Reviewed by T. Michael Testi

In Drawing Fundamentals with Ron Lemen, you will learn about the fundamentals of drawing and shading and their use in dry, wet, and digital media. Your instructor is Ron Lemen, an award-winning designer with a career focused on extreme sports. He has worked for a variety of skateboarding and snowboarding firms and industry publications. He has also been a designer/director for various video games such as Myst 3, Whacked, Soldier of Fortune 2, and NBA 2006.

Drawing Fundamentals is geared to take you through the fundamentals beginning with the basics and on through some completed works. You will find out what it takes to turn drawings into reality. Drawing Fundamentals is divided into four classes comprising nine lessons lasting over four hours. I will break this down by class.

"Drawing Fundamentals" begins by taking you through the tools of the trade. Here you will learn about everything from sharpening pencils - graphite as well as different types of charcoal - different erasers, and using a sanding pad. You will see the difference between rough newsprint, layout paper, and tracing paper. You will see how to set up an easel and working it in to proper viewing angles, the proper posture, and movements from the shoulder. You will see why repetition is what you need to build dexterity and stamina; practice, practice, practice doing arcs, lines, circles, and more. You will also learn about

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Hi as i said in the previous entry, today i am going post my work on Clone Stamp Tool and Healing Brush Tool in Adobe Photoshop.


As you can see, this is the original picture that is tangled by the electric wires, the streetlamp, antenna, and the bird in the sky. Moreover, the car and two motorbikes also hide the doors of the church, and there is a little yellow crane at the right side of the church. These things are probably making the viewers confused and uncomfortable when they look at that picture.

My job is giving back the beauty to the church by removing this mess. It is extremely easy if I use Eraser Tool and erase everything out of this picture but it is probably destroy the picture. Therefore I have to use the other tools


After three hours hard working, I finally finished that work. Instead of using Eraser Tool I use Clone Stamp Tool and Healing Brush Tool and the reason is these two tools can make the picture look natural, soft and difficult to be discovered as an edited picture!

The electric wires, the birds and the yellow crane are easy to be removed. The streetlamp is a little more difficult. However, the doors and the wall in front of the church are ultra hard to deal with...

I had hoped to have had this posted a few days earlier, but I'd also hoped to have more of my film developed by now. Last Wednesday, I was up north at Bill Schwab's place near Cross Village for Photostock 2008 -- a gathering of photographers, mostly all of which are members of the Analog Photography User's Group (APUG) on the web. Bill has been offering some interesting wet-plate workshops, and his collodion workshop preceded the gathering. I arrived for Photostock on the 25, and had a great time meeting a lot of photographers. I only knew a couple previously, and a few I knew by their APUG names, but still, it took me the whole 4 days to associate names with most of the people -- as there were around 30 at any given day. I camped out at Bill's woodlot, as did a few others, and it was pretty darn nice to wake up to the birds in the woods in the morning, make some coffee, and think about little but photography for several days.



Marc Akemann and I teamed up for our excursions, and we got along really well - he's an excellent and very dedicated film shooter, and like me, shoots a lot of 35mm and some medium format. Probably the worst combo would be a large format and a 35mm shooter, since our approaches are so different. We...

Today, more people are getting hooked over Digital photography. Since the birth of digital photography, it has been easier and more convenient for people to capture the best photos they desire. Digital Photography indeed has become the wave of today and in the near future. But what if you're still using the old mode of taking photos- the film photography? Well, think again.
For those few people who are still using film photography, here are some good reasons why you should opt for digital photography:

1. Generally, one of the most excellent features of choosing digital photography is that its convenience. Aside from the fact that digital cameras are easy to use since they are user friendly, these cameras are also portable and you can just safely place it in your pocket anywhere you go.

2. With digital camera, you can save your time and effort. Digital cameras provide instant feedback once you take photos. It has a review button to let you view all the photos so you'll be able to choose the best one. At the same time, it has also a delete button for those photos you don't like to keep. In short, you can keep on trying until you get the right photo. Now isn't that great?

3. The next good thing about digital photography is its capacity to have your photos printed immediately. Actually, you can it is much easier if you have a digital printer. You can just simply connect your...

Today, digital photography is considered the most popular not only in the business industry but also for personal use. For all those who have shifted from film cameras, it is vital that you know the different terms related to it.

The first part of the digital photography tutorial will focus on the basic parts and terms you need to know before handling a digital camera. Below are the common terms used in digital photography:

1. Pixel- means the tiniest part of the digital photo. A photo image is composed of combined millions of pixel.

2. Resolution- the over all quantity of pixels in a photo. Increasing the resolution would make the image become sharper. Thus more pixels are needed to achieve a better photo image quality.

3. Mega pixel- a photo composed of three to four mega pixels will have a better quality that a photo with only one mega pixel.

4. Dots Per Inch (DPI) - this term is used to describe quality of the computer monitor and printer. Specifically, laser printers have more dpi resolution than monitors. Hence, higher the dpi resolution means better quality.

5. JPEG (joint photographic experts group) - it correspond to the format for saving images in the digital camera.

6. Memory Card- this is where the digital files are stored. Memory cards consist of different sizes and capacity. A memory card with higher storage capacity would be more convenient to purchase.

7. LCD (liquid crystal...

Digital cameras have advanced enormously in the last few years with many clever features incorporated into them; many of these functions the average buyer has either no need for or just doesn't understand. Of all the options available, what would you ask for if you were going to buy a digital camera? If this is your first camera then you must be honest with yourself if you have no idea what functions you would want your camera to have.

Is this something that is going to be used all the time? Once you have sorted this out you will have to think about how much you are prepared to spend on this new piece of technology. If you are using you home pc to carry out photo editing you will need to think about whether you pc is up to the task. Some computer outlets can supply complete computer systems that include a digital camera, printer, software and other accessories, so you can be 'up and running' very quickly. Fortunately you won't have to pay for the image editing software when you buy a digital camera but if you are after a printer or cartridges, these will be an extra expense that will have to be catered for.

Other items, other than the printer, the ink cartridges and special paper are the memory cards which once again will need to be purchased. By adjusting the megapixel setting up to the maximum you will ensure your pictures are of...

If you love getting out and about and taking photos, or even experimenting with your camera indoors and taking pictures of the family or pets, you'll love getting involved with digital photography.

There are lots of benefits involved with it that you don't get with a regular camera, and you will also find you can save a lot of money because you don't have to buy new film all the time. You also don't have to pay for the processing costs involved with conventional cameras.

Great For Beginners
If you are new to taking photos then digital photography is a good bet for you to get started with. You will find that you become better at experimenting with taking pictures because you know you won't be wasting any film. If you take a picture you don't like all you need to do is delete it from the camera.

This type of camera takes a memory card instead of a film, meaning that you have total control over what you want to keep on the card. A single card can take hundreds of photos at a time, so you can enjoy all the benefits of digital photography without the costs involved in processing.

Getting On Your Computer
Have you ever taken what you thought were good pictures with your regular camera only to find they come back from the developer looking rather disappointing? Out of twenty-seven or so exposures there might only be a dozen or so...

First of all, let's ask ourselves a bit of an unusual question, the answer to which may seem to be patently obvious - What exactly is a photograph? A photograph is an image or a representation created by collecting and focusing reflected electro-magnetic radiation, the most common of these are created by reflected visible wavelengths, which produce permanent records of what the human eye can actually perceive and see. In technical terms, this is the meaning of a photograph.

Photographs are also frozen memories of time captured, that people want to keep for whatever purpose. In this manner, photographs become an excellent tool to store information, for example, a fond memory, perhaps of a wedding or a similar event, of course, this is but one example among the many tens of thousands of reasons why people like to take photographs. Something that everyone has in common though, is the desirability to capture in perfect detail, an image which is very sharp and reflects the occasion as perfectly as possible that is being photographed.

With camera technology now advancing at quite an astonishing rate, compared to just a few years ago you can achieve perfectly respectable results for a very reasonable budget. Even vintage photographs taken in decades past can be retouched to enable them to appear much more perfect. Printing technology too has advanced at an equal advanced rate allowing anyone with a laptop or home PC these days, a digital camera and a good color printer to...