Browsing all posts in Photography.

Pros and Cons: Natural light vs. studio

In my previous post I created a poll to find out which type of setting Beyond Megapixels readers prefer, natural light or using a flash set-up in a studio. If you haven’t taken the poll yet, please do so! As of the time of this entry there is an overwhelming 82% who say that, like [...]

Poll: Natural light vs. Studio light

Tomorrow I’ll be posting a comparison to look at the pros and cons between shooting portraits (or other subjects) in natural light and shooting them in a studio with a full lighting set-up. Both are equally valid methods to approach photography and both have their good points and bad points. Naturally there are some situations [...]

Change your perspective!

If you’ve ever taken some photos only to find them decent but lackluster when you get them open in Photoshop you’re not alone. It’s happened to me a lot where I come home with 100 pictures on my memory card and there might be some nice snapshots but nothing that really screams “show me to [...]

Three tips for making your subjects smile

Taking portraits can be a lot of fun but there’s one little snag that people can often run into. It’s hard to get your subject to smile in a way that looks natural. While a highly exaggerated smile can be hilarious, it might not be quite the natural look that you were going for. Luckily [...]

Celestial Photography

The moon and the stars have always held a great amount of fascination for us humble inhabitants here on Earth. Since the invention of the camera, photographers have striven to capture the brilliance of the night sky. At one point or another we’ve all hauled our tripods out to the back yard in the middle [...]

Quick Photo Boost

Sometimes, I consider the photos that I take to be good just the way they are, straight out of the camera. In this instance, with this shot of the San Francisco Peaks as viewed from the Arboretum at Flagstaff last weekend, I was almost happy with the way it was, unaltered: I decided that the [...]

Taking photos in the rain

It’s a rainy weekend up here in my neck of the woods. It’s the kind of weather that makes me want to brew a nice hot cup of tea and bury myself in a blanket on the couch with a good book because not only is it wet outside, it’s also really damp. However, when [...]

Tips for photographing children

I’ve always liked taking photos but what really got me using a camera on a highly obsessive level was when I had kids. While I love to photograph a wide variety of things, my kids are still my favorite subjects to line up in my viewfinder. Here are some basic tips for photographing children – [...]

Inexpensive Lighting Solutions

Would you like to know how I composed this photo? I had the baby’s mom hold up a black blanket while the baby’s dad stood in front of it and off to the side, and held out the baby. We bounced the illumination of a clamp light off of the white lid of a pizza [...]

Road Tripping with your Camera

(Hover over the pictures for descriptions – these were all taken during some of our many road trips.) To say that I am a big fan of road trips is to utter an understatement of epic proportions. A road trip is my ideal vacation, and even if my husband and I are flying somewhere, I [...]