In June, Social Media Exchange, Beirut, hosted three digital photography workshops for participants in the summer 2009 Citizen Media Training of Trainers program. Photographer George Haddad led the one-day training, which included reviewing each other's photographs, resizing for the web, and a survey of popular photo-sharing sites for both amateurs and professionals. The training will be repeated periodically beginning fall 2009. All photographs © George Haddad.

2. Digital Photography
with
George Haddad

3. Photographers workflow
1.! Take the shots using basic photography techniques.
2.! Choosing and uploading the photographs using Adobe Bridge
and/or Picasa.
3.! Edit images with basic tools using Photoshop or Picasa software.
4.! Resizing images to a suitable size depending on it’s use.
5.! Naming your files and folders and how to organize them for
quicker access, for both off and online use
6.! Different types of websites and about embedding files.

4. A basic photography principle.

5. •! If your photographs are not good enough,
you’re not close enough.

7. Get close

9. •! It takes days for some photographers to get
the shot they want. Don’t rush, take your time.
Find what you want to capture and move in.
•! In some circumstances when people or
children are involved, they’ll come closer to
you.

14. The rule of thirds

16. Try using these points
to focus your subject
on, not the center .

18. Use the lines as guides.

19. And remember

20. Sometimes you can break the rules.

25. Something to add more effect.

26. Tilt the camera…

29. •! Too much tilt will

30. Go vertical.

32. •! Architecture and people can look good in
vertical images.
•! You can also use this technique when there
are visible lines leading away from you, or tall
objects in the image.

37. •! When photographing people focus on their
eyes, faces and their expressions. These are
the areas where most of the attention is drawn
to.

42. A little about natural and artificial (flash) light.

43. Well maybe just a bit more than a little.

44. •!The word photography means light drawing.
•!The best times of day to photograph (outdoors)
are early in the morning, or late in the afternoon.
The light is softer and the low sun creates
shadows that can give an added effect.
•!Unless you want to create a silhouette effect or
are shooting a sunset, try to avoid photographing
with the sun or bright lights facing you.

51. Using a flash to fill in the dark areas.

52. •! During midday or under artificial lights, the overhead
light can cause dark shadows in certain areas, you
can use the flash to “fill in” those areas .
•! You can also use the flash as a fill in if the sun or
bright lights are facing you. This can be used to
cancel the silhouette effect.
•! Don’t use the flash to light up the image.

55. •! More light means you
can shoot faster, and
capture moving objects.

57. Keep it simple

58. •! Try to avoid distractions in your images.
•! Even most landscape images have a point of
focus or attention. Find a point in the image
you want to emphasis and frame it using the
rule of thirds.

62. •! It takes time and lots of practice to get better
at something.
•! Try to apply these tips while you’re out
photographing, and in time they will become
second nature.

63. Choosing and uploading your images using
Adobe Bridge or Windows file browser.

64. Basic editing using Photoshop.

65. Resizing and renaming for the web.

66. Uploading your images to the web. Some
useful websites to store and display your
photographs

67. •! www.lightstalkers.com : Social networking site for journalists
and photographers. You can create your own photo galleries
viewable to the public. It’s for free and has lots of other
functions.
•! www.demotix.com : Citizen journalist site. Great place to read
and post features or breaking news from citizens and
professional journalists. You can create a photo gallery and
write an article for it. It’s free and its possible sell some
images through this site.
•! www.facebook.com : Social networking site. You can upload
photos and create galleries for people in your contact list to
see. It’s free and a good way to show your work to other
people.
•!

68. •! www.photoshelter.com : Online gallery and archive storage.
Depending on your subscription you have certain amounts of
storage space to keep an archive of your work. You can also
create galleries for the public where your work can be viewed
and sold.
•! www.flickr.com : Must have a Yahoo ID to use this website.
•! www.picasa.com : Online gallery and archive storage.
Galleries can be shared with friends or family by inviting them.
It’s for free and comes with an image editing software that you
can install on your computer, it also has an upload feature
that will upload your images directly into a gallery on the
website.