Dpreview.com is probably the premier photography equipment review site in the world.  Something they have begun doing in the past year or so is to review cameras in groups, and a recent group is the travel camera.  While cameras in this group should have pretty good image quality, they must be very portable.  They should be easy enough to carry that they WILL be carried, not left home, and they should have a zoom range that covers the vast majority of subjects.  So, these cameras are compact and have a large zoom range.

In looking over the dpreview.com review from this past July, here, I have found two cameras that I especially like, primarily for their wide angle end.  These are the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS10 and Nikon Coolpix S9100.  They have good user interfaces, zoom back as wide as 24mm (in 35mm equivalent terms), have built-in anti-shake technology, and have good image quality.  And, they are small and easy to carry.  A lens setting of 24mm means it is wide enough to be useful in landscapes and streetscapes.  Others in this group might zoom farther, but are less useful where a wide angle is required.

In addition to these, I like the Panasonic DMC-LX5, which suffers by comparison only in not zooming as far (so it is not a travel zoom, but a compact zoom).  You can find it here, with the Canon S95 and Nikon Coolpix P7000.  The LX5 zoom does not go as far, but it is still an excellent choice if you are willing to give up a little magnification.  Read the reviews for these three.  Read the reviews for others as well, if you like, using your judgment rather than mine.  But I really like this Panasonic and the two travel zooms.

One other choice if your recreation runs to hiking, camping, kayaking and the like, is one of the Olympus Tough series of cameras.  These are waterproof to 33 ft. and will survive a drop from six ft.  And still have good image quality and ease of use.  Waterproof and shockproof are things that become more important than other characteristics in an environment that is tough on cameras.

These choices might change next year.  The camera manufacturers are constantly innovating, in marketing and sometimes in useful features.  So, do your homework and read the reviews.  But if you want a short list as a start and you want a compact camera that is easy to carry and will get almost every distance shot you encounter, one of the travel zooms is your best bet.

When we all used film, we had to be concerned with white balance, but we dealt with it in more clumsy ways than today with digital cameras.  We bought daylight film or indoor film, or else we used filters to “color correct” based on the difference between the light we had and the light our film was made for.  Most people just bought the kind of film they needed the most and put up with the side effects.

And what did we get?  Well, when we had daylight film and used it indoors with tungsten lighting (typical bulbs in light fixtures), we got a color cast.  This color cast could be at least partly remedied by using flash.  How could that be?  It worked when the flash could overpower ambient light because flash and cloudy sunlight have similar colors.  But if we had indoor (tungsten) film and used it outdoors, we were sunk unless we had the right color correction filter.

And what do we do now?  Most of us set the white balance control to Auto on our digital cameras, and rely on it to do its best.  And many of them do very well.  But another approach is to treat the white balance as another creative control, and set it to get the effect we desire.  To do this, we need to understand a little bit about the color of light.

We dealt with this issue before, in the tutorial on light color and correction.  From that we can recall that visible light can range from a sort of blueish light in the sun at high noon (say, 8000 Kelvin) with increases going to violet and UV, to an orange light from a candle flame (say, 1000 Kelvin) with decreases going to red and IR.  A cloudy bright day might be in the neighborhood of 5000 Kelvin, as is the light from an unmodified flash.  Other kinds of light (say, fluorescents or sodium vapor) have their characteristic colors.  So if we want our photos to look natural, meaning as they would when seen in that light, we can set the white balance to match. Using auto white balance works in most cases, but it has limits; if it is important to get the color tones right, set the white balance manually to a preset or use a custom white balance.  (See your camera manual for how to do a custom white balance.)

But the point here is not just how to make the color cast go away, but how to make color “correction” part of your technique.  Here is a photo with its white balance set “incorrectly”.  Is the white balance wrong?  Not if I meant to set it that way, it is just inconsistent with the light.  And the result is a view of the scene that you would not see if you were there.  Is it a bad photograph?  That depends on our point of view and what we like and don’t like.

Here is another with the “wrong” white balance.  How wrong is this?  I find it “more wrong” because of the setting and how I expect the colors to look.   To me, colors in nature can easily look wrong, and need to be managed carefully.  Colors on a street scene, though, might be almost anything, and unless we are very familiar with the scene we might accept heavy modification to the color.

Some cameras have a “raw” shooting mode.  In this mode, the relatively unmodified photo file is saved, along with information about it.  This lets us change the white balance using photo editing software that supports raw mode; this way, we get can defer the choice of color cast until we process.  Note that this does not work with jpg modes; they use the white balance selected in the camera to save the file.  So if your camera is saving jpg files, you will need to choose the white balance before you make the shot.

If you like all your photos to look as close as possible to the way your eyes saw the scene, your concern with white balance will be to get it “right”.  And many shots should be done just that way.  But if you want to inject another dimension of creativity into your photography, try variations of white balance.  We did this with film, sometimes going to extremes where we purposely processed the film using the “wrong” chemicals just to get an interesting effect.  We do this in infrared photography, where natural color has little meaning and we need to choose colors at the processing step.  (These are both subjects of future tutorials, in case you are interested.)

Getting the colors “wrong” is not a mistake when we do it with purpose and creativity.  Someone might not care for the result, but it is not a mistake, and not liking it is the same kind of thinking that does not like selective focus or motion blur.  It is a matter of taste.  Next time you are doing photography in a mood to do other than simply record a scene, try it.  Just look at the light, determine the “correct” white balance, and then choose something else.  You might like the results.

Del

There are really more than three in photography, especially if you include all the variations of composition.  And learning them can be a fascinating and rewarding education in how to use creativity.  But many people don’t want or intend to go that far, and three useful rules are better than a hundred that we would probably forget.  And, remember, we need to know the exceptions as well as the rules.

The first rule is “keep your back to the light”.  This rule has a simple purpose, keeping glare and lens flare causing light out of our camera lens.  And with the added complexity of zoom lenses that are almost standard, there are lots of chances for stray light to enter a lens and cause problems.  So, keeping your back to the light keeps that light out of your lens.  But, what does it do to your subjects?  Well, if they are people, they squint.  And if they are inanimate objects, they have flat lighting that does not raise surface details well, sort of like a crime scene photograph.  Neither of these situations are good, but they can be improved by mentally turning ourselves about 90 degrees.

If the light is off your shoulder, it is probably striking a human subject on the quarter, not face-on.  This is becoming light that Rembrandt might have liked.  And if you are shooting a landscape or still object, the shadows are more interesting.  Of course, this assumes that you can stand with your shoulder to the light and this is the correct place and position for the photo you want to make.  If it isn’t, just do the best you can and remember that the rule is there to reduce lens flare, not make subjects poorly lit.  So find yourself a shooting position that is a good compromise; think about the light and the shadows, then shoot.

The second rule is “check your shutter speed”.  This is especially important with digital cameras in low light, because they will try their best to expose correctly in most cases, and that sometimes means reducing shutter speed to the extent that your subject is blurred.  Good sports photographers know the range of good shutter speeds for the shots they are after, and they set their cameras accordingly before the shot.  You can do the same in how you set ISO and other camera settings.

The point is, check your settings (not just shutter) for the light you have and the shot you want, then set your camera mode accordingly.  If the light is good, don’t worry.  But you will save some shots if you learn what kind of light makes your shots blurry, and know how to anticipate it in your camera settings.  You might find you need to use flash, or find a reflector, or increase ISO, or just plan for the blur.  The important thing is to know when your camera will blur your shots, and think about how to deal with it before it happens.

The third rule is “get closer”.  In general, this means that most people shoot with too much empty space around their subjects, and moving in closer would be an improvement.  So would cropping, but many people don’t crop, just use what comes out of the camera.  And too much zooming in while cropping can degrade picture quality, so getting the size roughly correct is a good idea.  So, overcome that human tendency that is based in social distance, and get closer to your subjects.

Or, should you move away?  In most cases, closer is better.  But, there are times when moving back would improve framing.  In other cases, moving back gives you room to crop that you might not have had.  (This is especially important in digital SLR cameras that use the old 35mm aspect ratio of  3:2.  These can be difficult to turn into 8×10′s unless you leave a little room.)  So, is it closer or farther?  The answer could be either.  You need to think about it.

Will this ruin the fun in your photography, all these things (well, just three) that you need to think about?  Probably not.  If you begin by noticing light position, shutter speed, and closeness, you will find that you make decisions about them fairly quickly, and the more often you think about them, the quicker you make those decisions.  If you spend a little time in practice, say 30 minutes a day for 5 days, you will find that the decisions come with the speed of automation, but this automation is your decision process, not a circuit in your camera.  So, that is an improvement in your picture making process, and the result will be more of the kind of photos that you like to show people, and fewer of the other kind.

Actually, though, flash is not the issue.  The issue is the light, or its lack or excess.  When we have trouble stopping action with the camera shutter, what stops us?  It is the amount of light.  If we had enough light, we could choose the aperture we want as well as the shutter speed we desire.  If we had the right amount of light, we could choose aperture and shutter speed creatively without worrying about over or under-exposure of part of the scene.

When we use flash to fix these problems, we are using a piece of equipment, possibly built-in, to put light somewhere.  While this works, there are times when it also causes problems, as some of the previous tutorials point out.  Harsh shadows, for example, or mixed color of light that makes the result have a color cast that is hard to deal with.  These are the times when we should remember that the problem was the light, not how to use the flash.

So, how can we fix the light without flash?  Let’s take these cases one at a time, and deal with the unbalanced light first.  This is a very common problem, as anyone who has tried to make an indoor photo which includes a sun-lit window will agree.  We expose for the interior, and the window is over-exposed.  When we use flash in this case, it is to increase the light in the interior until its exposure is close enough to the exposure for the window that the light looks natural, not harsh.

What could we do instead of flash?  We could choose a different time of day, for one.  But frequently that is not a reasonable choice.  So how can we get more light without a flash?  One of the best ways is to use the sunlight that is there.  A large light surface, out of view of the camera lens, can be used to redirect some of that excess sunlight into the darker zone.  Sunlight is actually very attractive; it is a problem only when there is too much or too little.

So, where can you find something like this?  If you plan to use it a lot, get a portable reflector.  These come in a variety of sizes and surfaces, from basic white to translucent to gold, and they are not terribly expensive as photographic equipment goes.  But there are alternatives which are much less expensive.  An assistant (or an easel) holding a piece of white poster board or, if it needs to be stiffer, white foamcore can redirect the light for you.  You might be lucky and find that opening a door in the right place will redirect light for you.  Almost anything lightly colored will work.

You can use these outdoors as well.  Late in the day as the sun is setting the light starts to go, but it is beautiful while it is there.  Just before it goes, use a reflector to gather up some of what there is and direct it where you need it.  In the couple of hours before this, use the gold reflector to mimic those golden hours a little later.

There are ways to make several shots and combine them to deal with light extremes.  This is called high dynamic range imaging, and we will deal with it later.  For these first few light tutorials, I want to keep things a simple and practical as possible, meaning no extra software needed.

Now, the other case is a little more difficult.  When you want to use a shutter speed of 1/1000 but there is not enough light, and there still will not be when you have turned on and reflected as much as you can, about all that is left is to use high speed film or the digital equivalent, high ISO.  Many cameras add significant levels of noise when the ISO is increased.  Some of the newer sensors, though, do a pretty good job at higher ISO levels.  Just think of ISO as another of your creative controls, and boost it up a little and see what you get.  In many cases, what you get will be noisy but the other choice might be no photo at all.

So these five tutorials have really been about light, with flash as a convenient way to deal with the amount on hand.  Using flash well takes practice and, to some degree, equipment.  The small built-in flashes on most cameras are not very powerful, and so are useful only on close objects.  But using flash on close objects is one of the things that makes the light harsh.  Using off-camera strobes can be costly, and gives you another piece of equipment (or two) to carry around.  So, think about the light, whether there is enough, and whether it is in the right place.  And, before you pop up your flash, see if you can do without it.  You might be pleased with the results.

At one end, the infrared end, invisible infrared turns into visible red, and at the other blue fades into invisible ultraviolet.  There is a good description of color temperature at mediacollege.com, including a good figure that relates kelvins to light sources.  We have deep blue sky at around 10,000, overcast daylight around 7,000, candlelight at 1,000.  An important point to remember is that electronic flash is a little more than 5,000, and so is noon sun.

Modern digital cameras have a color temperature setting, usually called “white balance”.  We call it white balance because if we can make whites look correct, other colors should fall in place.  Camera settings are made in kelvins or in types of light, like daylight, flash, or tungsten.  And when the light is consistent, even though it is blended of different sources, we can set the camera to adjust for it.

If we are using fill flash with sunlight or open shade 0n an overcast day, we have little problem.  The color of the light from the flash is close enough to sunlight that correction is not needed.  This is how flash systems are designed, and if you only use flash when it is the only light or with sunlight, you don’t need to worry about white balance correction.  Just set it for flash or sunlight.

But what if you are indoors, with tungsten light (conventional light bulbs) and flash?  The light from the flash is on the blue end, but the light from the light bulbs in near the red end.  If you fire a flash in a room with conventional light bulbs turned on, you can’t rely on flash and tungsten light being fully mixed.  There will be areas where the flash dominates, and other areas where the tungstens dominate.  It is likely that the subject will have flash illuminating it, and its shadows will not.  If your camera white balance is set for flash, the subject will look normal and the shadows will have an orange to red color cast.  If you set your camera for tungsten light, your subject will look too blue.

There are no camera settings or lens filters that will correct this, because the light sources are not fully mixed.  Instead, you need to either rely on one light source or the other, or else you need to modify one light source to match the other.  If you can turn the tungsten lights off, or at least to a lower level, the flash will overwhelm all but the darkest shadows.  So, the flash setting would work.

If turning off one set of lights is not possible, you will need to modify the light coming from the flash.  This is referred to as “gelling” the flash because we place a colored gel in front of the flash to color its light.  If the ambient light is tungsten, we can set the camera white balance to tungsten and put a CTO (color temperature orange) gel on the flash.  There are different strengths or grades of CTO gel, so you might need to experiment a little to find the correct one.

If the lights are fluorescent, the problem is more difficult.  This is not because the principle is different; it is exactly the same.  But, fluorescent lights come in different colors, and it can be difficult finding the right gel, usually a shade of green.  With increasing use of fluorescents as replacements for tungsten lights, this problem will get worse.  It is easy to find a room with both tungsten and fluorescent light.  Fortunately, in this case it is probably easier to turn off one kind of light, simplifying the solution.

Gels are not terribly expensive.  I use gels from Midwest Photo Exchange, but you can get them anywhere Lumiquest or Rosco products are sold.  With a little bit of experimenting, you can usually find a color or density that fits your situation.  They are re-usable, and easy to carry and mount on your flash.  If possible, try them out in advance at home, or on location if you have access.  This will save both time and risk of error.

In some cases, you will find you just can’t match your flash with the ambient light.  A good example is at a basketball game.  Lights in gymnasiums are not chosen for the convenience of photographers.  The professionals, sitting on the floor below the baskets, are using high powered flash guns that can overwhelm the overhead lights.  But from the seats, you don’t have a chance.  Your flash is not likely to reach far enough, anyway, so your best shot is to take the flash off and do a custom white balance to set your camera for the (usually unusual) lighting that exists.  Consult your camera on making a custom white balance; camera models differ in how this is done.

If none of these situations match yours, or if you just can’t seem to find the right gels, don’t give up.  Just decide how much you want the photo.  Sometimes a photo with funny colors due to lighting is preferred to no photo at all.  And if someone criticizes the colors, you will have a good explanation of why it happened.

Finally, about that kelvin scale.  Near the high end (large numbers, high color temperature) we find light that is referred to as “cool”.  Near the low end (low numbers, low color temperature) we call the light “warm”.  Go figure.

Del

When using flash as the primary light source, we generally don’t give a thought to the other light, which is usually the ambient light, the light that was there to begin with.  But sometimes we want to use this light, maybe because it is almost enough, maybe because there are things it lights that the flash can’t.  A common example is a backlighted portrait subject taken out of doors.  If natural light is behind the subject, probably lighting the general scene and maybe even attractively backlighting the subject, then it is not lighting the front or face.  The flash has to do that.

So, how do we do that?  First, we consider what controls what.  In most flash photography, the flash intensity (generally controlled by the camera) and the aperture (set on the camera) control the exposure.  This is because flash is both stronger than ambient light up close, and faster than the shutter.  So, shutter speed doesn’t matter.  Or, does it?

With fill flash, shutter does matter, because the combination of shutter speed and aperture control the exposure for the parts of the scene lighted by ambient light.  So, if you are not concerned about ambient light, set the aperture for the depth of field you want and turn on the flash with your shutter set at flash sync speed.  (Flash sync speed on modern digital cameras is pretty quick, usually at least 1/125 sec.)  Your camera will expose accordingly, and will usually be correct.   But if you want more ambient light effect, just reduce the shutter speed.

Let’s say, just for illustration, that a correct ambient light exposure would be f/8 and 1/30.  If you set your shutter speed at 1/125, the scene would be under-exposed by about two stops.  If you then turn on your flash and set your camera correctly, that scene now becomes exposed correctly wherever light from the flash falls on it.  That might mean dark shadows in the background.  Now, if you set your shutter speed to 1/60, it is only one stop under-exposed.  So if your flash is turned on, it exposes what it hits correctly, and the background is a little under-exposed.  Maybe just enough to make an attractive picture.

So, the key to remember is the aperture and flash expose for flash light, and aperture and shutter expose for ambient light.  If you want more ambient, just lower the shutter speed.  On modern cameras, it is even easier than this.  Most cameras have a fill flash mode.  They might call it something else, like outdoor portrait, or backlit, but it is a fill flash mode.  When you are using your camera’s flash or an external flash that can be controlled by your camera (probably a ttl flash mode), and you select a fill flash mode, your camera does a good job of combining ambient and flash light.  You really don’t have to think much about it once you have set the camera correctly.

On a manual camera, or for those who just want more control, connect your ttl flash, then go to manual mode.  Press the shutter halfway to set exposure and see what it looks like.  Adjust until you can make a decent ambient light photo.  Now increase the shutter speed to darken the background as much as you like, and turn on the flash to light the subject.  Press the shutter button and make a fill-flash picture.

Here are some examples of fill flash:

Ambient light on desk and wall is used, not overpowered by flash

In this shot, there was ambient light on the wall behind me, and the strobe light was in front.  I did not want strong shadows behind my head, and did not want the flash to overpower the ambient light on the desktop.  Fill does the job here.  This was 1/50 sec at f/5.6 and studio strobe through an umbrella.  Not really fill, but a single light combined with ambient does the same thing.

Fill flash to light near foreground, while keeping background lights.

Here is a case where what I wanted to save was in the background, the lighted carnival rides, and their correct exposure would leave the foreground in shadow.  Fill flash, camera mounted, exposed the near foreground, which I now find is really a little over-exposed.  Shutter at 1/8 and aperture at f/8.  I should have reduced the flash intensity here, by dialing back the power or using flash compensation.

Museum moose with desirable background light

This moose found in a museum had nice backlighting, and pretty good lighting in general.  But there were shadows on the lower head that fill flash fixed.  This was 1/60 and f/4.  Notice that the shot was from below the level of the moose head.  Another place where you find this lighting is at a fashion show, shooting runway models from slightly below.  Combining ambient with a small amount of flash, with just enough shutter speed to avoid blur, gives a flattering light and attractive picture.  In general, you don’t have to think about avoiding motion blur with flash, but with slow shutter speeds and ambient light, you can get ghost edges if the speed is too low.  I usually try to keep the ambient at least one stop below correct exposure, letting the flash define the main subject.

So, is fill flash difficult?  Not when you have good ambient light and you can combine it with flash.  Remember that you are using the combination, and that the shutter speed controls the ambient exposure.  In most cases, using the fill flash mode on your camera is enough to get it right.

When does this not work well?  When subjects are moving rapidly (give up on ambient and freeze action with the flash) or when the ambient is both strong and colored differently than the flash.  The color of light from your flash is about what you would find outdoors on an overcast day.  Dealing with the color of light is coming in a future tutorial.

Try fill flash.  Find a subject you can backlight and experiment before you put yourself into a situation where lack of practive might make you miss an important shot.  Practice just a little, and become a fill flash expert.

Del

First, you must have an account at our Member Gallery, meaning you must register before you can do anything beyond looking at the pictures.  If you have not yet logged in at the Member Gallery, you will see a Register link near top center of the main page.  (You can always get to the main page by clicking on the Coppermine logo at top right.)  When you click “Register” you will first see our gallery terms and conditions.  These are not extreme; you don’t give up any rights here, and we don’t sell your private information.  You must agree to the Terms and Conditions to proceed with registration.

Click on “I Agree” at the bottom to see your registration page.  Now stop just a minute and think about your Username.  You can use just about anything, but this is one way people can find your photos.  You can use your first and last name, or a nickname, or something cryptic.  But, this is hard to change, so give it a few second’s thought.  Your password can be anything you choose.  We won’t know what your password is, so if you forget it, all I can do is give you a new one.  You must enter a valid email address, because that is how you will be informed your account activation.  The rest of the form is optional; fill in what you would like other members to see.  Visitors (people not logged in) cannot see this information.

When finished, click “Submit registration” at the bottom of the form.  An email will be sent to us, letting us know you have registered.  Once we confirm that you are a dues-paid member, you will receive an email (at the address you entered above)  telling you that your account has been activated.

When you return to the Member Gallery following account activation, you need to Login.  Click the “Login” link near top center of the main page. You will be prompted to enter your Username or the email address you entered during registration, and your password.  Enter those, click “OK”, and your are in.  Notice now that you have some new links on the main page.

Just below the set of links that all visitors see are four new ones.  First from left is “Create/order my albums”.  Click on this to see your albums (you may have more than one) or create one.  Near the center of the page is the “New Album” link with a green plus sign.  Click this and a place for an album name opens up next to it.  Enter the name for this album and click “OK” (or “Cancel” if you decide to do this later).  Your new album shows up in the list at left, with your older ones if there were any.  You can drag these albums up and down, to set the order they will be seen in the Album list that all can see.  If you hover your pointer over an album name, its Edit link appears.  This is to modify the album name, but you also need to click it to select an album before you  edit its properties.  The “Album Properties” link is very useful.  There you can select any album, give it a text description that will be displayed in the album pages, decide whether all visitors can see this album, or just registered members, and decide whether visitors can post comments and rate your pictures.  Click “Update album” at the bottom of the screen to accept your edits.  Your album is done so far; if you want to do anything else, you need to click a link at the top of the page.  A useful one after creating an album is “Upload file”.

This is where you can  upload photos.  First, you have to select an album name at the upper left corner of this dialog, even if you only have one.  This enables the “Browse” button.  Click “Browse” to open a file dialog on your computer to select the file or files you want to upload.  If you want to upload more than one, select as many as you want.  At this point, you can see that if you want to upload several photos, you should put them in a single folder or directory on your computer.  You should also be sure they are no bigger than 1024 pixels in their larger dimension, and they should be jpg file types.  As soon as you select the ones you want and click “Open”, the upload starts.  You can follow its progress as “Pending” changes to “Uploading” and then “Complete” for each photo.  You can also cancel individual photos before they start, and cancel the entire upload before you go further. If you want to work further with these files, click “Continue”.  (Don’t try to upload file names that are already in one of your albums; this will cause an error message.  If you want to have a photo display in more than one album, send me an email; or wait for another tutorial.)

Now you should be at the “Edit files” screen. You can give photos titles, descriptions, and keywords.  If your photo software puts titles, descriptions and keywords in Exif data, they should show up here, but you can also enter them from scratch or change them.  When finished, click “Apply changes” at the bottom of this screen.  Note that you can always come back here from the Album Manager by selecting an album and clicking “Edit Files”.  Notice again the coppermine does not take you to a new page.  You might be finished here, but the gallery software does not know what you want to do next, so it waits.  As before, click a link at the top to do something.

There is more that can be done in our Member Gallery, but this should be a good start.  Don’t be shy about browsing around; you can’t hurt anything.  The worst that can happen is you might delete one of your own photos.  Enjoy the gallery and member albums, and think about what new ideas this might give you.

Del

So, we have a number of people with different equipment, different experience, different expectations, but a common interest.  I can’t make a tutorial that will equally satisfy every reader, but I bet I can make a collection of tutorials that a lot of readers will find useful.  So, that is what I will try to do.  They will not be long, they will not preach a particular brand or genre.  They will take into consideration that some of you read the manual more than others, and that a few have lost theirs some time ago.  They will also take into consideration that many people don’t want to become accomplished professional photographers, they just want their pictures to come out better.

So, here’s the plan.  I will begin making a list of topics.  Already have a list of categories to classify these, and an inclination to make a lot of these about light (thus the blog title) in some way.  But this is a club blog, so I hope to get some suggestions from you.  And, as topics are developed, I hope to get continuing feedback on how this is helping your photography, and what topics might help it more.

These will certainly deal with equipment, software, and technique.  They will also deal with light, and subjects for photography.  Some might be interested in someday showing their work, or selling it, if only to friends.  These are all possibilities, and they also cover the set of categories I have developed so far.  So, watch this space, and expect a new topic posted in late September.  (Not the next topic, that is the early September topic for our overall site launch, on September 10).

Del