Image by JOHN CORVERA

This weekend your photographic challenge is to take and share a portrait.

Early next week we’ll be launching our first ever e-book here at DPS – ‘The Essential Guide to Portrait Photography’ and in anticipation of the launch and to get a little practice in – I thought it’d be fun to set the challenge to take a portrait over the weekend.

If you’ve not participated in our weekend challenges before – they’re pretty simple. You can see the last three weekends results in our Kitchens, Pets and Environment challenges.

The task is simple – take the best possible portrait that you can and come back to this post and share it..

Any kind of portrait is cool – it might be of a friend, child, partner or even yourself. All we ask is that you keep it family friendly and refrain from posting nudes (we have a password protected section in our forum for that).

PLEASE NOTE: We’re looking for ‘new‘ shots – this is a challenge rather than a look through your archives for a shot! This is about inspiring you to take more photos, not just showing off what you’ve already taken – we have a ‘share your shots‘ section in our forum for showing other shots you’ve taken so please do use that section for that purpose.

Once you’ve taken your photos – choose your best 1-2, upload them to your favourite photo sharing site either share a link to them even better – embed them in the comments using the our new tool to do so.

If you tag your photos on Flickr, Twitter or other sites with Tagging tag them as #DPSPORTRAIT to help others find them. Linking back to this page might also help others know what you’re doing so that they can share in the fun.

I can’t wait to see your portraits!

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

PORTRAITS: Weekend Photography Challenge

Photo by wvs – 10mm

Many digital photographers get a little obsessed by the ability that their zoom lenses give them to get in nice and close to their subjects.

While there’s a lot to be said for the power of zoom lenses (in fact many manufacturers are developing cameras with bigger and bigger lenses like the 20x optical zoom on the Olympus SP-570 that was announced this week) photographers who exclusively shoot at the longer focal lengths that their camera and lens offer could be missing out on some wonderful perspectives and framings.

Today I want to present you with 17 shots – all taken with wider focal lengths (mostly with 10mm lenses). I hope these give a little inspiration to rediscover the wider end of your camera’s zoom.

I’ve included the focal lengths of those images with EXIF data that reveal the focal length used.

If you’ve got some wide angle images to share don’t forget to drop by the forum to post some of them for the rest of us to see, be inspired by and learn from.

Further Reading – read more about creatively using the lens distortion that shooting at wide angle lenses can bring in portraits.

Don’t miss future posts like this – subscribe to Digital Photography School.

Photo by petecarr – 10mm

Photo by 10 Ninjas Steve – 11mm

Photo by wildpianist

Photo by Jrtippins – 10mm

Photo by gari.baldi – 10mm

Photo by gari.baldi – 10mm

Photo by shoothead – 10mm

Photo by Éole – 10mm

Photo by El Fotopakismo – 10mm

Photo by J. Star – 10mm

Photo by gari.baldi – 10-20mm

Photo by gari.baldi – 10mm

Photo by antiguan_life

Photo by .m for matthijs – 12mm

Photo by ttstam – 10mm

Photo by mangabanane – 10mm

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

17 Amazing Wide Angle Images

Image by BrittneyBush

Kitchens – we all have one (or at least should have access to something resembling one) – so lets make our kitchens the focus of this weekends photography challenge.

The task is simple – take the best possible shot that you can in your kitchen.

Let your imagination run wild – you might take a macro shot of something in your kitchen, you might take a shot out of your kitchen window, you may choose to sit a portrait subject in your kitchen, you could set up a still life shot on your kitchen table, you might try your hand at some food photography….. anything goes.

Note: We’re looking for ‘new’ shots – this is a challenge rather than a look through your archives for a shot!

Once you’ve taken your photos – choose your best 1-2, upload them to your favourite photo sharing site and share a link to them here in comments below or embed them in the comments using the our new tool to do so.

If you tag your photos on Flickr, Twitter or other sites with Tagging tag them as #DPSKITCHEN to help others find them. Linking back to this page might also help others know what you’re doing so that they can share in the fun.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

KITCHENS: Weekend Photography Challenge

As a result I’m sure many readers will be excited to hear that he’s just released another one in the last few days called ‘Chasing the Look: 10 Ways To Improve The Aesthetics of Your Photographs’.

It’s available now on in David’s Bookstore (it’s the top one) for his regularly insanely cheap price of $5!

The title of ‘10 Ways To Improve The Aesthetics of Your Photographs’ pretty much sums up what the ebook is about but David describes what it sets out to achieve like this:

“CHASING THE LOOK is about making intentional choices about the use of our gear and the settings on our cameras based on their affect on the aesthetic of the image. It begins to answer the question we all ask at some point while looking at the images of others – “How come my photographs don’t look like that?””

It’s 48 pages long, contains some great imagery to help illustrate what David’s talking about and is written in an easy to engage with and understand style.

Grab your PDF downloadable copy of CHASING THE LOOK at David duChemin’s Bookstore (if you’ve not got his other books already they’re well worth the look too).

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

David duChemin Releases another Great $5 Ebook

Photo H@Ru

Earlier in the week I had the chance to sit down with a photographer whose specialty is photographing flowers. As I tend to do with pro photographers – picked his brain as we chatted and took as many notes as I could. Here’s what I gleaned from him and his flower photography experience:

By the way – he also recommended two flower photography books – Photographing Flowers: Inspiration*Equipment*Technique by Sue Bishop and Field Guide To Photographing Flowers by Rokach

Preparation is key

Getting your gear together and in working order, choosing the right lens, having a tripod set up and then preparing to take the image. Pause and examine your subject before pressing the shutter. Some questions to ask:

• how to crop it – get in close or take a wider angle shot?
• what is the focal point/point of interest? Insect, stem, colour, texture, shape etc?
• what angle will you shoot from to get the best perspective?
• how much depth of field do you want?
• how is the subject lit?
• which flower is the best specimen for your photo?
• what distractions are there in the background and foreground?
• which is the best format to shoot in? (horizontal or vertical)

Photo Ozyman

Highlighting subjects

One of the questions above is worth a little extra consideration – ‘what distractions are there in the background and foreground?’

Gardens are filled with all kinds of potential distractions. They might be the tool shed, a fence, other flowers, the clothes line etc. A decision needs to be made whether you want to include these elements or remove them from your shot. Either option is legitimate but in most cases you’ll probably want to remove them unless they in some way enhance your shot. There are a number of options open to you if you want to remove distractive elements:

• move them – some distractions can be moved pretty easily so that they’re not in your frame
• move yourself – find a new angle to shoot from that has a less distracting background
• crop them out - go for a tighter framing of the flower either by using a zoom or moving physically closer to it
• use aperture to narrow depth of field – as we highlighted in our introduction to aperture, if you choose a wider aperture (small numbers) you’ll decrease the depth of field. As you do this you make elements in the foreground and background more and more out of focus.
• move your subject - I’m not a big fan of intervening in a scene too much but some photographers will move the flower to a new location for the shot. This might include getting someone to hold the stem on a different angle or could even mean picking the flower and taking it elsewhere. If you’re going to do this make sure you are aware of the environmental impact of your photography.

Photo rosemary*

Don’t ignore the dead, marked or dying flower

Sometimes carcasses of flowers can present you with wonderful subject matter. While the perfect flower is the one you’ll probably be drawn to first sometimes the more interesting shot is the ‘ugly duckling’ beside it.

Identify a focal point

As in all types of photography you need to think about where you want your viewers eye to be drawn. Consider setting it off centre using the rule of thirds – but do find something in your frame that will grab your viewer’s eye and carefully think about how to position it.

Go abstract

Sometimes going in extra close and focussing in on a part of the flower can create wonderful and unusual images that take on an abstract quality. Look for contrasting colors, patterns and textures.

Photo Auntie P

Focus is Key

Sharp focus is important in all forms of photography but in flower Macro photography it is crucial and even a tiny adjustment can have massive implications for your shot as the depth of field is so small. In macro photography your depth of field is a game of millimetres so attention to detail in focussing is something to be worked upon.

Identify the point of interest that you want to be in focus and then work hard to ensure that it’s as sharp as possible. This can be a real challenge, especially outdoors on breezy days where you’ll probably end up taking a lot of images and relying on luck to some degree! You can improve your ‘luck’ a little by photographing in a more controlled environment (taking flowers inside for studio shots, shielding them from wind or just choosing to do your photography on a still day).

Photo StarLisa

Lighting

Ideally your subject will be wonderfully lit without you needing to offer any assistance, however the world of outdoor macro photography is often far from ideal and there might be a need to intervene with either artificial light or some kind of reflector.

Using a flash is something to experiment with. Generally you’ll find that direct flash on automatic mode might wash photos out a little so consider using a flash diffuser and/or bouncing your flash off another object. I find that the more subtle and indirect the flash is the more natural your shots will look.

Reflectors can also be handy in shooting flowers as they give a nice, natural, diffused light into areas of your subject that might not be getting natural sunlight. Experiment with different colored reflectors as they can really impact the colors in your shot.

Photo rosemary*

Lenses

Point and Shoot Cameras – if you’re shooting with a point and shoot camera with no interchangeable lenses you’ll obviously have less options here. You will probably have the ability to switch your camera into macro mode (which will allow you to focus a little closer and will tell the camera to use a large aperture giving you a shallow depth of field). Some point and shoot cameras do have the option of a macro lens attachment also to allow closer focussing (see your owners manual).

DSLRs – if you have a camera that allows interchangeable lenses (DSLR and some prosumer cameras) you might like to consider buying a purpose built macro lens. Most of the major camera manufacturers offer a range of them. For example offers a number including ones at focal lengths of 50mm, 60mm, 100mm (the one I own), 180mm etc. Each will have it’s own specifications and strengths (do some careful research before buying). Obviously a shorter focal length means you need to get physically closer to your subject to really hone in on your subject while longer ones allow you to shoot from further back (helpful when photographing insects).

I hope that you’ve found the above notes from my chat with a Pro Flower Photographer helpful. We did cover a lot more ground but I can only type so fast! Feel free to add your own flower photography tips in comments below.

Don’t forget to check out the two books on flower photography – Photographing Flowers: Inspiration*Equipment*Technique by Sue Bishop and Field Guide To Photographing Flowers by Rokach.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

How to Photograph Flowers

If you’ve got thousands of images sitting in hard drives around your house, you can put them to work for you by making gifts with them for family, friends, coworkers and all those other people you feel you want to give those little holiday somethings to.

First, start with family and others you love with a big gift. If you assess the living space in which your family members reside so that you can match a photo with the decor, you can make them a framed photo, getting all the supplies you need from the Internet. You can even have the photo printed to any size you want up to as big as one of their walls (see BigHugeLabs.com below), all using the Internet. You can do it yourself by buying the frames at FrameDestination.com or have all done for you at Pictureframes.com (click on Print & Frame Images). You’ll begin with uploading a high resolution photo on at their website. That means if you want an 11X14 framed print, you should have taken the image with a digital camera (preferably a dSLR camera) of at least 8 MP. If you print any bigger than that you’ll get pixelization (those pesky little colored dots that appear all over your photo).

At BigHuge Labs you can get moderately priced gifts such as jigsaw puzzles and posters made from your photos. The site has a generator that lets you make posters in different styles, from Andy Warhol art to giant baseball cards. The best feature on that site is their generators, which allow you to upload your photo so you can see how it would look as one of the featured poster styles available on their site. If you like it you can have it printed in high resolution and buy it.

For that little something you want to pick up for the mailman or your child’s teacher, there’s zazzle.com, a site where you can create mugs, t-shirts, greeting cards, calendars and even shoes with your pictures on them. The site has a feature where you can upload your image to see how it looks on the product you are purchasing. Also, there are hundreds of sellers on the site who sell their one-of-a-kind designs. If you feel entrepreneurial, you can set yourself up to sell your designs on their site.

This is just the beginning of a gift-giving adventure. For more ideas check out the book, 101 Quick and Easy Secrets for Using Your Photographs. Happy gift-giving!

Have you used your photos to produce gifts using services like these? Share what you’ve done and what services you’ve used in comments below.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Adventures in Photo Gift-Giving

I recently took a trip to my cities zoo to do a test on a camera that I was reviewing and thought I’d share a few tips that I put into practice along the way.

Zoos are great locations to practice photography as they present us both with a great variety of subjects (both animals and the people watching them) but also with some real challenges. Some of the things you’ll need to overcome in getting great shots at a zoo include:

• Distance – the space between photographer and animal
• Moving Subjects – animals rarely stay in the one place for long
• Tricky Lighting – foliage and indoor/outdoor shooting can prove to be challenging
• Cages and Glass – while many zoos are improving in how they contain their animals and are giving them more natural surroundings the challenge of photographing them without the distractions of reflections off glass or grim looking bars both in the foreground and background add to the ‘fun’ of zoo photography

Zoo Photography Gear

What camera and gear will you need to get good photos at a zoo?

The answer to this question will vary a little from photographer to photographer depending upon their style, the type of shots that they want to take and the type of zoo that they’re visiting – however, a long zoom lens will almost always be handy to have attached to your camera.

Camera/Lenses – This means you’ll either need a DSLR with an attachable longer focal length prime lens or telephoto lens (something with an upper length of 200-300mm would probably be handy) or a point and shoot camera with a super zoom lens (probably a 10-12x Optical Zoom).

Also consider taking a macro lens if you’re lucky enough to have one. At our zoo we have a number of enclosures where they are handy (a butterfly enclosure for example).

Tripod – Also consider a tripod or monopod (depending upon the weather and how light it is, you’ll probably find that in some animal enclosures you’ll need to use slower shutter speeds which mean you’ll need the extra stability).

Lens Hood – the combination of shooting outdoors, having limited angles to shoot from (which means sometimes you’ll need to shoot into the sun) and that at times you’ll be shooting through glass means that a lens hood might be handy to have. I actually left mine in the car and as it was a bright day my images suffered considerably as a result.

Zoo Photography Tips

Photo Big-E-Mr-G

1. Points of Interest – Before you start photographing an animal ask yourself ‘what is it about this animal that interests me?’ What has drawn you to photograph it above other animals around you? Does it have great colour, is it in a humorous pose, is it about it’s expression, is it something about it’s surroundings? The reason to ask these questions is that they help you to identify potential points of interest for your image (something that will take your shot to the next level) and will help you to determine how to approach the shot.

2. Get in Close – as with many styles of photography, if you’re able to get close to your subject you create a feeling of intimacy with it and are able to capture details that you’d not otherwise have been able to see. Of course with animals in cages this is a challenge and getting close will almost always need to be done using a longer focal length (you can of course help a little by shooting for as close as you can get – without breaking any zoo rules). Tightly cropping the animal’s face or body helps you get shot with a real impact but also helps eliminate any distracting elements in the photo.

3. Focus on the Eyes – the eyes are the ‘window to the soul’ in portrait photography and a similar thing is true when shooting animals. Get the eyes in focus and in a prominent position in your shot and you’ll help create a more personal connection between your subject and the viewer of your image.

4. Get down Low - photographing an animal down at their level is another way of creating a sense of closeness and intimacy with your subject. This might mean you need to get down on your knees (and get a little dirty or look a little silly) but it will give your shots punch.

5. Eliminating Reflections – shooting through glass is a real challenge and something to avoid if you can. If you can’t get around it get in close to the glass, give it a wipe with a cloth (or your sleeve) to get rid of finger prints, find a spot that is less scratched than other parts, use a lens hood and/or your hand to try to eliminate any reflections and attempt to shoot at right angles to the glass. If you can’t eliminate reflections you might also like to try to work with them. Take a few steps back and incorporate the reflections of those watching the animals into the shot (hard – but if you get it right it could make for a great shot).

6. Shooting through Cages – there’s nothing worse than trying to shoot through the wire or bars of a cage. On occasions you’ll be able to find a wider opening (look for the bigger gaps around gates) but when you have to shoot through cages get up as close as you can to them, use a longer focal length, choose a wider aperture and wait for the animal to move back from the cage. In many instances when you do this you’ll not even notice the distraction of the cage at all. But what if you are using a point and shoot with no control over aperture? Try switching to portrait mode which is a mode that uses a wide aperture and should narrow your depth of field.

7. Shoot People – speaking of people – they also make a great subject when at the zoo. Don’t just focus on the animals but look for the wonderful reactions of those around you as they react to the animals (they can sometimes be more animated than the animals as they mimic them).

8. Look for Humorous Situations - animals do the funniest things. Keep your camera up to your eye for that moment when the monkey points at you, the giraffe picks it’s nose with it’s tongue (sorry – they do do it) or when the Emu pokes its head through the cage to steal something out of someone’s bag.

9. Treat Animals as Moving Subjects – to overcome the problem of your subjects always being on the move consider shooting with a fast shutter speed. You might like to switch to shutter priority mode at a fast shutter speed or let your camera do the work by shooting in ‘Sports’ mode. You can also help with this by shooting in continuous shooting mode so that when your subject is on the move you capture a burst of shots quickly one after the other.

10. Plan your day - I’m a fairly spontaneous kind of person but when it comes to photography have learned that it’s worth thinking ahead. When you get to the zoo get yourself a map and work out which animals will be on your hit list. Also note any feeding times that are publicised (these can make for some action shots). You might also like to find a zoo keeper to ask them what times certain animals are more active. Another good strategy is to head to the gift shop of the zoo and take a quick look at their postcards and picture books that might give you a little inspiration and a few ideas on good shooting angles for different animals.

11. Patience – occasionally you’ll stumble upon an animal in the perfect pose for a shot when you first see it – but in many cases you’ll need to wait for it. Once you’ve picked the animals you want to capture give yourself extended periods of time to camp out at their enclosures. This way you’ll hopefully see them in a variety of positions and with different expressions. This is what often takes your zoo shots to the next level.

12. Think About Context – the beauty of zoo photography is that you get relatively close to animals (something that is obviously difficult in the wild). The challenge is that the environment is not a natural one and that on many occasions there will be distracting elements in the background or foreground. Where possible try to shoot from angles where ‘natural’ looking elements are included (vegetation etc) – but where there are distractions you might like to try using wide apertures (small numbers) which narrow depth of field and throw foreground and backgrounds out of focus. Also try cropping with focal length (or later at home with photoshop).

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Zoo Photography

Image by Buntekuh

As a follow up to our Dogs Image Collection earlier in the week I thought it might be fun to run a weekend photography challenge that revolves around our pets.

This might exclude a few people that don’t have a pet (although perhaps you can be a little creative and photograph your pet rock, a sock puppet…. or a neighbour’s pet) but I’m sure enough DPS readers have a pet to make it a fun project.

So grab your camera over the weekend and take a few pet shots. If you’re looking for some tips on the topic check out our how to photograph pets tutorial.

Note: We’re looking for ‘new’ shots – this is a challenge rather than a look through your archives for a shot!

Once you’ve taken your photos – choose your best 1-2, upload them to your favourite photo sharing site and share a link to them here in comments below or embed them in the comments using the our new tool to do so.

If you tag your photos on Flickr, Twitter or other sites with Tagging tag them as #DPSPETS to help others find them. Linking back to this page might also help others know what you’re doing so that they can share in the fun.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

PETS: Weekend Photography Challenge

In comments below it might also be interesting to hear HOW you print them – ie do you get them done at a lab, do you print them at home on a printer etc?

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Do You Print Your Digital Images? POLL

There have been 23,345 people respond so far and here are the results. The white number is the number of responses for each category and the %’s are the total percentage of people who’ve chosen the category.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

The Type of Photography Our Readers Do…. [POLL RESULTS]