Digital Art Photography For Dummies®

Chapter 11. Achieving Creative Results When Shooting

In This Chapter

• Identifying the modes and settings on your digital camera

• Adjusting your focus and light metering for more interesting shots

• Making flowing water look like silk

• Taking pictures with long shutter speeds

• Using camera filters in your photo art

In Hollywood, you think of special effects as Jurassic Park stuff or maybe Harry Potter zooming about, playing a game of Quidditch. In magic, a special effect is pulling a rabbit out of a hat. In math, a special effect is that the digits of multiples of nine add up to nine. In traditional photography, you might think of a special effect as water flowing in a stream, looking as if it were billows of steam. Special effects, really, are what you want them to be. After all, they're what's inside your head — what ultimately comes out when you set and focus your camera on something — anything, invented or otherwise.

My definition of special effects (as I use this term in this chapter for the purposes of creating digital art photography), however, encompasses using particular measures — tweaking camera modes, using time lapse, employing video techniques, and so on — while shooting photographs that achieve certain creative results. Using these techniques are the sort of special effect this chapter covers. If you want to add Jurassic Park dinosaurs to your photographs, you have to use Photoshop. ...