Hank the Kitten- a family photo tweaked with Arcsoft software

The First Step is to Understand the Basics of Digital Photography

What is digital photography?

Read this short tutorial below I found at APTE

http://www.apte.com/b2b/about.php  This company was founded by educators, and makes digital photography software.

About Digital Photography
How does a film camera differ from a digital camera? A film camera and a digital camera are very similar in many ways. The biggest difference is how each captures and stores information. Film Camera With the conventional film camera you push the button. The shutter is tripped and light reflected from your subject passes through the lens and exposes the film to the image of your subject. You then wind the film to the next unexposed area and get ready for the next picture opportunity. Developing film into negatives, which are then used to make pictures, is a chemical process. Unless you have the expertise and equipment to develop film, you will need to take your exposed film to a professional to have your film processed. Digital Camera The digital camera does not use film. Instead of film, a digital camera has light sensitive computer chips. Like the conventional camera, you trigger the shutter, light comes in and passes through the lens. Instead of exposing film, the light is captured by an array of light sensitive computer chips. When the light hits these computer chips, they emit an electrical charge. The camera processor converts these electrical charges into a digital format (pixels) and stores them in the camera's memory. Think of a digital camera as just another computer harddrive. It stores your pictures as image files. You can download these files to a computer; edit and print them much like you do other types of computer files. What are pixels? Pixels are the building blocks of digital images. Every digital picture is made up of thousands of pixels. The number of pixels in each image affects the quality of the picture resolution. For example, a low-end camera might have 307,200 pixels in one picture. A high-end picture might have more than 5,000,000 pixels in a picture. What is Resolution? Simply put, resolution is how you define the sharpness of your digital image. Resolution is often defined as how many pixels per inch (ppi) your image has in both its height and width. A digital camera that has a 640 x 480 resolution will have 640 pixels in width and 480 pixels in height. This is a fairly low resolution that works well with email and Web postings. Pictures will print best if they are not bigger than 3” x 5” high. crisp 3" x 5" photo prints A digital camera that has a 1600 x 1200 resolution (2 megapixels) will have 1600 pixels in width and 1200 in height. This resolution gives a crisp 5” x 7” print picture. crisp 5" x 7" photo prints A digital camera that has a 2048 x 1536 resolution (3 megapixels) will have 2048 pixels in width and 1536 in height. This resolution gives a crisp 8” x 10” print picture. crisp 8" x 10" photo prints Resolution examples: Low End Midrange High End pixels at 640 X 480 or higher pixels at 1600 X 1200 pixels at 2048 X 1536 or higher

Basics of Operating a Digital Camera

Here are other ways to get images into a digital format:

1. Pictures taken with film can be transfered to a digital format and saved to  a computer, cd rom,  memory stick, or flash drive.  It is easiest to do when developing the film.  Most film processing services will place deveoped photos on a cd.

2. You may also use a scanner to scan a photograph into a computer, and save it as an image file.  Some printers have  a scanner feature.

3. You can get a photograph via email, or from a photo sharing site such as snapfish or flickr.

Some Digital Image File Types

Digital Image File Types -  .gif, .tiff, .png, .bmp, .psp, .psd, .raw,  .jpg, also known as jpeg

The .jpeg format is the default that digital cameras use to save pictures, and every photo editing or viewing program can read it. It is best to save pictures into this format until you are comfortable with digital photography.

Not all file types will open in all software.  It is possible to convert the file type. To learn more about how to convert file types: Alison's conversion tool

For more on file types and why to use each:   http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/graphics/formats/formats.html

Tips and Tricks:

1. Right click on an image to copy it or save it.
2. Don't discard a photo that is too dark or too light, these can be fixed easily.  Even a photo taken without a flash has potential to be saved.
3. "Red eye" can be removed by opening a photo in "Paint" and using the paintbrush tool too recolor.
4. When using a digital camera, always keep extra batteries with you. Turn off the LCD viewer to save battery power.
5. If you can't email an image file because it is too large you can compress it, or send it through the free service at Yousendit   https://www.yousendit.com/cms/liteaccount

Why use digital photography be used in the classroom?

Digital photography can be used to engage and motivate students from pre-k through 12.  Digital photos are colorful, attention grabbing, and provide immediate results.  Few things are more relevant to a child’s life than a picture he or she has taken, or a picture of a place they have been. Photos can compliment projects in language arts, math, social studies, science and art, and appeal to visual and kinesthhetic learners. 

How to use digital photography in the classroom

Give a student a camera, and let them create!  Pictures can be used to make a video,collage, or other multi media presentations. For ELA, photos can tell a story, or be used to prompt students to tell a story their own way.  For mathematics, photos can be used to demonstrate Students can share their work, and comment on the work of classmates if these projects are posted on a wiki or other online sharing space like Flickr.  Digital photographs can be used as an assessment tool, students can "show" what they have learned.

Examples

Here are some og my completed assignments using digital photography.

Digital Storytelling- My assignment was to use digital storytelling to make a video to tell of a difficult time in my life, and how I overcame it. It had to be less than 3 minutes, and be made with copyright free materials.  I took some family photos, some new pictures of my summer garden, music from freeplay.com and used iMovie on my Mac to make this.  I had technical difficulties with an upload, so I had to recreate it with Microsoft Moviemaker on my pc.  Both were fairly easy to learn and use.

Alison Fricke Gardening Video.m4v

CAST Bookbuilder  http://bookbuilder.cast.org/http://bookbuilder.cast.org/  The site says "Use this site to create, read, and share engaging digital books that build reading skills for students. Your universally designed books will engage and support diverse learners according to their individual needs, interests, and skills. Use this site to create, read, and share engaging digital books that build reading skills for students."  You need to sign up, but it is free and you can store your books or works in progress on their site.  Click here to see my book "Jenna Gets Asthma"  http://bookbuilder.cast.org/library.php?search=&item=&area=&genre=&gk=&g1=&g2=&g3=&g4=&g6=&g9=&sort=title&order=asc&page=12http://bookbuilder.cast.org/library.php?search=&item=&area=&genre=&gk=&g1=&g2=&g3=&g4=&g6=&g9=&sort=title&order=asc&page=12

In this assignment I had to use Dumpr, an online photo editing tool, and write a review of it.  I took an ordinary photo and easily transformed it into a variety of looks to demonstrate what Dumpr can do.

Dumpr

http://www.dumpr.net/

is an online tool that allows users to add special effects to any photo. There is no fee, no need to register, no programs to download, and no need to give an email address. These are all important considerations for uses in education where funds, privacy, and unsupported software are issues. Dumpr has a free newsletter that gives tutorials, creative ideas, and digital camera tricks. There are some premium effects are only available to members, who pay $12 a year.  

Simple to use, there is no tutorial required as there are guided steps. Go to the Dumpr page to begin. Users then choose a photo to change from their computer, their flickr account, or any url. Following the step-by-step instructions, it is possible to add features or special effects in less than a minute. There are 12 different effects to choose with names like sketch, poster, museum, paparazzi, and reflection.

After completing the photo transformation, users can choose to save the picture to their hard drive as a jpg, send it as email, upload it to their flickr account, or embed it into a blog. It is also possible to embed the photo into various social network sites such as xanga, face book, piczo, my space, word press, or blogger through direct links on Dumpr. Dumpr itself has groups where users may add photos and comment on the work of others.

To try out Dumpr, I uploaded a picture of my sister from my Flickr account and tried the different effects. Each time I used an effect, my photo art was rendered in just 20 seconds. The results from Dumpr reminded me of images that I am able to get with photo shop, an expensive difficult to learn photo editing program. I made a group in Flickr to show the art that I made utilizing the same picture. I named each photo with the Dumpr tool I applied. Stop and visit, and leave a  comment.