Photography Tips: 5 Tips for Amateur Photographers

So you've just gotten your first Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera. You've read the manual and surfed the web, and now you're ready to start taking some Pulitzer- grade photography. Right? Sure! But before you hit the pavement with your camera in-hand and film rolls in your bag, take a moment to read over these five tips that can help push your work from great to amazing. 1. Dump the Flash While it’s true that professional photographers often do use a flash or complicated light rigs, you shouldn't need a flash in most lighting conditions. Subjects shot without a flash often look more natural, and you’ll get much greater detail and depth by using natural light. Additionally, ditching the flash for the first week or so will make you intimately familiar with how your camera works with light – an invaluable skill for the beginning photographer. 2. Turn Off Auto Focus There's no arguing that a camera that auto-focuses is infinitely handy and easy to use. However, focusing on the fly is an important tool in any photographer's toolbox. Since cameras don't understand your intent, it's up to you to make sure you're focused on the right thing at the right moment. It is incredible how unique and interesting an image can be when you allow the focus to move out of the direct center of the frame, so set this one to manual for a while. 3. Take a Photo Class You can buy all the books in the world and browse the internet for days, but the absolute best way to learn about photography is in a hands on environment. Find a class at a local college or adult school and see how understanding the basics will improve your photos for the better. As a bonus, your photo teacher will likely give you assignments based on individual elements of photography that you probably never considered. 4. Say Farewell to Color Before you dive into color, buy a few rolls of T-Max 400 (great B&W film) and see if taking it back to the basics changes your interpretation of the world around you. You'll know it’s time to upgrade to color when you can shoot and print a black and white image that has pure black, pure white, and every shade in between. Taking photos in black and white will force your mind to think less about the "image" and more about the importance of how light interacts with the objects in the frame. 5. Shoot, Shoot, Shoot This may seem obvious, but if you're interested in becoming a "great" photographer, you'll need to shoot lots and lots of photos. The more pictures you take, the better you will get. Photography is often as much about luck and timing as it is technology and skill. Even "great" photographers only average 3-4 good photos at a time, so don't worry about taking a lot of images. It's far worse to miss a photo opportunity than to take too many pictures! There is no secret trick to being an amazing photographer. The more you challenge yourself, the better you will become. If you start with a firm understanding of how your camera works and what it takes to make a good photographBusiness Management Articles, the rest will come in time. Your camera will never change- only your ability to manipulate it. So keep your camera close and extra film (or a memory card) on-hand. Never be afraid to experiment with new ideas! And remember: The most important photograph in the world is the one you are about to take.

How to Shoot Waterfalls

One of the important aspects about shooting waterfalls is knowing the waterfall itself. What I mean by that is knowing the lighting conditions at each time of year and day; knowing what time you are going to get your best shot. Here are some useful tips for getting beautiful waterfall shots. Lighting for waterfalls is best when it has just finished raining- such as s storm that’s just passed. You can take advantage of this to get great shots to get a soft and dim light that brings out the dramatic nature of the waterfall. In order to get a slower shutter speed on auto, you will need to capture the waterfall particularly at this time after the rain. There are a couple of successful tips to get two types of waterfall shots. The first is the soft smooth flowing effect of water; such as water looking like a blanket of silk over the rocks. If you want to get this look, set your shutter to a speed of 1 to 2 seconds. To get the right exposure at this speed set your aperture at an f stop of f/16 or smaller say, f/22. You will notice that with these settings you’ll get a better, larger depth of field. The entire frame will be in focus this way, which is always a bonus. If you find you have too much light, just change your shutter to 2 seconds or just slight of that. You can also use a polariser or neutral density filter. Filters for waterfall shots? I have found that a ND filter gives some fantastic effects. If you invest in one of these for your waterfall photos you will find that the amount if light on the lens is reduced. Once the light is reduced (provided you are shooting during the day on auto) the shutter speed will change accordingly. You will find no reduction of colour at all. It’s also wise to use a tripod when taking waterfalls. When you are using a shutter speed of 1 to 2 seconds (depending on light), you must remember that this is a pretty slow shutter speed and you don’t want to take any chances. So many times subscribers have sent me photos if their waterfall shots with some significant blur, leaving them disappointed in the process. Also, with such a slow shutter, try to get yourself a shutter release cable. A remote shutter release is even better because the chance of knocking your camera goes from 10% to absolute zero. It’s a must when taking such slow shutter speeds like this because even the most beautiful photo is ruined by the slightest movement. If you don’t have a remote release cable, you can use the cameras self timer. This is something I’ve used a lot when I first started photography. This will get a similar, if not the same effect, as using a remote shutter release cable. When you set the timer, press the shutter, you still have a few seconds before the shutter will open and take the picture, During this few second window, you can take your finger off the shutter and then the picture will be taken after this set amount of time. (Usually three to ten seconds depending on what you set it at. Some cameras may have a pre-set timer for this window.) Just remember that the time of day you are shooting your waterfall is very important- watch for stormy clouds to enhance colour and capture that beautiful water with a slow shutter speed of under 2 seconds. One more reason why its good to have low light is because water offers come high contrast on a photo when taken in the mid afternoon sun. The low light will soften any potential harsh contrasts. If you do find that you have too much light during the day with the slow shutter, you can always adjust the levels on the Photoshop Histogram. As always happy shooting! Amy Renfrey

Photographing Fireworks

Firework photography presents some technical challenges,learning how to photograph fireworks successfully needs quite a different approach to most other subjects but follow these few steps carefully and you will be successful. What are we photographing? Basically we are photographing streaks of light that develop over a period of time against a black background. The great thing about a black background is that it makes no impression on the film, or sensor in the case of a digital camera. So we can leave the shutter open as long as we like, the black will still be black.

So, in short, the way to photograph fireworks is to set the camera to manual exposure, set the aperture to a suitable f-stop and the shutter to 'b' or bulb. Open the shutter just before the firework bursts and close it after it's finished. Easy!

Managing light across a wide angle

A common hurdle with wide angle lenses is strong variation in the intensity of light across an image. Using an ordinary exposure, uneven light can make some parts of the image over-exposed, while also leaving other parts underexposed -- even though our eye would have adjusted to this changing brightness as we looked in different directions. One therefore needs to take extra care when determining the desired exposure. For example, in landscape photography the foreground foliage is often much less intensely lit than the sky or a distant mountain. This often results in an over-exposed sky and/or an under-exposed foreground. Most photographers therefore use what is called a graduated neutral density (GND) filter to overcome this uneven lighting. In the example above, the GND filter partially obstructed some of the light from the bright sky, while also gradually letting in more and more light for positions progressively lower in the photo. At the bottom of the photo, the GND filter let in the full amount of light. Move your mouse over the image above to see what it would have looked like without a GND filter. Also take a look at the tutorials on camera lens filter and high dynamic range(HDR) for additional examples. A wide angle lens is also much more susceptible to lens flare, in part because the sun is much more likely to enter into the composition. It can also be difficult to effectively shield the sides of the lens from stray light using a lens hood, since this hood cannot also block any of the image-forming light across the wide angle of coverage.

for I never, or almost never,

Go with your heart. Your mind is playing tricks on you. It can't be trusted.!

Emphasizing Depth

As objects become progressively further from your camera, not only do they become smaller, but they also lose contrast -- and sometimes quite dramatically. This can be both a blessing and a curse, because while it exaggerates the difference between near and far objects, it also makes distant objects difficult to photograph in isolation.
In the example to the left, there are at least four layers of trees which cascade back towards the distant bridge. Notice how both color saturation and contrast drop dramatically with each successively distant tree layer. The furthest layer, near the bridge, is reduced to nothing more than a silhouette, whereas the closest layer has near full color and contrast.

Although there are no steadfast rules with photographing in the fog, it's often helpful to have at least some of your subject close to the camera. This way a portion of your image can contain high contrast and color, while also hinting at what everything else would look like otherwise. This also serves to add some tonal diversity to the scene.

Camera Exposure - Getting it right

In photography, 'exposure' means the amount of light that falls onto the film, or CCD if you are using a digital camera. In modern cameras the exposure is usually set to automatic by default and, most of the time, it can be left there and will produce beautiful pictures. There are times though, when the lighting conditions are difficult or we want to produce a particular effect and it would be nice to understand what is going on 'under the hood'.

The problem with all types of film and recording media is that they cannot record the entire range of contrast (black to white) that the eye can see. Especially when you take into account that the eye is constantly adjusting to cope with high contrast. On a sunny day if you look into the shadows of a scene then into the bright areas, the iris in your eye will quickly adjust so you can see detail in both.

Faced with the task of recording as much information as possible, the camera will try to average out all the light levels and expose the film accordingly. As burnt out highlights are normally considered uglier than black shadows, the camera, left to it's own devices will normally err on the dark side. Which is no good if you are shooting someone's face against a bright sky. It's the person's face you want to see, and you don't really care if the sky is white.

Auto Exposure
The camera manufacturers have come up with all sorts of ingenious metering systems to try to help, there are now multi mode metering systems, which give you a choice of 'center weighting', 'spot metering' or 'multi spot metering' on many of the better cameras, but none can guarantee to give you what you want every time.

The temptation to think that your camera 'knows what it's doing' is great, even for more experienced photographers, which is my main complaint against automatic cameras. It's easy to get lulled into a false sense of security, switch your brain to more interesting things and end up with a pile of rubbish.

Camera Lens Filter

Camera lens filters still have many uses in digital photography, and should be an important part of any photographer's camera bag. These can include polarizing filters to reduce glare and improve saturation, or simple UV/haze filters to provide extra protection for the front of your lens. This article aims to familiarize one with these and other filter options that cannot be reproduced using digital editing techniques. Common problems/disadvantages and filter sizes are discussed towards the end.

The most commonly used filters for digital photography include polarizing (linear/circular), UV/haze, neutral density, graduated neutral density and warming/cooling or color filters. Example uses for each are listed below:

Filter Type	Primary Use	Common Subject Matter
Linear & Circular Polarizers	Reduce Glare Improve Saturation	Sky / Water / Foliage in Landscape Photography
Neutral Density (ND)	Extend Exposure Time	Waterfalls, Rivers under bright light
Graduated Neutral Density (GND)	Control Strong Light Gradients Reduce Vignetting	Dramatically Lit Landscapes
UV / Haze	Improve Clarity with Film Provide Lens Protection	Any
Warming / Cooling	Change White Balance	Landscapes, Underwater, Special Lighting

Taking Photos in fog, mist or haze

Photography in fog, mist or haze can give a wonderfully moody and atmospheric feel to your subjects. However, it's also very easy to end up with photos that look washed-out and flat. This techniques article uses examples to illustrate how to make the most out of photos in these unique shooting environments.

OVERVIEW

Fog usually forms in the mid to late evening, and often lasts until early the next morning. It is also much more likely to form near the surface of water that is slightly warmer than the surrounding air. In this techniques article, we'll primarily talk about fog, but the photographic concepts apply similarly to mist or haze.

Photographing in the fog is very different from the more familiar photography in clear weather. Scenes are no longer necessarily clear and defined, and they are often deprived of contrast and color saturation:

In essence, fog is a natural soft box: it scatters light sources so that their light originates from a much broader area. Compared to a street lamp or light from the sun on a clear day, this dramatically reduces contrast:

Scenes in the fog are also much more dimly lit -- often requiring longer exposure times than would otherwise be necessary. In addition, fog makes the air much more reflective to light, which often tricks your camera light meter into thinking that it needs to decrease the exposure. Just as with photographs in the snow, fog therefore usually requires dialing in some positive exposure compensation.

In exchange for all of these potential disadvantages, fog can be a powerful and valuable tool for emphasizing the depth, lighting, and shape of your subjects. As you will see later, these traits can even make scenes feel mysterious and uniquely moody -- an often elusive, but well sought after prize for photographers. The trick is knowing how to make use of these unique assets -- without also having them detract from your subjected.

Importance of Moonlight

Just as how daylight photographers pay attention to the position and angle of the sun, night photographers should also pay careful attention to the moon. A low-laying moon can create long shadows on cross-lit objects, whereas an overhead moon creates harsher, downward shadows.

An additional variable is that the moon can have varying degrees of intensity, depending where it is during its 29.5 day cycle of waxing and waning. A full moon can be a savior for reducing the required exposure time and allowing for extended depth of field, while a moonless night greatly increases star visibility. Furthermore, the intensity of the moon can be chosen at a time which provides the ideal balance between artificial light (streetlamps) and moonlight. Gauging exposure times during a full moon can be tricky; use f/2.0 and 30 seconds at ISO100 as a starting point (if subject is diffuse and directly lit), then adjust towards scenarios 1-4 accordingly if OK. Another factor rarely noticed during daylight is movement of the light source (sun or moon). The long exposure time required for moonlight photography often means that the moon may have moved significantly over the course of the exposure. Moon movement softens harsh shadows, however too much movement can create seemingly flat light.

Photograph Under a Full Moon

Note how the 1 minute exposure above clearly shows high contrast and shadows from even the smaller branches, whereas the 4 minute exposure is at lower contrast and only shows the larger branches. The choice of exposure time can also vary by much more than a factor of four-- greatly exaggerating the above effect.

Crop of Tree Shadows on Path:

Choose Exposure Time:

Photograph Under a Full Moon 1 minute 4 minutes  

Shots which include the moon in the frame are also susceptible to moon movement. A rule of thumb is that the moon appears to move its own diameter roughly every 2 minutes. As a result, it can quickly appear elongated if this exposure time is approached.