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The Lens Flare is primarily an online image gallery where hundreds of artists and photographers share their work with the world. We're constantly improving the website to make it easier to view beautiful pictures as well as provide information that is useful for our members and visitors.
| Table of contents |
Photography
Read about the art of photography and how to create beautiful images with a camera. Subjects include photography equipment and accessories, techniques to create memorable photographs, specific types of photography careers, where to learn more, and activities to spur your creativity by trying new and exciting things.
How to make a still life photography studio for under 20 dollars - You don't need professional lighting equipment to take great still life photos. This article explains how to make a light tent out of some cloth and PVC pipe.
Improving Composition - Tips on how to improve your photo's overall composition.
Emotional Colors - How colors can affect the overall tone.
Kill The Clutter - How to improve your photos by eliminating unnecessary elements in the image.
Photography Types - A brief description of many different types and genres of photography.
Choosing Portrait Studios - 10 things to consider when choosing a professional portrait studio for photos of your children, families, and other groups.
Digital Post Processing
Read about what to do with your picture once the digital image is on your computer, and learn about various techniques to correct the color and exposure of an image, how to do special effects such as selective coloring, and how to retouch images to fix damaged photos and remove unwanted elements. Different software packages and hardware devices are explored such as Photoshop, Wacom tablets, and scanners.
Lack of latitude with digital capture - This tutorial explains how to use software to correct images where part of the image is either too dark or too light.
Colour management for beginners - This article gives you an overview of colour management in your digital workflow, and suggests some simple things which will put you in charge of the colour in your images.
A basic curves tutorial - This tutorial introduces the curves dialog, explains how it does what it does, and walks you through a real life example.
Theory and practice of sharpening - This article introduces the concept of sharpening your images: how it works and how to do it successfully.
Going beyond basic curves - A more sophisticated approach to adjusting your images. This article builds on the concept of the selection mask introduced in the sharpening article, and introduces blending modes as an alternative to curves.
Selective Coloring Tutorial - For making digital 'hand-colored' images.
Printers, Cameras, Lenses, and other auxiliary equipment
Nikon DSLR Cameras - Discusses the major points of each of Nikon's current DSLR camera offering.
Camera Lenses - This article discusses the different types of lenses available for an SLR film or digital camera.
Lens Filters - Common filters that are available for SLR cameras and which ones are worth buying.
How to buy a printer - explains the different types of printers, gives recommendations, and covers important features to look for when buying a printer.
Wacom - An electronic pen tablet for use by anybody with a need for precise control over the mouse cursor for digital art, photo retouching, and note taking.
Nature, Wildlife, and Landscapes
Learn more about the plants and animals that frequent the images displayed on The Lens Flare, and arm yourself with the knowledge of how to photograph them successfully. Information regarding where to find them, what time of day and year is best to photograph them, their natural behaviors, how best to approach them and remain safe, and other considerations are explored. For domestic plants, additional information may be provided such as gardening tips, soil type, amount of water and sunlight needed, where to purchase them, how to use them in still life images, and where to find more information. For domestic animals, information about how to care for them, groom them, healthy diets, training, exercise, and other information may be provided.
Nature and wildlife: The most popular subject
Help
The Lens Flare is an ever-growing and changing website and community for artists and art lovers. Features are often added or changed as better methods are designed, programmed, and implemented. As a result, some of the things on the website may require explanation. This section is meant to display a set of Frequently Asked Questions, information about how to use the website's many features, how to make your gallery more visible to the world, how to add your articles to the website, and other things that people often have questions about.
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions about The Lens Flare
Stats - Visits, Visitors, Length on Site, Bounce Rate, and Page Views for TLF.
History of The Lens Flare - A somewhat brief history of TLF and its founder.
Contest Rules - A list of all contest rules and prizes.
Increasing Traffic to Your Gallery - This article describes techniques to improve the amount of traffic to your gallery by understanding how search engines work.
The SEO Game
Wanted: Reviews, Tutorials, Remarks, and Observations
Adding and Formatting Articles
General Articles
Version 3 is Live
Version 3 is ready for Beta Testing
TLF helps bring artists and buyers together
2006: A Year In Review - A synopsis of TLF's growth during 2006.
