Photography DEGREE from Flickr

I have learned an incredible amount about photography just by being involved with groups on Flickr.

Probably the single biggest thing I have learned is about light. Light is one of the biggest things that can make or break your shot. A group called Strobist teaches how to get the light off the camera (don't use the flash on the camera) and become more creative.

What makes some of those groups so helpful is obviously the people that use them. We all learn from each other. Over time I have marked various users as a "contact" so that I will be notified when they add photos. When I see a photo that is remarkable, I can email the photographer to find out how the shot was made. I have learned about Orton process, dodge and burn, aperture, split tone, and more from people that are my contacts. The most recent thing I have learned is adding texture to a photograph. I have seen several people starting to do this on Flickr lately and I couldn't figure out how it was being done. Then I saw one of my contacts do it. They linked to their source and it clicked in my head.

I made a few quick samples to see how it works. The first shot in each set is the untouched, the 2nd is after I added texture.

[1] Trumpet

[2] With a texture:

[1] Cemetery

[2] with a texture:

Everyone may not like the results, and it certainly doesn't work for every shot, but it can be an easy thing to make your shot more unique.

Essentially, I found a photo with some open space (no main subject) and over layed that section onto a photo. I blended them together in photoshop and I was done. You can do more with this such as altering the color, and erasing parts of your texture to highlight some areas (like a persons face).

The textures I used in these shots were:


For the trumpet, I took a landscape shot taken from a mountain. This is a small portion of that shot enlarged. I put this on top of the trumpet shot.

This is some sand around a stepping stone I had a photo of. I took this sample of the sand and enlarged it to fit the cemetery shot.

Thanks again, Flickr users!