Photography Tips (Page 37)

To most people, travel photography involves taking memorable photos of the things you experience while on your vacation. Travel photography includes road trips, vacations, scavenger hunts to historic locations, and generally anything else that requires leaving your house and packing a bag. Before you load up the car, take a look at these quick hints to help ensure your photographs turn out as great as your adventures.

When you try to take portraits of your pets, do you end up with nothing but blurry blobs, down in the corner? Was your dog or cat even looking at the camera? Were they looking attentive and happy? Did your cat make sure everyone was bleeding before the end of your last photo session? Here's how to get better pet photos...

My little dog by Szlivka Róbert on flickr (licensed CC-BY-ND)

The moon, a body out in space that none of us are likely to visit in person, can make for some great photos. However, despite its large size, the long distance from earth means that it can be hard to get a meaningful photo of it.

Moon Rise behind the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm by Chuck Coker on flickr (licensed CC-BY-ND)

There is nothing quite as exhilarating and rewarding as getting back to nature and photographing mountain scenery. Mountains are dramatic, inspiring and provide great photography potential. Whilst you will need to be careful, mountains can be much more accessible and rewarding for the landscape photographer than you realise. Here are some top tips to get you started and hopefully capture those stunning scenes.

Taking great landscape pictures can seem so easy compared to shooting action photography or taking pictures of children or animals. But any photographer that's carried heavy equipment up a mountain to take a spectacular shot with no success, will tell you it's a lot more than just showing up. Here are a few things you can to do to get beautiful landscape pictures.

Alfred Stieglitz, born January 1864, died July 1946, was one of America's foremost photographers and played a crucial part during his lifetime in ensuring photography became an accepted art form in its own right. He is also known for introducing many European artists of the avant-garde to America and for being married to the painter Georgia O'Keeffe.

Shooting photos on a particular theme can help provide inspiration and get you out of a photographic rut, giving you inspiration for your photography. Sticking to a single theme will also force you to shoot more creatively, looking for photographs that meet your theme where you might not have seen a potential photograph before.

It has been that said the most difficult thing for man to do is to judge his or her creative work, objectively. Be honest, can you tell when your work seems to be missing something? More importantly do you know what it is that’s missing? You can only improve your photos if you set a high photo standard to compare yourself against.

Fill flash is where you use your camera's flash (or an external flash unit) as a secondary light to fill in shadows.

One of the main uses for fill flash is when photographing people under bright light (for example on a sunny day). The harsh light creates strong shadows on the face. But by using fill flash, you can add some light to the shadows and reduce their appearance.

A question that most people would ask when packing for a vacation is "how much gear should I bring?". If you bring too little, you may fear you'll miss out on a photo opportunity. On the other hand, you would not want to lug 6kg of photo gear during a vacation (that's the amount of gear I carry for 10 hours at a wedding). Over the years, I have tried out many different variations in my quest for lighter loads during a vacation. This is especially crucial when you not only have to carry your camera gear, but a baby and shopping bags as well. All the parents out there will know what I mean.