Backlighting – when the sun is directly in front of you and lighting the back of your subject – can produce some very pleasing and striking results. You can use backlight at any time of the day, but when the sun is high in the sky and shadows are very strong, you may struggle to […]
Tag Archives | The Exposure Triangle
How to get soft focus backgrounds
…. or put simply blurry / soft focus behind your subject. This is a very desirable effect for the following reasons: Makes your subject stand out from the background. Introduces depth into your image. It’s aesthetically pleasing, especially if you can achieve some “bokeh” too. Bokeh is the term used to describe the blurry […]
Shooting fast moving action
Camera settings to think about as follows: SHUTTER SPEED – the faster the movement the faster the shutter speed needs to be. Here’s a cheat sheet to use as a guide – these are the minimum you need. Apparently you need a shutter speed of 1000th of a second to photograph Usain Bolt sprinting the […]
5 tips for a successful and fun family photo shoot
5 family photo shoot tips We all want lovely photographs of our family don’t we? And as our children grow older, we can foresee the day when they will have left home to pursue lives of their own. This was the case with this lovely family, where the oldest daughter will be heading off to […]
Makers Market Knutsford
Markets are great places to practise your photography. There are so many interesting and colourful subjects and people generally don’t mind photographers snapping away. At the Easter Sunday Makers Market Knutsford people were in such high spirits in the long awaited Spring sunshine, that there were broad smiles all round! A few market photography tips […]
Do I need a tripod?
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 […]
10 things to photograph this Autumn – [4] – fungi
The wet and mild conditions of Autumn provide the perfect growing conditions for fungi and this exceptionally mild Autumn means that there’s lots around at the moment, without having to look too hard. They have their own kingdom completely separate to plants and animals and there are tens of thousands of different kinds. They are fascinating to […]
10 things to photograph this Autumn – [1] TREES
I LOVE Autumn (or Fall, for our friends across the pond!). Summer is fab while it lasts but around the start of September I yearn to wear fleecy jumpers and knitted hats, to walk through woodland, seeing my breath as white clouds, kicking through fiery coloured leaves with my wellies, spotting weird fungi on tree stumps and […]
Mastering Manual Exposure on a Practical Photography Lesson in Knutsford
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 […]
How to photograph babies indoors – capturing the every day stuff
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 […]
How the Exposure Triangle will help you take better portraits
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 […]