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I’m an enthusiastic but clueless amateur photographer. Some basic photography knowledge has started to sink into my head, but frankly, I’m still entirely not sure what things like “ISO” mean. Nevertheless, I’m still able to get some really fun results with the pictures I’ve taken. There is a ton of useful information on the web for anyone interested in digital photography or image manipulation. I decided to put this page together to compile some of the resources I’ve found the most valuable.
General, all around camera and photography info:
KenRockwell.com – This site is invaluable. If I could only link to one photography site on the internets, this would be it. And if I could link to only one page on his site, this would be it – How To Do Anything Photographic. This guy has written a ton of extremely useful and easy to understand articles reviewing cameras, explaining photography terminology, giving Photoshop tips, etc. There’s a ton more information than just that. Ken Rockwell is my photography zen master. He knows all. Fear him. 
What’s so cool is that he shares all of this knowledge with everyone. Thanks Ken!
Flickr.com – This is kind of a gimme, but the truth is, you can find a lot of really interesting phtography discussions going on at Flickr all the time. Say you want to learn more about infrared photography. Just go to the “Groups” page, search for “infrared,” and you come up with 943 groups. The second group listed, Digital Infrared, seems promising, so click on that, and it takes you to the home page of that group, which shows the newest photos sent to that group, and also, the most recent discussions. The photos will inspire you, but it’s the discussions where you actually learn things and can receive advice and answers to questions you might have about a topic.
A Computer Geek’s Guide to Photography – I just found this, but it looks like it’s going to be useful. And funny.
Tutorials:
Modern HDR Photography – This will tell you how to get images like this:
The really condensed version of the how to is to either take three JPG photos (an overexposed, and underexposed, and a “just right” photo) or one RAW image, throw those into HDR conversion software, and then tone-map them. That’s simplifying it to an insane level, and of course, the more you know, the better your results will be.
Trey Ratcliff’s HDR Tutorial – This goes into even more detail than the tutorial above. Prepare to have your mind blown!
How To Create Your Own Planets Using Panoramas – This is to get you to make things that look kind of like this:
…but normally much cooler. I wasn’t working with an actual 360 degree panoramic shot for that one. Anyway, the whole technique is pretty easy.
Create Your Own Bokeh – Admittedly, I haven’t had much luck yet with this one, but I’m going to give it another go, since the effect you get is really cute.
How to turn your photo into movie like effect using Photoshop – There’s a bunch of steps in this one, and it’s not something I’m really interested in following all the way through, but it is valuable in breaking down and showing exactly what each of the filters and brushes that he uses actually do.
Software, Toys, and Things:
FD’s Flickr Toys – There’s a lot of useful and gimmicky little weirdness here, from anything to the Warholizer to the LOL cat generator. There’s probably at least one toy in here that you’ll wind up using all the time.
HDRsoft Photomatix – Here’s one of the places you can get HDR conversion software. They have a free trial version available. Right now, this is the software that I’m using.
Artizen HDR – This is another type of HDR software. Like Photomatix, they also offer a free trial version.
Qtpfsgui – If you like playing with HDR but don’t want to shell out the moneyto buy Photomatix or Artizen, you can always give Qtpfsgui a whirl. It’s open-source, which is cool, but has the worst name ever, which is not. Like Artizen, I haven’t tried this out yet, but intend to at some point.
Autostitch – This is a neat little free program that allows you to stitch together many photos in order to get one panoramic photo. Pretty nice to have around, and hey! It’s free! Example of Autostitch is this image, stitched together from 4 photos:
Vector Magic – This is a fun program that I like to play with. You don’t even need to download it, it’ll just upload your pictures and work on them online. Keep in mind it’ll take a few minutes to complete a picture, but you can turn things like this:
into this:
Useful if you want to make cartoon-like images of your photos!
Pictobrowser – This is the fun Flickr web app that will let you insert a slide show kind of thingy into your blog posts.
Optik Verve Labs – This is where you can download Virtual Photographer, which is a collection of a ton of different filters to use in a bunch of different imaging programs (Photoshop, Paintshop, etc). Basically, with one click, you can take a regular photograph and turn it into something really cool, like this:
Their color filters are pretty obnoxious, for the most part, and when I use them I normally wind up fading them by quite a bit, but their black and white filters are amazing. For some reason, it’s hard for me to get a strong black and white image from a color image in Photoshop, and Virtual Photographer makes it really easy. This was a color photo converted to a monotone in just one click:
Miscellaneous:
Library of Congress’ Flickr Photo Stream – This is absolutely invaluable if you’re looking for inspiration or for photos to mainuplate, as all of the photos are available without any known copyright restrictions.
As I find more fun stuff on the tubes, I’ll add it to the list. Happy shooting!
