Mobile Photography

If you think you have to shell out a ton of money to create these types of photographs, think again! We used the $330 Olympus TG-2 and we are proud of the results.

Actually, it's some of the most amazing macro functionality I have seen on almost any standard camera. It's like macro mode on steroids! Although this how-to article is not an advertisement for the Olympus TG-2, it pretty much sells itself as the best way to capture snowflakes with great detail, good clarity, maximum portability, and with less expense than any other photographic tool you could use.

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.

Children see the world through a special lens. There is a purity to their imagination that at some point most adults lose. If you have ever put a camera in the hands of a child you will soon discover that what they see in life is very different than the adults persepctive.

How can you harness the creativity of a child through photograhy? I recently embarked on an experiment to this very goal.

Allow 30% Theory and 70% Practice:

Kids will only sit still for so long before their focus diverts. For this reason spend the majority of your time allowing kids to practice. you don't have to send them out on a photoshoot; you could bring a bag of random obects and allow them to play right inside your classroom. Assign them a number of photos, and encourage them to come back to you for feedback. Invaluable practice comes from re-shooting the same subject to get the concept down.

Have Contests to Spur on Creative Excitement:

Everyone likes to compete. Set a contest for "most colorful" or "most interesting". Give an appropriate amount of time for their goal. When the kids come back from shooting, walk them through the creative elements of their photos. Foster team spirit by having the kids vote on which photo most fulfills the contest.

For a person with no experience, photography can be quite intimidating. There is so much information available it is easy to understand why people become overwhelmed. These tips can help you get started in taking quality photos.

Location: Outdoors

If it’s a private client photo shoot, and we’re shooting at my client’s home or at an outdoor location, I will normally bring my lights and a portable power source (just in case), but will shoot with existing light and my favorite light modifier – silver reflector – whenever possible.

Shooting with natural light allows me to open up the aperture and create that wonderful softness in the frame that makes Beauty images so gentle, delicate and feminine.

Location: Indoors

When shooting indoor on location, I always search for a spot where I can place my client or model between a couple of existing light sources. I arrange it in the way that one of the light sources (usually the larger one) will be the key light, and the other one will either add rim light and separate my subject from the background, or simply add interesting detail in the background.

One of the biggest skills that you can learn as a photographer is learning how to figure out the contrast of a scene. For starters, look at the scene through your viewfinder and figure out the contrast between the brightest of brights and the darkest of darks. Your camera will automatically figure out a middle ground in the evaluative scene metering mode but in order to get the most details in the image ask yourself: “Are the brights more dominant in this image or are the highlights?” Also ask yourself which one is more extreme.

To get even more advanced you can adjust your camera’s contrast and saturation settings to make colours more intense and alter tones. I don’t want to lose anyone here so I won’t go into details, but if you want to learn how to get punchier photos using the camera (and not post-production like PhotoShop) then read more about the subject- here’s an easy-to-read article for anyone who uses Canon, but feel free to dig deeper.

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.

This should be one of the most obvious things in an image yet many people have absolutely no idea as to where it should go. Most people take their subject and place it slap bang in the middle thinking that is the right place to go.

Despite what I have said in my intro about centrally placed subjects, there is a place for it in photography, just that it works in limited ways. Subjects ike people portraits can work well with a central subject. Other subjects or objects like buildings that are symmetrical work well as do cars taken from the front and subjects cropped tightly. Be careful though that you use central placement in a limited way in your photo taking.

If you want to place a subject in the middle of an image try to off center it just a little so that it's not right in the middle. This will help make a more pleasant image.

Take a look for yourself at a photo of travel magazine and see how many of the images use this rule. But, not only do these points help create a great image but the vertical or horizontal lines do the same. If you have a tall object or a person standing up then place it or them on one of the two vertical lines. The same goes for a landscape image with a horizon.The horizon should always lie on one of the horizontal lines and not in the middle, creating a striking landscape photo.

Pin It It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas… and in our forums I’ve noticed more and more great Christmas images being shared – some of which feature a technique that is always popular at this time of year, so let's try some Bokeh Christmas lights shots.

The technique takes a bit of experimenting and practice but is relatively simple to do. You need some Christmas lights and a camera lens with a resonably 'fast' aperture (or a large aperture).

The key is to shoot at the larger end of your available aperture - this throws the background (and foreground) of your shot out of focus and any Christmas lights in the foreground or background will become little balls of light.

You can make the little balls of light bigger by increasing the distance between your in focus subject and the out of focus lights in the background.

It's called "Gear Acquisition Syndrome," and photographers all over the world are being diagnosed with it. It's a disease, that effects us all at one point or another, and causes us to desire new and upgraded camera bodies, lenses, lights, and other various pieces of gear. So when you get the bug, what do you do with your old gear? In this tutorial, I'll try to help you get the most out of selling your used gear.

Like selling all things, its best to have some tact, personality and great photos. Certainly not all salesmen are created equally, but after owning seven different DSLR camera bodies, and over 20 different lenses, I've picked up some tips on selling gear along the way.

First things first, you'll want to have nice photos of the gear you're trying to sell. The most important rule when it comes to photos is to keep them as clean as possible. Having dirty gear or distracting images can be the difference in selling something for $800, and selling it for $950.

Buy a light box! A decent one can be purchased for under $40, and I promise that if you're selling even just a couple pieces of gear, it'll pay for itself in no time. What a light box does is provides an even white box for you to shoot an item in. Any light that you use will bounce all over and provide a nice even light on the object. This makes it possible to shoot with just a single light and get catalog quality looking images.