This week’s photoblogger of the week is Puja Parakh.

Puja lives in Seattle Washington where she works teaching low income and homeless women and their families about computer basics to help empower and build job skills. Puja has been kind enough to share a couple of her images with us as well as giving us a description of her digital photography kit. Lastly below she shares a tip for DPS readers. PS: you can see more of Puja’s work at her flickr account.

Wind-Swept

Puja’s Digital Camera Kit

I just recently upgraded to the Canon EOS 30D, but have been using the Canon Digital Rebel XT for the past year or so. I found that it was great with my smaller hands and easy/lightweight to carry as I walk to work everyday through Downtown Seattle. My walk around lens is the Sigma 10-20mm which is a great affordable wide-angle. Other lenses include the “nifty-fifty” (which everyone should own) and a Tamron 28mm-75mm based on its great reviews.

Beyond that, I really love to experiment with film and often times purchase cameras at thrift stores. The best find has been an Ultronic Panoramic 35mm point and shoot. Others cameras include the Lomo LCA, Holga and various Polaroid cameras. My favorite accessory is the Polaroid P-500 printer, purchased on ebay for $10. It prints .jpg pictures directly off of the CF card onto Polaroid 500 film. So fun!!!

Jump

Puja’s Digital Photography Tip

Often times I am asked for tips since I am an amateur myself. The best advice I have received was to study composition.

In the digital age, there is so much focus on image editing via Photoshop; however the picture will never look good if you don’t have a well composed image. Recently I read a thread that began with, “I would like to learn HDR so that I can spruce up my boring picture…”. My response to that is, “Don’t bother.”

Along with learning composition, know your camera very well. You should be comfortable manual and changing the settings as quickly as the person next to you with a point-and-shoot. Be ready in any situation to know exactly what needs to be done to capture the image. I highly recommend taking a photo class at your local community college or art institute. They are usually low cost considering how much you learn.

It is also important to actually be creative. Photography is an art. Don’t try to shoot exactly the same thing you saw somewhere else, how boring! It is said that you only get about 2 usable shots per roll of film, and lucky to get one great shot of a lifetime… so make sure to show us only your best work.

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