The advent of dig­i­tal cam­eras has changed pho­tog­ra­phy as we know it. It has dra­mat­i­cal­ly low­ered the cost of pho­tog­ra­phy, and we’re now snap­ping more pho­tos than ever before. But we’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly tak­ing bet­ter pic­tures.

This is where Nikon steps in. Their cam­eras make casu­al pho­tog­ra­phers immense­ly bet­ter than they actu­al­ly are. (Trust me, I know.) And Nikon has now set up a free Dig­i­tal Learn­ing Cen­ter that offers tuto­ri­als and tips for tak­ing a range of dif­fer­ent pic­tures — por­traits, trav­el pho­tos, nature pho­tog­ra­phy, etc. Ques­tions that get tack­led here include, but are not lim­it­ed, to: “How can I take bet­ter por­traits?” “How can I take pho­tos at dusk with­out hav­ing them look com­plete­ly dark?” “How do I get true-to-life skin tones?” “How can I get the mov­ing fig­ures in my pho­tos to look like they’re in motion and not frozen?” “My por­traits have red eyes. How can I pre­vent this?” Give a tour of the Learn­ing Cen­ter here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

• If you’d like to learn about dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy using pod­casts, check out Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips from the Top Floor (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). And, for that mat­ter, if you need to learn how to use a pod­cast, spend some time with our Pod­cast Primer here.

• Also Slate recent­ly put togeth­er a nice gallery of images fea­tur­ing the work of Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son, a mas­ter pho­tog­ra­ph­er who is con­sid­ered the father of mod­ern pho­to­jour­nal­ism.

The name of the pro­gram is Morn­ing Sto­ries (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). The host is Tony Kahn. And the show is all about pre­sent­ing great sto­ries from every­day peo­ple — sto­ries that get at some­thing deeply human, things that oth­er peo­ple can iden­ti­fy with, no mat­ter what their age, back­ground, or nation­al­i­ty. (Hence the rea­son why the show’s pod­cast has unex­pect­ed­ly devel­oped a con­sid­er­able fol­low­ing in Chi­na.)

I fig­ured that there’s no bet­ter way to intro­duce the show than to ask Tony Kahn to high­light some of his own favorite episodes. So that’s what I did, and here’s what he had to say. Once you get beyond lis­ten­ing to his favorites, you can peruse the com­plete archive here. Enjoy.

1. Over Here and Over There (mp3): Morn­ing Sto­ries Pro­duc­er and Direc­tor catch­es up with his friend Fati­ma, by phone from Brazil, and recalls her sto­ry of the hopes that once made her flee her home­land for Amer­i­ca, and the fears that sent her back.

2. How Can You Say No? (mp3): Jack­ie Lantry fights time and City Hall in Chi­na to give her son a fam­i­ly, and Tony Kahn and Gary Mott dis­cuss their per­son­al expe­ri­ences with adop­tion.

3. Fam­i­ly Tree (mp3): Karen Dil­lon begins the pod­cast with a report on work­ing with griev­ing chil­dren. Kat­ri­na Mur­ray ends it with a moth­er’s tale.

4. A Les­son in Chi­nese (mp3): A caller from Xian, Chi­na teach­es Tony the true mean­ing of “hap­pi­ness,” “love,” and “vol­un­teer job.”  Also, Tony and Gary dis­cuss the true mean­ing of “wan­ton.”

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