Mobile Photography

What To Photograph During The Christmas Season:

Christmas Lights & Ornaments:

Christmas lights and ornaments are the holiday decorations you'll find in nearly every Christmastime photograh; they're a staple, but they're also a cliche staple. You'll want to find ways to utilize them in inventive ways - extreme close ups or just having them dominate the frame where the "subjects", the people, populate the background to give dimensions and suggest depth.

Capture the Preparation Stages:

Families come together at holidays, but not just for the amin event, they come to help decorate... and these are exciting, fun-filled moments, so they're ripe with photoraphic opportunity! Trimming the tree is a special moment in creating the atmosphere of Christmas, and most families have a cherished collection of ornaments, lights and stockings - all of which need to be hung on the tree.

Win the chance to brush up your photography skills and experiment with new techniques as part of the Welshot Imaging Academy Lighting and Photographic Experience in London on 14-15 December. It will cover sunrises and sunsets and offer you the chance to hone your fashion photography, plus guidance from experts including Will Cheung and Eifion Williams.

Start Basic: Use your iPhone native camera to shoot -- that way you can adjust your images using Instagram or other apps and still save your original. If you're using another device, just make sure you're getting a quality image.

Get Fuzzy: If your subject is in front of a distracting or not-ideal backdrop, you can isolate it by creating "shallow depth of field" using the Tilt Shift tool. You can make a circular selection -- a face, for example -- or a linear one, great for creating fake miniatures.

Last words: Pre-set filters, tilt shift, light leaks, etc ... don't necessarily make good photos. Tey to use the time you spend editing photos to learn how you might take even better ones next time. And most importantly, get out and have fun!

A look at 5 ways in which you can improve your mobile photography by looking for different photo opportunites. 

Look for Shape in Things:

 Shape is another useful way to bring added focus and interest into a photograph. You can use the curves of paths of steps in the same way as with straight lines and perspectives to draw the viewer into your compostion.

Consider going abstract and closely cropping into the smooth curves of contemporary buildings. Stephen Davis makes good use of this technique in his photograph ‘”We watched the sky move sideways…” Steven Wilson’. The dark background of the sky contrasts nicely with the smooth curves of the building which also features the reflections of light.

A Guest Post by Alice Laidlaw No matter what their skill level, most photographers do everything they can to avoid cheesy, awkward and generic couples portraits.

If you’re new to couples portraiture, or your subjects are a bit self-conscious, it’s good to start the shoot with a longer lens. This allows you to stand back and allow the couple to interact normally with each other, which means that you can get some great natural shots that you may struggle to capture if you were right in their face. Of course you will be getting some close shots of your couple later in the shoot, but this is a good way to warm up and break the ice with your subjects.

If the idea sounds familiar, that’s because Alexa Meade does something similar using entire scenes. Khokhlov’s series is different though, because it intentionally straddles the line between painting and reality, playing tricks on your mind, whereas Meade intends to fully convince you you’re looking at a painting and not a photograph.

The portraits in 2D or Not 2D sometimes look quite painted, and optical illusions frequently play a role in making you wonder if you’re looking at a two-dimensional object. But the majority of the photos give themselves away on purpose by leaving the models’ eyes open — two pools of reality in an otherwise two dimensional-looking object.

Blogging tips on editing photography features and why less is more.

You need to get your readers down there because that’s where the vendor credits are usually located, that’s where they can leave comments, and that’s where they’ll click to other articles on your blog.

If you’ve got three different shots of the bride, then five of her and the groom, then four different shots of the cake, and then six of the reception table, followed by multiple photographs of while different, what essentially amounts to the same place setting your readers are less likely to make it to the bottom of your post.

If you choose the best photo to represent each part of the story, your post will be a series of perfect photographs showing all those amazing wedding details and photography instead of a fantastic photo every fifth, seventh, or tenth image.

The US Patent and Trademark Office confirmed this week that Apple was granted a patent for a “digital camera including refocusable imaging mode adaptor,” that would allow a user to snap a photo and then refocus the image after the fact. The patent also covers inclusion of such a system in portable devices, such as an iPhone or an iPad.

The patent describes a camera that can be configured to operate in both a lower-resolution mode that allows refocusing after image capture, as well as a high-resolution mode that doesn’t permit refocusing. The body of the camera contains an image mode adaptor to select the operating mode.

What makes this patent noteworthy is that it is for something that Steve Jobs himself was very specifically interested in, enough so to deem it instrumental to the reinvention of photography. That kind of personal attention from Jobs is sure to carry some weight, ensuring that Apple’s team gives it more than a cursory once-over.

Our pets are part of our family, so naturally we want to take great photographs of them. Pet photography can be a bit tricky at times, but here are a few tips that will ensure you get great shots of your four legged friends:

Have An Assistant:

If possible, enlist a family member or friend to help you. While you may have your camera pointed at your pet, he or she may want to look anywhere but your camera, especially if you are outdoors. Having someone stand behind you to get your pet's attention while you operate the camera will get your pet to look in your general direction, giving the illusion that they're looking at the camera.

Props:

Just as you might use when photographing people, try incorporating props into your pet photography. Why? Because it's just plain cute!

Get Low:

Lowering your camera angle, and making yourself eye level with your pet, can make for great close-ups, as well as help you get creative with your focus, like blurring the foreground or background or your image.

Photo editing is quite literally what VSCO does for a living. Specializing in photo editing add-ons for Lightroom and Aperture, VSCO has somehow managed to inject that same formula into a mobile app for your smartphone. When it hits Google Play tomorrow, VSCO Cam will come with 10 Presets (filters), and Tools (photo editing features), with 38 additional custom Presets available via in-app purchases.

Feel the Subject:

If you need to create nature photography, you must have to personalize the experience before shooting. Choose your subjects carefully, photographs will profit from the subjects. Interesting subjects are what makes an interesting photograph, it reflects in your image. Look for the one which takes you by surprise. Your photograph will be surprising for others.

Seeing in Black and White:

Look beyond the colors, stop colors from blocking your vision. This process can be tough at the beginning, believe me even the masters found in tough in the beginning. Start evaluating the scene based on the subject and composition, avoid color to play a bigger role, think neutral. Master the art of Black and white Photography

A few commenters have on occasion joked that we need to add a "tenuous links to photography" category for those stories where, strictly speaking, there's not much photography involved. 

The video was shot by photographer Benjamin Scot (there’s your tenuous link…) and it captures his son Ward’s struggle to survive his first year of life after being born a full 14 weeks premature.

"It’s hard to remember now, but back in the 1990s taking a decent picture required skill. Only dedicated hobbyists or professionals reliably produced images worth looking at. Now there are several phones with cameras that take pictures almost perfectly most of the time, even when used by amateurs.

But after looking at the Google Glass photos of Trey Ratcliff, a New Zealand-based travel photographer, you might be convinced that Glass could revolutionize photography just as thoroughly as smartphones have."

"I’ve spent the past five years in the photo department of The New Yorker, carefully reading magazine pieces and then researching or commissioning photographs to accompany them. The stories, from music reviews to war reporting to fiction, are the impetus for our photographs. I was curious to ask the writers, whose work informs me, inspires me, and alters my perspective about subjects that were previously far from my thoughts, if there were photographs that had done the same for them.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, here is a selection of eight writers on photographs that they are thankful for."

This week your photography challenge is to capture the weather, good or bad! Too many photographers pack up their gear when the weather turn inclement but some of the most spectacular images can be had in less than ideal conditions.

Keep in mind weather if ALL kinds of conditions including a lvely sunny day, or a bitter cold winter frost. So wherever you live in the world you do have some kind of weather. Give yourself a challenge to show it and use it to your best advantage and share your images.