Digital Photography: Cheap digital cameras

It's impossible to know the influence that digital photography has on people's lives. One picture can reach millions of people, sell a product, be used as evidence in court, be used as decoration in an office, or rest in a family album.

There are two kinds of pictures: good ones and the rest. This is true for the whole world, even though tastes may vary. It's acknowledged that, for each one of us, photography in general is particularly the good photographs and nothing more. A picture isn't considered good if what it tells us isn't interesting, or if there are unacceptable technical problems.

When we are enjoying a good photography it wakes in us the desire to capture our surrounding as we see it. Otherwise the images that rapidly pass by will be disappear forever. In everybody's life there are people, places and moments which are important to remember; therefore photography can be everybody's visual testimony of their surrounding throughout time. Starting from this personal use, the infinite topics, applications, and uses of photography are always developed around one specific way of seeing things.

There are two pillars for learning photography: the technical control necessary to register images as they are, as you see them, or as you cant them to appear; it is also essential to learn to observe your surrounding world with an attentive and curious eye. It goes without saying that these two capacities are developed with experience.

Since you must apply technique before shooting, and errors are only visible when it's already too late, it's inevitable that our first experiences will be somewhat discouraging. The process which allow us to "extract" an image from the retina and store it permanently is very complicated. The more we deepen our knowledge on this topic, the better we will be able to control and image. There are some variables which intervene in all photographs and require certain conditions to be filled. These conditions are analyzed in chapter 2: "How to Create a Photograph". From there on it is completely necessary to alternate reading with practice. Around that chapter there are other things you must keep in mind when frequently using a camera. Only with practice can you assimilate the technique necessary to freely dedicate yourself to what is truly important: the content of the image.

After reading chapter 2, and gaining some experience with a few rolls, its possible to make technically correct pictures. Nonetheless if you limit yourself to finding the correct technique in an image you can obtain a reproduction of the scene, but not a good photograph. It's necessary to find a way to transmit what your trying to say with the image, and this is the hardest thing to learn.

The way of saying things in photography basically depends on the point of view and frame chosen. Also technique offers many possibilities of choice in light sensitive materials, lenses, filters., which ass different characteristics to the image. It's easy to loose yourself when too much importance is given to technical mediums. These are used as tools, they alone don't have the power to create a good picture. Everything depends on what we want to, (and know how to) do. Deciding what works best to say what you want to, regarding different points of view, frames, materials and others technical tools, requires a much greater photographic experience than that necessary to learn the strictly technical.

A good photograph is almost never created randomly. Before pulling the trigger we have looked for an image who's characteristics have been decided, in a greater or lesser degree. If we look closely at what were seeing, meditate about what we want to capture, and look for the way to say it, finally if we can apply the proper technique, slowly our images will stop being just "snapshots" and start being "good photographs".