November 9th, 2009 
Andrei 
Vertical lines have the ability to give a variety of different moods in a photograph ranging from power and strength to growth. As horizontal lines can be accentuated by shooting in horizontal format vertical lines can be used very effectively by swapping the way you hold your camera into a vertical framing. This lengthens the vertical subject further which can emphasize it’s height. The other option is to break this rule and frame your vertical subject horizontally which will give it the sense that your image can’t contain it.
It is important to attempt to keep your vertical lines as much in line with the sides of your image as possible. This is not always possible if you’re shooting looking up an image as the subject will taper off towards the top – but attempt to keep it’s center as straight as possible. Keep in mind the Rule of Thirds when you have strong vertical lines in a photograph.
The rule of thirds is one of the most basic composition guidelines in photography. The rule of thirds makes use of a natural tendency of the human eye to be more strongly drawn towards certain parts of an image.
Metering mode refers to the way in which a camera determines the exposure. Cameras generally allow the user to select between spot, center-weighted average, or multi-zone metering modes. Various metering modes are provided to allow the user to select the most appropriate one for use in a variety of lighting conditions.
White balance is a digital camera setting that allows the colors in your photos to appear accurately. White balance gets it’s name because if a photo has correct white balance, things that are white in reality appear white in the photo. All other colors appear accurately too – blacks are pure black and gray are pure gray with no other colors mixed in.
APERTURE PRIORITY MODE (A or AV): This mode is really a semi-automatic (or semi-manual) mode where you choose the aperture and the camera chooses the shutter speed so as to ensure you have a well balanced exposure. Aperture priority mode is useful when you’re looking to control the depth of field in a shot (usually a stationary object where you don’t need to control shutter speed). Choosing a larger number aperture means the aperture is smaller and lets less light in. This means you’ll have a larger depth of field (more of the scene will be in focus) but that your camera will choose a slower shutter speed. Small numbers means the opposite (if your aperture is large, depth of field will be small and your camera will probably choose a faster shutter speed).
I’ve decided to talk about Exposure Time and Aperture in the same lesson because it is a strong relation between them, which I’ll explain later. First I will discuss about each of them to help you understand them better.
So now you have your digital camera in your hands and you are about to take the first shots. Most beginners in this situation will put the camera into full auto mode, or into one of the auto mode presets. In this lesson we will talk about these modes so you can know their advantages and their limits.
Batteries are another very important aspect that you will have to take into consideration. Some digital cameras (mainly the DSLRs) come with their own rechargeable batteries, so the only thing you can do after you get your camera is to see if this one is enough for you and if not, you can buy another one (or more), so you can change them in case you need to. If the camera doesn’t come with it’s own rechargeable battery then in most cases it will be compatible with standard AA ones. Choosing which one to buy can be a discouraging job since there are so many models on the market today. This can be very much simplified if you take into consideration this two aspects:
Choosing a memory card is actually an easy task. All you have to do is to follow a few easy steps:
