Buying things get expensive fast, especially when you’re feeding your hobby frenzy, or purchasing items to grow your business. And as the Internet gets bigger and bigger, and people become more aware of products available online, shopping on the World Wide Web becomes far more common. Close to 60% of the American populace purchases items from online resellers, buying anything from produce to giant HD TV’s.

Choosing the right computer is a very major task. You don’t want to buy something sub-par and neither do you want to spend tons of money for a system you’ll never fully utilize. Let’s do a little walkthrough and get a better understanding of what systems you should consider.

So, you want to shoot some photos, eh? You may have the talent and zest, but do you have the right equipment? Think all cameras are alike, or the most expensive is the best? You’re in for a surprise.

Printing your photos isn’t an easy decision. It really does need to be thought-out well and pre-planned. Imagine you have taken the picture to the right of this page. You’ve worked out just the right atmospheric lighting and contrast in Adobe Photoshop®, and need to get a print. You’ve got two primary choices: Using an external service to print your picture, or utilizing a home printer. Both have their own pros and cons.

Okay, so someone in your extended family just asked you to shoot their wedding. Why? Because they said you like to tape stuff, and are “pretty good at it.” Now, before you get a big head you better realize what kind of a mess you’re getting yourself into. Wedding videography isn’t easy.

Once you’ve conducted your pre-wedding interview you’ve hopefully made a good impression upon the bride. If you hadn’t, she would have let you know immediately, either by her mannerisms or direct expression (depending on how forceful she happens to be). Presuming you have indeed passed the bride’s test, do you think it’s all fun and games until the wedding day? If you do, you better think again.

As you formulate your shoot plan you’ll very often change things from time to time. You’ll go back and alter your shooting method during one part of the planned wedding, and completely re-plan another. But as you continue on the perfection of your shoot plan, you also need to consider your equipment. This is the best time to take a good look at your camera and accessories, as well as anticipate any new purchases you might have to make for the upcoming wedding.

So, this is it. It’s crunch time. Your wedding shoot is tomorrow, and you’ve checked and rechecked your equipment, your shoot plan, and your location. Tomorrow will determine if you’ve paid attention to not only our advice, but (more importantly) the bride’s wishes.

Any idiot can press the Record button, sit back, and enjoy the ceremony. Any doofus can put the camera on a tripod and eat the cake, dance in the congo line, and laugh it up with the guests. But only a professional, well-trained videographer can make a wedding look spectacular on film. It’s all about the technique, and how you choose to implement your shoot plan. It’s more than a casual, half-hearted attempt. Today, we take a look at the techniques that will set you apart from most of the other competitors.

Now that you’ve filmed the wedding ceremony, you can breathe a sigh of relief. You’ve got the most important footage canned, and you should really give yourself a pat on the back. But before you get too comfortable remind yourself that nothing’s over until the fat lady sings.

There used to be a time when a wedding videographer would plug his camcorder into a VCR, insert a blank VHS or SVHS tape, and record away. That would be basically the gist of the editing process. Oh, sure, sometimes the videographer would pause the recording and fast forward the master tape, skipping over some parts of useless footage, but there wasn’t much more to editing than this.

When you edit on your computer the most amazing aspect of using your editing software is the ability to cut and paste video anywhere. This is what is called “non-linear editing.” This method of editing allows you to import your video onto your hard drive, open it in your editing software, and simply cut portions of the video to delete or replace by other portions. That is to say, not only can you cut up a video clip into innumerable smaller ones to delete portions you don’t like, but you can also rearrange the smaller, segmented clips to your liking.

Burning your footage to DVD is a very simple job. There’s nothing difficult about it, especially with the new DVD authoring software on the market. These days it’s just a matter of dropping your video file into the DVD authoring program, pressing the Burn button, and waiting for the output.

Back in the 1970s a producer and cameraman named Garrett Brown invented we today call a steadicam. Before this invention it was very difficult to get smooth walking shots while shooting footage. Thus, to follow an actor from Point A to Point B you had three options: (1) you could record several takes, positioning your camera at different intervals at each take, then cut the footage together in post-production; (2) you could also use a dolly shot to follow the actor; (3) or you could use a follow shot to just zoom as the actor got further away, and then cut to footage taken with a camera facing the actor as he walked to Point B.

A long time ago there was once a superhero named The Flash. As his name implies, he was incredibly fast--that was his superpower. These days when people talk about Flash they’re not referring to the that masked crusader. Rather, Flash is a coding language that does just about everything.

Photoshop® is one of the greatest applications of all time--and will continue to be so for a very long time. But, what essentially is Photoshop? Getting down to the nitty-gritty, Photoshop is a layered photo editing application. By “layers” we mean that you can add as many effects as you want, each with its separate editing layer, and which you can control with precision.