You can choose the sequence in which the photos/photos'>photos and captions appear and you can even choose the calendar start month ensuring that it is ideal for printing for yourself or as a gift at any time of year. Use digital photos/photos'>photos from your own collection or scan paper print pictures, magazine images, or anything else that takes your fancy.

Customised Calendars

Customised calendars are one of the most unique of all photo gift ideas. They can be customised with a variety of pictures, and unlike many other photo gift ideas they naturally allow for the inclusion of more than a single photo without having to create a photo montage to do so. In fact, because you can customise the cover as well as each month of the year, monthly calendars allow you to use 13 of your favourite photos in the creation of a stunning gift item.

Choosing The Best Photos

Digital photos offer the best quality when printed on materials like the crystal clear acetate cover and landscape orientation gives the best looking overall results. A4 and A3 calendars are both printed in portrait style and because the photo is printed on approximately half of the page this means that the natural space that is allowed for the photo is a landscape shape. Landscape photos are printed from edge to edge while portrait pictures can still be used but will include white edges around them.

Customising The Calendar

Write a cover title and add a cover picture. Write monthly captions and include 12 photos for the monthly pages. Choose the sequence in which the photos will appear and finally decide on the calendar start month. If you’re printing the calendar for yourself then you can use this month or next month as your starting point and enjoy a while 12 months from now. As a gift idea, use the month in which the birthday, wedding, or anniversary falls and the recipient can even cut off the calendar section at the end of the 12 months and keep the remaining section as a mini photo album.

Organise Your Life In Style

A calendar is a practical and useful gift as well as a good looking one once it is personalised with your choice of photos. You can use it to remember important dates, special occasions, and critical meetings and appointments. You’ll never need to miss a birthday again, and you can be sure to get an anniversary photo calendar on time this year.

Give A Stunning Photo Gift

Birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, and other events are ideal uses for photo calendars. Choosing the appropriate start month and adding appropriate photos and captions means that monthly calendars can be customised and given for any occasion or event.

Store And Share Favourite Photo Memories

The photo calendar looks incredible and is a great looking gift item. Whether you have one printed for yourself or a gift recipient, the bottom calendar section of the item can be cut off once the twelve months are up and the high quality materials and printing processes used ensure that what’s left can be kept as a mini photo album for many years to come.

-By: Sarah Maria Williams

Sarah shares her knowledge about gifts. Visit Bags of Love for stunning gift ideas and customised calendars
Personalized gifts don’t need to take time – Bags of Love have a speedy service, guaranteed to make you look good, and with presents for everyone, you will never be caught short again. SAME DAY DESPATCH – order today to get delivered tomorrow!

Each day we take thousands of photos/photos'>photographs either digitally or on film, unfortunately many of those images are never developed for future generations to enjoy. Imagine if our grandparents had never developed their photos/photos'>photographs how would you get to see and experience your family history.

Downloading images from your digital camera or mobile phone to your computer is not the secure option that you may think, and may prove difficult or even impossible later to retrieve. Electronic devices are constantly being outdated, lost or stolen. Your computer can also crash or become beyond repair. Formats change at an alarming rate (whatever happened to floppy disks?) and become defunct or your online photography company could even go bust taking all of your precious images with it.

Nothing beats having your photographs developed and accessible to your fingertips, which is where Arrowfile System comes in. It allows you to store varying size images from different format cameras in one single binder album. The non-pvc re-changeable pocket refills will protect your photographs from toxics that destroy those precious memories for years to come and allow your photographs to last longer.

The traditional way of storing photographs in albums has severe shortcomings because most albums use sleeves made with PVC, a plastic that has very poor storage qualities, accelerates deterioration of your photographs and contains harmful glues that tend to destroy photos over a very short time.

Arrowfile’s photography albums use non-PVC acid free polypropylene, so no more fading photographs or sticking to the plastic giving archival quality long term storage.

The Arrowfile system is unique because you have unlimited flexibility. It enables you to expand, organise and display your collection to your changing requirements by simply adding refill pocket pages and using the comprehensive indexing accessories

This is ideal for reorganising old photographs, other family documents, memorabilia and collectables that have been previously filed away that are not saved in an Arrowfile System. It is also beneficial as it saves time and money when moving old photographs to an existing album by saving on the cost of purchasing a bigger album; simply insert a new page and the job is done.

For more information on how to protect and organise your precious photographs please visit www.arrowfile.co.uk.

-By: Kesh Morjaria

Kesh Morjaria – invloved in photography since a child and passionate about not only protecting but also organising in a meaningful way.

Did you know that if you have quality photos/photos'>photos sitting on your digital camera you can upload them to stock photos/photos'>photo websites where you can earn money when people buy or lease those photos? If your photos are good this could mean a recurring income for you.

STEP 1

The most important step in making money with your digital camera is to find out what types of photos are currently in demand. You don’t want to upload a photo you think is cute only to find that nobody else does. The photos don’t have to be anything elaborate.

A simple photo can sometimes catch the eye for its simplicity. If you look at magazines, websites, brochures or anything that has photos you will see the impact a well chosen photo can have. Somebody took those photos and is making money using their digital camera. That somebody could be you.

The quickest way to find out what types of photos are in demand is to go to the stock photography sites. If you google stock photo sites you will find many sites you can explore and see the types of photos which are making money.

STEP 2

I suggest you make a note of all the categories of photos and search your camera for those you think will ‘fill the bill’ so to speak. Reiterating the timely advice of a great internet marketing teacher I am learning from; create a folder for these photos so you know exactly where they all are when it comes to uploading. You can even create separate folders within the main folder for each category.

STEP 3

Once you have organised your photos and put them into easily accessible folders on the desktop, it’s time to sign up for a free account at the stock photo sites of your choice. Some sites offer higher royalty rates if you upload your photos exclusively to their site.

STEP 4

You really need to give all your photos an appropriate keyword title describing them. (Keywords are the words people type into the search engines when looking for information. eg. ‘stock photo sites’ is a keyword even though it is more than one word) Have several keywords to cover all aspects of your photo. This makes it easier for searchers to hone in on your photo, and, if they like what they see, you will make money.

STEP 5

The exciting bit. Upload your photos! There is no cost to upload. Don’t be discouraged if some of your photos are not accepted. Try another type of shot or angle. Also make sure your photos are not blurred and haven’t been retouched. The requirement is quality.

STEP 6

A WARNING. You must own the photos. Do not use other people’s photos without their permission. You must also have the appropriate release forms.

STEP 7

Last but not least – ENJOY. Enjoy the profits, enjoy the fun of taking photos, enjoy uploading them and enjoy seeing them earn you money over and over again. Making money with your digital camera is possible and you will soon get a “feel” for the type of photo that sells. Therefore folks, if you want to make money with your digital camera you need to know:

a. The type of photos required.

b. The quality required.

c. The ones that aren’t really in demand.

d. The ones you SHOULD NOT upload.

e. Where and how to upload.

f. The sort of money it is possible to make

g. General dos and dont’s and other requirements that you definitely need to know.

-By: Lovinia Dickens

To get all this info and much much more GO NOW to http://www.loviniadickens-onliine.com.

Way back in the late 80′s the vast majority of news and VIP photos/photos'>photos were taken by professional news photos/photos'>photographers, usually employed by newspapers, news agencies alongside freelancers. This group of people worked day in day out often as a posse circling their subject until a photographic ‘kill’ had been achieved. However, that’s where the colloquial ‘cowboy’ analogy ends this group of photographers were, in the main, highly professional lensmen (with very occasional and increasing in number lenswomen) who took photos to order and frequently processed, sometimes with the aid of an assistant, monochrome or colour film on site and transmitted selected images to their respective picture desk to meet deadline. Most were likely to be called Reg or Brian. Were honest, talented and highly professional photographers.

Those were the days? Not quite, heavy equipment bags including a 30lb wire machine, early deadlines and finding a telephone and electricity point were just some of the difficulties encountered on a daily basis. The competition was considerable but with a camaraderie that always gave an air of professional integrity.

Then came the 90′s and VIP’s gave way to ‘celebrities’ and royalty was pursued at pace by bounty hunting photographers or paparazzi, often pillion riding on motorbikes or stalking at a distance on very long lenses, maybe the equivalent of modern-day outlaws. At the same time, the trusty possee continued with their assignments, while this new breed of go-get photographer often roamed the planet chasing the ‘golden fleece’ of an exclusive image. At around this time mobile telephones also appeared in great numbers and enabled fast voice communication for information or briefing.

At the turn of the millennium we saw mobile phone technology move at such a rate we had ever improving cameras within ever decreasing in size phones. Celebrity photography had by now become so important to newspapers and magazines that specialist celebrity photo agencies had sprung up and hoardes of flying paparazzi had been whipped up into a frenzy with the high value placed on exclusive photo sets. Agencies often worked in conjunction with celebrities, mocking up ‘exclusives’ and inflating image values to the highest bidder. The self-policing posse of news photographers continued to work in a similar, professional way, but the ever-increasing paparazzi had aggressive opportunists attaching themselves to the highly competitive world of celebrity snapping. These novo paps had little training, little respect for their subjects but plenty of balls and above all the ability to take, edit and transmit images to their agency or clients within minutes of shots being taken. Great technology, not so great for their subjects! Immediacy had arrived.

Now we have sophisticated cameras within mobile phones. Their specification can almost match a pro’s camera but they take up a fraction of the space. High end phone cameras also have one button capture and also provide very good video quality, certainly good enough for broadcast. People seem to have more leisure options and routinely travel internationally. The opportunities are clearly there.

That brings me back to the question of why Joe Public is only scratching the surface of his potential? Well on a few recent world news events many citizen journalists have provided us all with insight into events never seen before. Buildings collapsing, inside underground train carriages after a bomb had exploded or a car floating down a flooded river. But where are those millions of camerphone holding citizens everyday news related images? Do they need a nudge? I suspect that to unlock this mass of potential we need to provide information, promotion, organisation and reward. Information on what they hold in their hand and how to use it. Promotion to remind them of their potential and what a resource it can be. Organisation in leading them to agencies or outlets for their pictures and reward financially and who can resist seeing their name “up in lights”?.

There are some Citizen Journalist sites out there who offer no outlay in cost and take a percentage of their members photo sales fees. Maybe they need to implement a better strategy of promotion or perhaps they key is in the evolution of the general public to instinctively think of “oh that would be a good picture” or “I must take that or I’ll regret it forever” or “a picture of that is worth thousands, go on!” Maybe governments needs to make more effort in capturing daily life as a social project, after all they spend enough time filming us for other reasons.

Meanwhile the trusted possee of pro’s continue to rule the roost, with roving paps continuing to earn on their exclusives, but maybe not for too much longer.

-By: Tony Henshaw

Snapperty is run by professional photo editors

We all know that the holiday season can be fast and furious. Why not give yourself the gift of being extremely organised and frugal, yet creative, for Christmas this year? Here are some ideas you can get to work on right now!

Consider Christmas gifts in a jar or Christmas in a box. Set aside a place to store jars or boxes labeled with each person’s names, for whom you intend to get gifts. When you do your weekly shopping, if you see something that may be just right for one of your friends or family, buy it and place it in their box or jar. Add to each container as you go, through the year. Near Christmas time you can simply and decoratively package these gifts with their bows and cards. Each gift can be wrapped in its own tissue paper in the box and then glue wallpaper to the outside of a box instead of using wrapping paper.

Alternatively, buy a bunch of cheap baskets/boxes and create generic gift baskets/boxes. You could have themes for each such as aromatherapy, sports, car care, music, entertainment. Fill each with items relative to their themes such as restaurant vouchers, music CD’s, car wax, lavender oils. A basket like that is bound to please someone you know or it’s a great way to store smaller gifts that are just right for the friends you may have forgotten on your gift buying errands.

Purchase a bunch of photos/photos'>photo frames that you may spot on sale at some point through the year. For family and very close friends you might collect a nice photos/photos'>photo during the year that you can enlarge or reduce in size to put in the frame. For other friends, the frame is simply the gift.

Grow cuttings of some of your favorite plants and these can then be put in a decorative ceramic pot at the end of the year and used as a Christmas gift or, kept at hand for gifts at any stage of the year.

Sponsor a child with World Vision or similar organisation. The receipt for each month’s contribution could be enclosed in a beautiful envelope as an individual gift for 12 different people that Christmas. Perhaps a letter or photo of the child during their gifted month can be enclosed with the receipt copy. Invite the recipient of the gift envelope to write a letter to the child letting the sponsored child know of your friend or family member’s indirect involvement.

Get creative this Christmas and start your preparations early. Allow yourself to be relaxed and able to simply be in the company of the people who you love spending time with during the holidays.

Copyright Glenda Erceg.

-By: Glenda Erceg

This article may be used without permission as long as it is shown in its entirety with links intact.

For more Christmas Gifts resources visit http://www.christmasgiftsinfo.com/ [http://christmasgiftsinfo.com]

Entering photos/photos'>photo competitions is a great way to practise and improve your photos/photos'>photography and have some fun in the process. One of the greatest morale boosters a photographer can get is to win or even placed in a highly regarded competition. It means that others have seen your work and judged it worthy. There are a few pointers that you need to know about competitions that will increase your chances of winning however

First find your competition. Luckily photographic competitions can be found in many places such as in magazines (both photographic and other specialities), local newspapers, local promotions as well as here on the Internet. Why do people run competitions and give away lovely prizes? Well photographic clubs use competitions as one of their chief sources of entertainment and encourages the members to take photographs. Competitions are also used as promotional or advertising tools for products or companies.

The prizes offered can vary from cash, certificates, film, photographic goodies to cars and exotic holidays. Some photographers make a handy bit of extra cash by entering competitions on a regular basis. Though prizes are a definite draw, many just enter competitions to test their skill against others.

If you are thinking of entering a competition or you have had little success before, here are a few tips to set you on the right track toward entering and hopefully winning a photographic competition.

Shoot for the competition!

The best pictures in a competition are often those that are shot especially for the competition in question. Most competitions have a theme and certain guidelines to be followed. Sometimes even the organisation running the competition must be considered before even composing that winning shot.

The Theme – This is the most important thing to remember. Most competitions have a theme or a specific subject they want portrayed. For example, entering a dog picture for a landscape is a sure fire way of joining the rejection pile. Far too often shots are sent into competitions which, seen on their own merits are technically superb and artistically excellent. But, if the picture doesn’t fit the them then the judges have to reject the image.

The Organisation – Often the company or organisation running the competition will conjure an idea of the type of images they want to see. For example, a travel business that runs a competition for the best holiday snaps. They are probably expecting to use the winning images to promote their business. So knowing what holiday destinations they cover and supplying nice bright images of those destinations will probably score higher than others.

Use Impact in Your Entries

When you enter a competition just think how many other may or will be entering. It could just be a few entries in a local camera club competition or it could be thousands in an international competition. Whatever the numbers your image must stand out amongst them. In order to achieve this the subject of your photo must have an eye catching feature or form of impact.

Landscapes for example are a popular subject for competitions, everybody knows what a landscape is and can usually find a nice location not too far from home. But to stand out from the crowd you have to consider the impact and with landscapes its all about the lighting. Sunsets are pretty, and can be spectacular but if the judges have seen hundreds of them then the sunset is very ‘samey’ as all the other sunsets and become mundane.

For other subjects for impact use colour, shapes or creative lighting, try unusual angles for shooting common subjects. You must find something that will make your image jump out from the crowd.

Technical ability

The last important aspect of your entry is purely technical. If the image is badly exposed, has washed out highlights for example or is out of focus or exhibits camera shake then the image will be rejected.

So with all the above in mind, happy shooting and just remember, shoot for the competition and go for impact with nice sharp well exposed images and you will increase your chances of winning those prizes.

Good luck

-By: David R Butcher

David R. Butcher Bsc., LRPS has over 35 years experience in photography and is a co-founder of School of Photography.com (http://www.schoolofphotography.com) established in 1999. He has been awarded the Licentateship of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain.

photos/photos'>photo albums come in all shapes and sizes – there are so many different kinds of photos/photos'>photo albums that it can be difficult to know which one to get. Let’s have a look at what each size is like, and the positives and negatives of each choice.

The smallest photo albums are the size of one photo – after all, how could they be any smaller? They have a plastic sleeve on each page for your photos, and you can put two related photos together in a spread if you want to. These albums hardly take up any space, and are easy to store and flick through, although they don’t give you any space to write about the photos.

The next size up is perhaps the most common kind of photo album. These albums are made from sticky paper, with sheets of plastic in-between to stop the pages sticking together. This means that you can position your photos wherever you like on the page, and it’s easy to take photos in and out or change the order. However, these kinds of albums can get worn out quite quickly, especially if you change the photos around too many times.

The biggest albums are the ones with small plastic folders for each photo, often fitting six or even eight photos to a page. Next to each picture is a small space with some lines where you can write a brief description – good if you think you might forget the significance of that photo in the future. However, the size of these albums makes them harder to store away, and means that you might be reluctant to take them out and look at them all that often.

I find that the best way to organise my photo albums is to have a different big one for each part of the year, plus an individual, smaller one for special occasions. This keeps the photos organised, while also making the special occasions stand out.

-By: John Gibb

John Gibb is the owner of photo album resources [http://www.photo-albums-guidance-and-info.info]

For more information on photo albums check out [http://www.photo-albums-guidance-and-info.info]

Having taken some photos/photos'>photographs on our digital camera we now want to organise our computer so that we can import these pictures for easy access and viewing. If we take pictures on a regular basis and do not organise them as soon as we import them to the computer we will in a very short period end up with a very big mess to clear up, especially if future photos/photos'>photographs are of many varied subjects. This short step-by-step guide will explain how you can organise all your photographs easily and simply…

There are a big selection of digital cameras and computers so therefore there is no universal means of transferring the images from the camera to the computer. The two main forms tend to be either a USB cable from the camera to the computer or removing the memory card from the camera and plugging it straight into one of the media slots on the computer. Either way once you have placed the card into the slot or plugged in the USB cable a small window should open in the middle of your computer screen titled, AutoPlay.

There should be about seven selections available from the AutoPlay menu.

• Import pictures using Windows
• View pictures using Windows
• View pictures using Windows Media Center
• Create Disc or Edit Image using DVD Suite Deluxe
• Make a muvee with photos using muvee Reveal
• Plus a couple of General options at the very bottom.

You might think that you click on, import pictures using windows, but you would be wrong. In most cases with digital photography there is an excess of pictures that can be taken at any given time. For example, in some cases on an eight gigabyte memory card in a DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera you can take up to nearly two thousand photographs.

Most people would not get anywhere near that even if they took this piece of kit on a two week holiday, but most digital cameras tend to have a large capacity for images. This means that the photographer can take several pictures of the same thing in order to try and get the best shot.

Visible management should be the first port of call and for that you will need to manage which images are actually imported from your camera. For this purpose you should click on, View pictures using Windows.

This will automatically open your Windows picture viewer with the first picture that you took being displayed. With this viewer you can edit your picture using several basic functions such as.

• Adjust Exposure
• Adjust Colour
• Auto Adjust
• Crop Image
• Remove Red Eye

Cropping images will also save you valuable computer memory space, even if you only crop a couple of centimetres off of the image around the outside, this action can turn a three megabyte picture into just a few hundred kilobytes.

These can all be accessed by clicking on Fix on the menu bar at the top of the page. If you make a mistake and want to revert back simply click on Revert found at the bottom right hand side of the page when the Fix menu is activated.

The bottom center toolbar is for standard picture activity such as (from left to right)

• Zoom In
• Quick zoom
• Back one
• Play Slide Show
• Forward One
• Left Turn
• Right Turn
• Delete

Use all of these as you wish, but for now we will focus on the task in hand, as stated before you may have taken several photographs of the same subject and it is in this window that you will now want to edit these so you are left with the best. Go through all of your images editing as you wish and deleting those that are duplicates or not of the quality that you had wished for.

Once you have completed this process you will see up in the top left hand corner the words Import To Gallery, click on these words (but only once you have completed editing). This will open a small window in the bottom right of your screen with the title, Importing Pictures and Videos. At this point there are two things you can do. Firstly if these pictures are all of the same topic such as a holiday that you have just been on or similar you can at this stage simply type in the type box the name of the holiday title that you wish to give these pictures and the date that you took them, then just click on the Import button to import, or secondly if the pictures are of various subjects type in the type box the date you took them and click on the Import button.

This will create two actions, the first of which is create the images in the Windows Photo Gallery under Recently Imported, which has now been automatically opened, the second being that a folder with the title that you gave it has now automatically been created in Pictures on your computer.

If the pictures you have imported were of the same event such as a holiday and you titled it as you wanted then there is nothing else you need to do at this time (you can now view these pictures by going to Pictures, double clicking the folder and see all your images, simply click on any one of them to open it up in the Windows Picture Viewer again) unless you wish to segregate the pictures within that folder into other titles.

Open your Pictures file from the Start Menu this should now display all your lose images and picture folders in the larger right hand column and all of your Folders for the Desktop on the left hand side. Let us say that your recent photograph session was taking pictures of various items in your garden over a twenty four hour period and you have quite a selection of images that you took in your folder that simply has the date on it.

On the toolbar at the top of the page click on Organize then New Folder, this will produce a new folder awaiting you to type something into the bottom space. As we continue with this example type in Garden Events, then go back to the smaller left hand column and click on the Garden Events folder, this will give you a blank page on the right hand column. Go to Organize at the toolbar, click to activate drop down menu and again click on New Folder.

Call this new folder Flowers and Trees, and then click on organize again and create another new folder, call this one Insects, then create another folder called Birds and Wildlife, another called Lunar Events, and finally one called Miscellaneous.

So now you should have five folders looking at you all with nothing in them. In the left hand column you will see the folder Garden Events with a drop down triangle behind it, click on the triangle just to drop down the five sub folders that you have just created. Now still in the left hand column click on the original folder that you have just imported, this should display all of the images in the right hand column. So if you have a picture of a bird in the right column highlight it by hovering mouse over it and left click with the mouse, drag this picture across to the left hand column and down until the Birds and Wildlife folder is highlighted, now release and that image should have successfully been placed into that folder. Repeat this process for all of the pictures.

When you have successfully transferred all of the images into their designated folders you will no longer need the original folder you created when you imported all of the images. In the left hand column hold the mouse over the original folder that had all of the images in (should be the one either with just the date on it or holiday pictures if you have decided to segregate them further) and right click, from the drop down menu select Delete, you will get a window asking if you are sure you wish to send this folder to the Recycle Bin, click Yes.

Now you can use this example and knowledge to organise all of the photographs that you have already currently on your computer as well as how to organise and import any future photographs that you will be taking.

-By: Clive Anderson

Why not visit and check out myphotographblog.com, where there is a selection of photographs and information relating to the world of photography. On top of that there are some great photographs to view.

Clive Anderson
http://www.myphotographblog.com