I think the photos from this recent food styling workshop speak for themselves and I don’t need to say too much about it! Christmas garland making with Fiona, food styling, food photography, yummy grub by Nikki and lots of laughs. With carols playing in the background and mulled wine heating on the stove, it felt very festive […]
Left to its own devices (in AUTO modes) your camera may fail to expose a scene as you would like it to. I’ll try to explain why, without getting too technical. Your camera’s meter (how it measures light) sees everything in greyscale, a range of grey tones from very dark grey through to almost white. It […]
Discover how I learned how to photograph long exposure sunsets and, even better, it doesn’t matter that I can’t quite afford the filters yet! A couple of weeks ago I went to the Lakes and had a go at long exposure landscape photography under the expert tuition of Melvin Nicholson. We had a fascinating half […]
Polarising filters are a useful addition to your kit if you enjoy photographing landscapes. They reduce atmospheric haze and reduce reflected light, which can be helpful to your images in a number of ways: They give you more detail in the sky, revealing clouds and darkening the blue areas. In the images below you […]
I love wildlife photography and increasingly am going out in search of squirrels, kingfishers and lots of birds I don’t know the name of! It’s not one of my areas of professional expertise but I’ve got some tips that will come in useful for beginners. Make life easy for yourself and go somewhere with easy access […]
Silhouette images have a certain magic about them don’t they? A simple story told with an outline against a beautiful backdrop, usually a sunset or other beautiful sky. They can be quite difficult to create though, often occurring by chance rather than intention. Here are some tips: Shoot towards the sun – but remember that doesn’t […]
You should ensure that you get your image sharp in camera (see this blog post) – you cannot rescue a blurred image by sharpening it. However, you can make a sharp image look sharper and bring out details by using a sharpening tool. Bear in mind that if you are shooting JPEG files sharpening is applied in […]
This is a photo I took of a friend’s lovely white Alsatian (Luna?). You might not be able to tell at this low resolution but it is nice and sharp. Although the auto focus on modern digital cameras is awesome, you do need some knowledge on how to take advantage of it to avoid operator error. […]
Tips for photographing moving water, such as fast moving rivers and waterfalls As you will need to use a slow shutter speed you should avoid bright sunshine, so overcast days are better, or at sunrise and sunset. You will need to shoot in manual (M) or Shutter Priority Mode. Set the ISO to 100 and use a […]
WHAT IS “BOKEH”? It’s a Japanese word with no direct translation, but it describes the aesthetically appealing blur in the background of images like the one above. It describes the smooth, painterly and attractive blurring of colours and also the blurred circles where there are highlights. Bokeh is highly desirable in images as it […]
Sidelight is exactly as it sounds – where the main light source is coming from the side. You can create or find sidelight in a number of different ways: Photograph indoors next to a window, with the natural daylight hitting your subject from the right or the left. See the examples below with hard and […]
One of the attendees on a Let’s Shoot The Kids course sent me this lovely candid shot of her son and I offered to do an edit on it for her. I’ve followed my usual workflow apart from the fact that I would start with a RAW file and do tweaks to the colour balance […]
“You’re buying another camera?!” I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard this recently, but this time I had a good excuse: old age. Well OK I’m not ready to retire just yet, but certain bits of me are starting to protest every time I heave my camera bag onto my shoulder or lift my […]
Do I need a tripod? I get asked this a lot and I think it’s because people see professionals with tripods and assume that they, therefore, need one too if they want to take better photographs. I fell into this trap when I started out and between my other half and me we have either three or […]
I absolutely love hydrangeas. My husband doesn’t get it, he thinks they’re old-fashioned and prefers roses anytime. I find the mop head flowers and profusion of petals stunning and a complete joy to photograph. They come in a variety of colours in shades of white, pale green, pink, red, purple and blue and in some varieties the […]
According to my site analytics blog posts with pictures of cute babies and children on get far more views than those with (toy) meerkats, so I won’t be using my little Sylvanian family again! They enjoyed their little trip to the Riviera (side of our pond) but are glad to be reunited with their dad on the […]
In Part 1 we looked at how Aperture plays a big role in how to get blurred backgrounds in photos. Low f/numbers (large apertures) give us a narrow depth of field and high f/numbers result in a wider depth of field. This sounds pretty straight forward, but like lots of techie things it’s not quite […]
How to get blurred backgrounds in photos is high on the list for people who want to take better images and it’s one of the things that distinguishes good pictures from snapshots. It can be easy to achieve but if you really want to understand what you are doing and how to control the amount of blur, you should read […]
You can’t beat putting into practise what you’ve been learning and we humans definitely learn best by doing. Every course I run is very hands on with the camera, finding settings, using them and comparing results with other settings, but I find people learn fastest when they are out and about. This is why I […]
Photographs of your baby beautifully dressed in your favourite outfit, with a shiny clean face and huge smile are fantastic and they are the pictures that end up in frames around the house. However, some of our favourite moments may not be “frame-worthy” but are still very special and the ones that make us laugh every time […]
Okay – the Exposure Triangle is one of the best photography tips for beginners. But first let’s look at the basics of a technically good portrait (putting composition aside for the moment): It’s in focus. Movement is frozen and not blurred (unless it’s intentionally blurred). It’s correctly exposed (it’s not too bright and it’s not […]
Find out how to shoot in Manual Mode. If you’ve started to get to grips with using the P (Program) or A (Aperture) modes on your camera (bridge or SLR), then you’re ready to start using M for Manual Exposure too, even though it probably feels like switching off Autopilot and landing the plane […]
