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[Barstool]

One tip that I have is a simple tip to improve the composition when you take a picture of another person.

Most of the time when we talk to another person, we look at their eyes. When we take that person's picture we do the same thing and the eye ends up right in the center of our image. This will usually leave a large blank or uninteresting area at the top of the picture. Just tip the camera down to move your subjects head up a little in the frame. Also, don't be afraid to turn your camera so you are taking a portrait shot instead of a landscape one. Make sure the flash is at the top of your camera so you avoid a shadow above your subject.

While this tip is more for a person who would like to move beyond the "snapshot" phase of photography, it is something that everyone needs keep in mind. I have been shooting weddings for many years and I still end up with some pictures with the eyes right in the middle when I take a quick candid shot.

[Oruehl]

Wait.

Wait. Watch the sunrise and explore the world around you.
Watch the light and colour for a few hours.

Wait. Look out of the corner of your eyes. Notice small things. Wait for small things to happen.
Stay in one place for a long time.

Wait. Close your left eye and imagine you had a camera with you. Compose in your head.
Close your eyes and just listen.

Experience the world slowly and wait.
The way you see things will change. Slowly. Be patient

[mikedugganphotography]

-Select 3 RAW exposures in Adobe Bridge.
-Then click Tools-->Photoshop-->merge to HDR
-When it's done, click OK
-Then save merged image as a Radiance file (.hdr)
-Open Photomatix Pro program
- Open your Radiance (.hdr) file in Photomatix
-Then go to HDR--->Tone Mapping
-You want the 'details enhancer' option
-I crank Strength, color Saturation and Luminocity to 100% on this first pass through the program.
-Click on the Light Smoothing buttons to see what looks best (usually middle or second button from the right)
-You want a little bit of white point and a little bit of black point (pure black), but not too much. You can always adjust contrast and lights/darks later on
-Under the Micro Tab, lower Micro-smoothing to zero
-Under the Micro Tab, increase Micro-contrast to about 90%
-Hit Apply, but make sure you click 16-bit first
-Save file as tiff and close.
You can run it through Photomatix as many times as you want (just make sure you always save it as a 16-bit .tif). The more you run it through, the grungier it looks.
Now you want to open the photo in Adobe Camera Raw and adjust the following:
-luminance to 60%
-color saturation to about 40%
-fill light to 40% (give or take)
-blacks up to desired darkness
-The most important slider for me in ACR is the CLARITY slider. Crank it to 100%.
Go to the curves tab in CAMERA RAW and lower the shadows & darks sliders just a little below the middle point.
-you can adjust other sliders as desired.
Click SAVE at the bottom left and save your new adjusted version under a modified file name (as a tiff). Then hit CANCEL.
Now you can do your final adjustments in Photoshop. Contrast, Brightness, Saturation, etc.

[fromBrandon]

I recently made plans to take portraits of some friends' two little boys — two and four years old — an age I hadn't ever done formally. A couple hours before we were to meet, I took a nap and dreamt that the whole thing went horribly. I woke up extremely nervous; I knew these boys wouldn't take direction very easily, and the whole session was going to be very awkward if I didn't think of something.

I realized that they needed something to do while I worked. I made a run to Wal-Mart and bought a big blue ball, some sidewalk chalk, and some bubbles. I thought if I could just get them focused on having fun, I could spend my time capturing that fun.

As little as these kids are, they've already been trained to look at any camera pointed at them with an awful smile and say, "Cheese!" Fortunately, it only took a few minutes for them to forget about me and start focusing on throwing the ball with dad. The blue ball didn't fit with the rest of the scene, so I just shot before and after they would catch and throw it. After a few minutes we moved on to the sidewalk chalk, and then to the bubbles (though looking back, I'd definitely do the chalk last because it was very messy).

Aside from the beautiful shots, the most rewarding part of the day was hearing mom and dad talk about this being the first photosession the kids were able to have fun with. After showing the proofs to mom, she wrote me this note: "I've been telling people for years how adorable my children are and it's nice for someone to capture pictures that really helps showcase what I see in them all the time."

Bringing fun props allowed the children to have fun, and I was able to capture their personalities, rather than awful stiffness. Putting a little thought into ways to incorporate fun into our shoot made all the difference — both for the boys, and for mom and dad. (Word count: 349.)

Learning to be more creative,

Brandon Price
flickr.com/frombrandon






This shot is him reacting to the fun Dad and Big Brother were having.

[jbeise]

What will take you to the next level of sharpness? A cable release. This is simply a cable that attaches to your digital camera,and it has a button on the end of it. That way, when you press this button on the end of the cable, it takes the photo, but without you actually touching the shutter button on the camera itself. So, why is this such a big deal? It's because, when you press the shutter button on the camera, it makes the camera move just enough to keep your photos from being sharp. it sounds like a little thing, but this one is bigger than it sounds. Using it is easier than you might think, and most cameras support wireless remotes too, and they're fairly inexpensive as well. Now your photos will be just that much sharper.

[rayw796]

As an amateur, my biggest problem is remembering to carry my camera. I have a Canon D-20 with flash and a couple of lenses. This gets to be a head ache carrying on a trip or even with me to work.

Thanks to a review on your blog I purchased an Olympus Tough 8000. It gives me additional capabilities I don't have with the big Canon as well as being small and self-contained thereby making it easier to carry.

You won't get the great photo if you don't have a camera when the opportunity arrises!

[troymb]

In a Canon DSLR, you can set the camera do automatically take a bracketed shot for you (up to 3 exposures).

1.) Hit the menu button
2.) Go to the camera settings section and find "AEB"
3.) Hit the set button in the middle of the thumbwheel
4.) Turn the thumbwheel to the distance of the bracketing (i.e. 1 or 2 stops)
5.) Hit the set button again to save your setting
6.) Set the timer to 2 seconds
7.) Compose your shot and set your aperture and shutter speed for a "correct" exposure
8.) Take the picture...in 2 seconds your camera will take the "correct" exposure shot, then automatically take the next two...one underexposed and one overexposed.
9.) The settings will stay active until you turn your camera off.

[sftl99]

I am very new to photography and as my Flickr profile says, "to call myself 'amateur' might even be a stretch." That said, I want to improve and am always looking for ways to get inspired. One of the most difficult areas for me is the initial ideas: What do I shoot? How do I shoot it?

So what I have been doing lately is simply finding photographs that I enjoy and trying my best to replicate them. Now, you obviously don’t want to use this method for profit, but for the beginner, it can be a huge help. The goal, of course, is to better learn your equipment, lighting, exposure, aperture, composition, etc., and to eventually inspire your own unique and creative ideas.

I recently had a friend staying with my wife and me who I knew would make a great portrait subject. We were limited on time and limited to inside shooting so I knew it would be all about the lighting and the poses. I found certain poses online that I liked, one of them from these forums, then tried my best to replicate them. What I found is that by doing so, I had to figure out what type of settings and methods were used to capture the shot, which helped me learn a lot. As the first few copycat poses came out successfully, we found ourselves being more relaxed, confident, and having more fun overall. This, in turn, spurred our own creativity and we ended up getting a couple of unique shots that we both liked quite a bit. Even the copycat pictures have their own uniqueness to them given the model, the surroundings, and the difference in equipment from the original photographers.

Here are some examples that I have posted on DPS before, the first being a copy of something I saw here, the second two birthed from unique inspiration. I’ve owned my camera for less than 6 months but I am still quite happy with these shots…

[Hannahhughes]

Just in case you don’t know, ‘Bokeh’ is the magical little circles that appear when there are light sources or reflections in the area of your image that’s out of focus. When you use a shallow depth of field these can appear in the background of your image and make your photographs (portraits especially!) pop! This is an excellent example of Bokeh:


Image source: Wikipedia entry for 'Bokeh'

I live in the UK and we (rather unexpectedly!) had a massive amount of snow overnight a couple of weeks back. Wanting to capture this in an unusual way, I experimented with bokeh and flash and this is what I got:



If anyone has accidentally set their flash off whilst it’s snowing, you’ll know you often get a whole lot of overexposed ‘Woah!’ in the foreground and a lot of underexposed ‘Meh’ in the background - NOT good (although I have seen it work!). When I took off autofocus, made everything blurry and fired my flash again, I got lots of different sized glowing circles which gave me an idea.

You can make your bokeh circles any shape you like by cutting out a small template – they are only circular because of the shape of the lens, so I chose to cut out a tiny little star in a piece of card and taped it to the front of my nifty fifty (50mm f1.8) lens to act as a VERY large pinhole. Make your shape about a centimetre at its widest point. Hearts, stars, letters of the alphabet work particularly well.

Shooting again with my template made every independent light source, every reflection and every flash-hit snowflake into the shape of a star!

My tip to you, I guess, is to invest in a piece of card and some masking tape, pick up some fairy lights or go to the fairground and go and experiment – make those portrait backgrounds pop and still-lives sparkle! All you need is a shallow depth of field and various out-of-focus light sources in your background!

Hannah

[seeveeaar]

When i started with my hobby,my primary aim was to share the beauty i see in this world. Photography was an effort for me to capture something,show it to my friends and say"Look at this..this is how beautiful it was..this is how special it was...
So i didn't want to miss the moment. I was afraid that if i don't capture it i will never get a chance to capture something so i never gave too much of a thought before clicking. As a result i ended up with far too many of pictures which i couldn't show to anyone let alone the fellow enthusiasts who expect something special.It was too normal...It was too unprofessional.
There was no "me" in them. They were pictures which "anybody" could have taken...

The real difference happened when i started spending more time with the scene and tried to sink into the soul of the place. Suddenly i was able to see things which i would have normally missed on a shallow frame of mind. I was able to look at things on a whole new perspective and was able to predict the anticipate the moments a lot more easily.
That i think has made the biggest difference in my journey so far.

Think more, click less
Delete more, show less.

Focus more on subject selection,perspective and composition and practice your instinct and skills to improve on these. The greatest photographers,we all admire have got these three things figured out clearly more than anything else.
And that has made all the difference.
Happy shooting!







Simply CVR,