just some of my favorite environmental quotes. The time is now to act on the environment and we can all do out part. Regardless of the slogan you choose for your canvas bag the main thing is that we're getting the green message out to the masses.

James has recently moved to New York and he loves the city. He's a strong supporter of all things relating to the protection of the environment and wishes New Yorker's used less plastic and paper shopping bags. He recommends the full range of products at R.A.G. including the canvas bags.

Adding Images to Your PowerPoint: Public Domain, Royalty-Free, and Rights Managed Photography

The Internet makes it incredibly simple to beef up a
presentation with images on just about any subject. There
are many stock photo websites offering images,
illustrations and vector-based art for a price. Other sites
display "free" photos for anyone to use, with or without
restrictions. Here are three types of copyright restriction
every presenter should know.

Public Domain:
Artwork placed in the Public Domain simply means the
person who created that image has decided not to enforce
any copyright protection. It could be an individual who just
wants to share the work with others, or it could be artwork
created by a government body with public funding. An
example of the latter would be the images of Earth taken by
NASA astronauts. Because the funding for space
exploration came from the Federal Government, NASA
releases their images for public use.

An exception to Public Domain "freedom" is that an image
featuring people or products still have limitations attached. A
photo of a Coca-Cola bottle may find itself into a Public
Domain collection, but the shape of that bottle remains a
trademark of the Coca-Cola Company. Likewise, unless a
model release is on file with the photographer, images with
identifiable people (clear or close-up faces) should be used
with care. Imagine how you would feel if your own image
appeared in a presentation about foot fungus or bad breath!

There is a big difference between something being public,
and Public Domain. It is not legal to use a photograph from
any website just because it is viewable by "the public." Even
a picture of Granny's 80th birthday has the same copyright
as the works of Ansel Adams or Dorothea Lange. If you find
an image from an individual's homepage using a search
engine, it may be as simple as asking permission to use
the file in your show. You might be surprised how many
people would be flattered they had taken a useful shot and
give you the go ahead. Especially for a low profile
presentation in a classroom or a small business meeting.

Royalty-Free:
RF images are generally released for use in any project -
presentations, printed works, and multimedia - and for
extended periods of time. They are often priced by the size of
the image, with larger images costing more than smaller
ones. Restrictions may still apply, especially when it comes
to how the images will be distributed to third parties.

Many websites offering Royalty-Free images combine the
portfolios of numerous artists to create a larger database of
photographs. These artists agree to the Royalty-Free terms
in exchange for compensation, making the website a sort of
middleman to the PowerPoint user. The copyright for an
image is retained by the photographer, and is "loaned" to
the end user for their presentation.

Rights-Managed or Rights-Restricted:
Managed artwork pricing is based on a variety of factors;
length of use; the delivery method; how many people will
see it (impressions); who will see it (public or private), etc.

A photo shown in PowerPoint during a small town church
sermon would cost significantly less than a photo used in a
presentation during the press conference of a new
automobile.

As with Royalty-Free images, the copyright is still held by the
photographer in most cases. A photographer shooting a
specific assignment for a client, or on the payroll of a stock
company may turn over those rights based on
predetermined agreements with the end-user or agency
involved.

Large and notable websites like Corbis and Getty Images
built up their businesses on Rights Managed photography.
Both now offer Royalty-Free options as well. Many of the
smaller Royalty-Free websites, known as "micro-stocks,"
thrive on low prices and high volume.

When using any image in a PowerPoint presentation, it is
important to understand the restrictions involved. When in
doubt, talk it out. Contact the person or agency offering the
photos and know your rights!

Gary Lewis is a graphic designer with over twenty years of experience in television production, post production and presentation design.

For creative, Royalty-Free backgrounds and stock photos (and plenty of free samples!) visit Pro Background Art today!

Crooked Horizons in Your Photos? - Here is a Five Minute Digital Fix

Remember the good old photography days?

Film camera in hand, you would see that perfect landscape, seascape or sunset and shoot off several shots.

Perhaps a couple of weeks later, once you had returned home and finally finished that 24 or 36 exposure film, it was off to the photo-lab to get the film processed.

You eagerly open the packet of photographs, looking for that superb seascape you took, knowing that it would almost certainly be taken up by National Geographic for their monthly magazine spread.

What do you find?

A not too bad photo, but the seascape horizon is crooked, here's your excuse, I hear you say.. "Well when I took the shot I was standing on the side of a sand dune and quickly trying to get that perfect shot while the little sailboat was still in view".

Does this sound familiar to all you budding Adam Ansels and/or Lord Snowdons?

The photo is relegated back to the packet never again to see the light of day.

I had many of those packets of not so perfect photos until the digital photography age arrived.

The Digital Darkroom has arrived

The advent of the digital camera and in fact, before that, computerized image manipulation software such as Adobe Photoshop has completely revolutionized the way we can now resurrect a stunning image from what at face value might have appeared to be just one of those snapshots to be relegated to the shoebox under the stairs.

What I'm going to show you in this article is just one method of taking a mundane snapshot and producing a great shot in as little as five minutes.

The example I'm going to use, is one that I have seen so many times, and have already mentioned above, namely, shots that have crooked horizons, whether this be a landscape, seascape, sunset or whatever.

The source of the image may have come from a scanned negative, scanned print or digital camera image all converted to an image format (most probably .JPG pronounced "jaypeg") that can be opened in your image manipulation software.

Correcting a crooked horizon

The human eye is remarkably perceptive at picking out features in a photograph that are made up of essentially straight lines and that those lines are not parallel, either horizontally or vertically, with the overall print itself.

These straight lines may well be the horizon, but they may also be an object in your photo that has straight lines such as buildings or walls etc...

I will be using Adobe Photoshop CS, but almost all other image manipulation software packages have similar tools so the method described should be repeatable with your own software package.

The method used will employ a little known relationship between two Photoshop functions, the Measure tool and the Rotate Canvas command.

Step - 1

Open up your image in your image editor (in our case Photoshop) and select the Measure tool which if not visible on the Photoshop toolbar can be found by hovering your mouse over the Eyedropper tool and "left clicking".

Watch the other options window "fly-out" and select the Measure tool.

Step - 2

Interestingly enough, we are not actually going to measure anything in the real sense of the word, nor use the Measure tool as it is usually used (i.e. measuring the distance between two points within the photograph).

With the Measure tool active, "left click" and "hold" on a spot on the left hand side of the photo (remember our example is a seascape) where the horizon meets the sea.

While still "holding down" the left mouse button, drag to the right hand side of the photo and find a corresponding point where the horizon meets the sea and then release the mouse button.

What happened? .. Well you will see that a white line has been drawn on top of the photo with what looks like little "+" anchors at each end. The line is parallel with our crooked horizon.

Step - 3

Now the marvel begins!! Select the Image->Rotate Canvas->Arbitrary ... command and the Rotate Canvas pop-up window will appear.

What you will notice (in the case of Photoshop anyway) is that it has "pre-filled" the pop-up rotate options with the exact rotation information to correct the crooked horizon, 1.5 degrees counter-clockwise in our example on our web-site. Click OK and see what happens ..

The photo has been magically rotated the right amount to correct the crooked horizon!

Step - 4

All that is required now is to do a tight "crop" on the overall photograph and save it.

And there you have it!!
Less than five minutes of digital image manipulation to take that mundane snapshot into a photograph that is very pleasing to the eye.

If you find the steps taking are a little hard to understand in this text based article, you can click on the link at the end of this article to see the same method explained on our website with the aid of example graphical images.

© Gary Wilkinson 2005 - All Rights Reserved

You can see this correction method complete with example images at Correcting Crooked Horizons in Photos

Feel free to re-print this article provided that all hyperlinks and author biography are retained as-is.

Gary Wilkinson is a photographer, photographic restorer and the owner of a photographic retail business.

He is also the publisher of the http://www.restoring-photos-made-easy.com website, where other methods of correcting common photographic restoration problems are discussed.

Photography - Bainbridge Mat Board

When it comes to framing and matting supplies for your artistic photographic images, quality is everything. Your images may be the finest taken since Ansel Adams turned his camera toward the spectacular mountain ranges of California and the Pacific Northwest, but without the proper photography frames, matboard and other framing and matting supplies, your prints will not only look cheap, they'll deteriorate very quickly as well.

It Starts With Matboard

There are multiple techniques that can be used for mounting your photographic prints, and the one you choose will depend on various factors:

1. The storage or display environment; whether it is humid or dry, if there are wide temperature variations, and if pollutants are an issue.

2. The durability of the medium; are the photographic images reproduced on high-quality papers and with the best dyes? If not, it may be necessary to increase the amount of protection for the images.

3. Your budget: like many other aspects of photography, there is a wide range of costs depending on the quality and nature of the materials used. (Fortunately, framing is not the most expensive part of photography.)

4. The complexity of the method used; less experienced photographers may prefer to use simpler framing methods.

A Quick and Easy Way

Once you have chosen and obtained your framing and matting supplies, one of the simpler methods for mounting your print is to affix, or hinge the photo directly to the photo mat board. This is best accomplished with the use of adhesive hinging tissue, which is similar to double-sided adhesive tape designed especially for this purpose. This can create some problems in the future should you choose to change the picture mat at some future date, but it will definitely hold your print securely in place.

Other methods you may wish to consider:

o Hinge the matboard to the mount board, sandwiching the print between them

o Use photo corners affixed to the mount board. This has the advantage of allowing you to mount the print without having to apply adhesive to the photo paper, and the photo corners can be hidden with the use of photo mat board and/or proper sized photography frames.

o Glue or spray adhesive: this is probably the most economical method, but caution should be exercised, as such substances can damage the surface of the photograph.

Choose Your Mat

One question that is frequently asked is "What is the best picture mat to use?" Again, your choice of these particular framing and matting supplies depends on several factors. If you are inexperienced at cutting matboard , you may wish to use pre-cut mat board, although this will limit your options as to how your photo will be displayed. If you are looking for archival quality, bainbridge mat board is the only real choice; made from special acid-free mounting materials this is one of the best framing and matting supplies available, and will preserve your prints in museum condition for many years.

Susan Slobac is an avid photographer. Susan believes a picture frame is more than just fashion; it's a safeguard for something you love.