Photography Tips (Page 36)

Photographers often think of low light situations as restricting their ability to take good photographs but nothing could be further from the truth. You see there are really two ways to view low light situations; you can seek to use them as a creative opportunity or see them as a restriction you need to overcome. Irrespective of how you personally view the situation there are lots of things you can do to ensure you can take great images in low light.

As humans, it is only natural that we sometimes find ourselves in a rut. These ruts aren't limited to our day-to-day lives and can often crop up in our hobbies. Even the most passionate photographers find themselves in a loop now and again, and when these situations arise it is important we rise to the challenge and force ourselves out of our comfort zones with interesting projects. Here are five great ways to breathe new life into your photography

When photographing sports, many things happen so quickly that by the time you've let the camera focus and pressed the shutter button, the action shot you wanted to capture is already over. It is important to try and anticipate the action so you can have your shot set up and ready.

Backing up your photos and other important files is a task that should not be overlooked. Hard drives will fail, it's just a question of when. To safeguard your precious photos of family, vacations, and everything else, it's essential to make sure you keep a backup copy of them.

There are a variety of different methods you can use to make a backup. In this article we look at a few of the popular methods and their relative advantages and disadvantages.

Here are some tips to help you get some spooky photos for Halloween.

360 degree product photography is a so delicate and involved topic because products come in so many shapes and sizes. Some may be very reflective, some may have dimensions that will prevent you from simply dropping them on a turntable, and some may have features that can be only highlighted when shot from a specific angle while hanging from the top and with a certain lighting setup.

The more constraints you have in your 360 photography setup the less options you get at your disposal for creating smooth 360 product views. It's also very important to be able to quickly assess how your product appear from different angles with a given setup before you start on the actual production of 360 product images.

One of the most important elements of a photograph is often the one that is the most frequently overlooked. The background of an image can do many things - it can help establish context for the image, add emotion or feeling and strengthen the narrative of the picture. When taking pictures, it's important to know how your background will impact your picture and how you can use it to your advantage.

Niger Portrait by etrenard on flickr (licensed CC-BY-SA)

It can be very annoying when you frame a nice photo of your subject and then when you press the shutter the camera's flash fires on full blast, making your subject blown-out white. Unfortunately there's no way you can get back that shot, but there are some things you can do to bring down the flash power for another shot, even if there are no flash settings on your camera.

Reflections are all around but you need to tune your vision to spot them easily. A well captured reflection can make a stunning picture that will make your audience sit up and take notice of your work. To take great reflections you need good technique but it also helps if you know where to look, so here are some ideas as well as a few tips.

Glacial lake in Iceland: the icebergs help deaden the surface of the water creating reflections

It may be hard to believe, but you can take very nice landscape photography even with the most basic equipment. You don't need the latest and greatest ultra-wide lenses (although that does help create a unique perspective) or the fastest lens with a f1.2 aperture. Landscape photography generally benefits from a deep depth of field, and ironically the type of camera with inherently deep depth of field are compact point and shoot digital cameras! DSLRs have shallower depth of field, hence they lends themselves to creating shots with nice bokeh (out-of-focus elements).

These 5 tips will not feature the discussed-to-death rule of thirds. Anyway, for those looking for something on the rule of thirds, just remember this rule: Don't place your subject right in the middle of the frame unless you are aiming for symmetry (see the next tip below).