Browsing all posts in photography tips.

SOOC Challenge

This weekend I challenge you to share your “straight out of camera”, or “SOOC” shots. Sometimes we all need a little motivation to get back down to basics. We sometimes tend to allow our post-processing skills make up for less than perfect shots. We think, “Well, the exposure isn’t quite right, but I’ll fix that [...]

Taking pictures on Mother’s Day

I thought it was a perfect example of serendipity that Tiffany posted yesterday about photographing the minutae because today I wanted to talk about bringing out your camera for Mother’s Day – not because Mother’s Day is minutae, so to speak, but because it’s a day where it’s nice to capture some memories. Not everyone [...]

Mini Light Studio

I took this photo, of the bower vine blooms and roses currently blessing our back yard, with the use of a mini light studio that I put together a couple of weekends ago. The studio consists of: – My kitchen table – Two clamp lights – $9.00 each at Lowe’s – One tri-fold foam presentation [...]

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 [...]

The Rule of Thirds Explained

When I first started getting serious about my photography, I operated under the conclusion that a perfectly centered subject was the goal in composing an appealing picture. It seemed obvious to me that an off-center subject would make the photo look odd, so I needed to concentrate on framing it so that an equal amount [...]

Macro Photography Without a Macro Lens

Love macro photography, but can’t afford a macro lens? These nifty little gadgets may be for you! A reverse mount adapter, or “reversing ring”, like this one from Fotodiox, is an adapter that attaches to the filter thread on the front of a lens and makes it possible to attach the lens in reverse. The [...]

Composition Tip – Avoid Mergers

Okay, this just looks weird. This is an EPIC example of a classic composition no-no – a “merger”. This poor giraffe looks like it has two heads, when really his buddy was standing behind him and looking off at an angle. But because of the way the shot was composed, what you see is just [...]

Creative Cropping

There are occasions when the judicious use of cropping techniques can mean the difference between keeping and discarding a photograph. For the most part, unless you’re including the entire scene as the subject of the photograph, it is best to fill the frame with the subject as much as possible. Doing so will take a [...]