There are many rules, guidelines, suggestions, and ideas around what makes a good photographic composition. Every person has their own particular aesthetic and way of seeing, and it can be difficult to find your way through all the information to a concept that works for you.
However, there is one simple tip that may be the easiest and quickest way for you to improve your images. It’s free and doesn’t usually require you to buy anything. All you need to do is stop, think, and make a different choice. What is that choice? The choice of changing your point of view.
I love time-lapse videos and often create them myself, but never to the length or hard work required to created the videos detailed here. I like time-lapse because I think it can help us see the unseen in the world around us. As one example of this, we don’t really notice the movement of the sun across our home or garden as it happens much too slowly to really capture our attention. Speed up time though, through a time-lapse and we can clearly see how and where the sun is traveling about our environment. Analyzing the movement of people in a space is another great use for time-lapse. You can see patterns that might not otherwise be obvious at normal speed.
Most phones have the ability to easily create time-lapse videos. Try it out for yourself. What is happening around you that might benefit from a little “seeing differently.”
Once you’ve made a few time-lapse videos, trying slowing things down with your camera’s slo-mo features and record an entirely different world. — Douglas
Time-lapse has become popular with the growth of digital cameras. This technique can be very time-consuming, so why do some people dedicate their career to shooting time-lapses? And can this technique help you to tell stories in filmmaking? Let’s see in this video!
In this video we talk with Morten Rustad, a professional time-lapse photographer which spent a year in South America to capture the incredible landscapes there. We talk about his fascination for time-lapse, 8K resolutions and motion controlled gear.
I am always looking for new ways of keeping my anxiety at bay and these breathing animated GIFs are a great and new-to-me way of regaining control of my breathing. Check out the entire series. — Douglas
When you’re stressed — consumed by thoughts about your next career move, that embarrassing thing you said a few weeks ago, or anything else that makes your chest tight — it’s helpful to bring yourself back into the present by taking a few deep, steady breaths.
Obviously, that’s not always easy, but there are plenty of captivating GIFs that can help you visualize your way to mindfulness. These 10 will shift your focus away from your thoughts and toward your breathing. Take a look, breathe in, breath out, and wind down.
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
Amazing puppets in this short Great Big Story video. I am always amazed at the power of puppets and how puppeteers can bring them to life even when they remain visible in controlling their creations. — Douglas
Puppets—they’re child’s play, right? Spend five minutes watching Barnaby Dixon and you’ll surely disagree. At first, it might seem strange for a 26-year-old to be hand-building puppets in his bedroom and shooting videos of his performances for a living, but the puppet prodigy’s creations are completely original and totally addicting to watch. Barnaby started his career solely to make YouTube videos (https://www.youtube.com/user/barnabyd…), but recently hit it big after winning a 50,000 Euro grand prize on the German puppet talent show, “Die Puppenstars.”
Another great collection of public information freely available on the Internet and to use in your own educational projects.
No matter if you enjoy taking or just watching images of space, NASA has a treat for you. They have made their entire collection of images, sounds, and video available and publicly searchable online. It’s 140,000 photos and other resources available for you to see, or even download and use it any way you like.
There is a geeky community for nearly everything in the world and pens — yes, pens for writing — is one of them. Sure you have the fountain pen collectors and users, but even the humble felt tip, rollerball and ball-points have their community. In this case, The Strategist has developed a method of rating pens of all types and quantifying how each measures up so you don’t have too.
Yes, I am a geek in many things and pens could be considered one of them. I certainly have my preferences in pen and ink types I dislike ballpoints with a passion and look towards rollerball or fountain pens as my go-to writing instrument.
What’s your favorite writing instrument? Check out how it rates in the exhaustive list below!
At its most basic, a pen has to do just one thing, but there are so many reasons to choose one over another. Does it glide along the page, or does it drag? Does the ink flow in a smooth line, or is it unpredictable? Does the pen feel good or would note-taking cramp your hand? And how does it look? With so many varieties out there, from plastic ballpoints sold by the dozen to thousand-dollar fountain pens hunted down by collectors, we became determined to find the very best pens for everyday use.
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
More intellectual enrichment for FREE with these museum books. Expand your mind! — Douglas
You could pay $118 on Amazon for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s catalog The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry. Or you could pay $0 to download it at MetPublications, the site offering “five decades of Met Museum publications on art history available to read, download, and/or search for free.”
If that strikes you as an obvious choice, prepare to spend some serious time browsing MetPublications’ collection of free art books and catalogs.
Another great collection of free-to-use imagery care of your very own Library of Congress. Your tax dollars (and history) at work! — Douglas
The history of the venerable Library of Congress demonstrates the vast importance that the founders of the U.S. accorded to reading and studying. It may be one of the country’s most durable institutions, “the oldest federal cultural institution in the nation,” it proclaims. While partisan rancor, war, and violence recur, the LoC has stolidly held an ever-increasingly diverse collection of artifacts sitting peacefully alongside each other on several hundred miles of shelves, a monument to the life of the mind that ought to get more attention.
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
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