The Creative Children

We all gather and wait to see fireworks.  Always anticipating a BIG blow out, hopefully bigger then the year before. Cameras ready.  Fingers sharp to point out at the ones we love the BEST.  It is hard to achieve superb fireworks shots but these photos will prove that it could be done.

Dailyville

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

fireworks

via Smashing magazine

I just bought a great camera Nikon D60 after much consideration.  The new Nikon D90 looked amazing but for a girl who has never had a “real” camera, it was a bit much.  (aka, confusing). I am currently reading the manual, trying to get acquainted before my upcoming trip to the Caribbean. I have also decided to take a photography class to learn more about different techniques, how to use light, angles, distance etc in order to come up with a picture that will truly capture the object/moment desired.  I found some amazing photography during my research on what I can personally do in order to be a better picture taker. I was blown away at the emotions and thoughts these photos provoked while looking at them. Photography is a powerful thing!

Water Drop

Water and a Girl

A Conversation

Bird and Meat

Autumn in Red

Family of lady bugs

All Alone

Bird and Water

Golf Ball

Cat

Flower

Water

Flowers

Beach

Bubble

Hand

Leaf

Ballons

Tree

Fight

Saving repetitive tasks as Photoshop actions can save you a lot of time, allowing you to automate your work and improve workflow efficiency. A Photoshop action is a recording of a sequence of commands and operations that you can save and access later on.

We’ve searched for the best downloadable Photoshop actions that can help you improve your workflow and perform complex techniques with the push of a button. In this collection, you’ll find more than 350 free hand-picked Photoshop actions that you can use to speed up your graphics creation.

Note: It’s important to check the license of each action set you download and use.

Quick Introduction to Photoshop Actions

For those unfamiliar with Photoshop actions, they’re simply pre-recorded tasks that you can save and reuse anytime. Photoshop actions commonly have an .atn file extension. Installing a Photoshop action for more recent versions of Photoshop is easy: simply drag the .atn file onto the Actions palette or place it directly inside your Adobe Photoshop\Presets\Photoshop Actions folder. For a more comprehensive discussion of Photoshop actions, check out this complete guide to Photoshop actions.

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by Vailancio Rodrigues and Smashing Magazine Editorial Team

Of all the different types of photography showcased on Smashing Magazine, underwater photography is probably one of the most difficult to practice. It requires a very specialized equipment and the knowledge of some advanced techniques to get a perfect picture. You need to get the correct exposure, accurate focus, controlled movement of your subject and a pleasing color balance; you also have to deal with low light. Underwater photos offen suffer from loss of color and contrast when taken at a significant depth. Such photos are always adjusted with color balance to help offset the blueish tint of the water.

Because underwater photography is a specialized art, relatively few photographers attempt it. But it offers many exciting and rare photographic opportunities for fresh and truly different vivid images. Most often, photographers use a traditional film or digital camera covered in a watertight casing. Professionals prefer to use special underwater cameras.

Below, we present over 50 beautiful examples of underwater photos, created by artists and professional photographers. All works featured below have the artists and photographers’ names linked to their portfolios or websites. At the bottom of this post you’ll fine some links to Flickr groups where you can find more similar and exciting photos.

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By Robert Bowen and Smashing Editorial Team

In the realm of digital art, so many wonderful and playful genres exist that stimulate the imagination, but so few do it with the intricate style of fractal art. Fractal art is achieved through the mathematical calculations of fractal objects being visually displayed, with the use of self-similar transforms that are generated and manipulated with different assigned geometric properties to produce multiple variations of the shape in continually reducing patterns. Sounds extremely technical and not that artistic, true, but these equations create some of the most mesmerizing and inspiring artwork to emerge from the digital art arena.

In this edition of our Monday Inspiration series, we look at awe-inspiring examples of the dynamic digital art sensation that is fractal art with 50 Phenomenal Fractal Art Renders. Setting across the vast sea of cyberspace to find these works was such an amazing task as so many fantastic pieces surfaced. Here are scaled-down versions of some of the most breathtaking ones that were uncovered, though the full-sized versions (linked through the image) offer a much more spectacular view of these mathematical masterpieces.

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