The best way to become a better photographer is to take as many pictures as possible. Photographing more people more often will give the learner the most experience, and that experience will serve to make them better and better at their craft. The photographer will learn how to elicit reactions from their subjects, how to best light the scene, and what equipment serves their aims best.
Pet Photography Tips
The best way to photograph pets is with natural light and capturing candid moments. Photographing pets while playing is the best way to catch their personality in the photo and to get an interesting shot. A fast shutter speed is the best way to capture an action. Photos of pets can be more cherished and personal when the photo includes the pet and family member. Most people with pets consider them family so great photographs are precious memories.
Photography 101 – 4 Photo Tips to Know
Although you can’t learn everything in one post about photography (and nor would I try), this post is written to give you a taste of four important digital photography tips that can be helpful in improving almost any picture.
Have Enough Resolution
With most people using digital cameras, often people end up with poor quality pictures when they go to enlarge them. Often times, the problem is that the image doesn’t have a high enough resolution.
If you’re going to print out your pictures, make sure you use your camera’s highest resolution. However, if you want more information on resolution, check out our blog post All About Resolution. Just remember, that if you’re shooting with high resolution, you can always resize the picture to a smaller size.
Have the Right Kind of Light
Good lighting is critical if you want great pictures. However, sometimes people think they have to spend a lot of money on lighting equipment in order to get quality light. Although this post is not about the basics of lighting, if you’re on a budget and want great lighting simply go outside.
Natural lighting is best when you choose specific times of the day such as the hour after dawn or the hour before sunset. Both of these times give soft light compared to the harsh shadows and bad bright glare of the sun at high noon. Obviously you want to avoid direct bright light (such as noon time) like the plague as it will wash out your pictures and generally give you bad results.
Composing Your Pictures
With photo composition there is lot to learn but one helpful tip you can start using right away is to “fill the frame.” Filling the frame means that you want to have the subject of your photo be the focus and have it take up the majority of the image. This allows your subject to be the focus and will usually result in a photo with more impact.
Often times, people will include a lot of extraneous “stuff” around the subject that is later cropped out. For example, if you’re taking a picture of Suzy swinging in the yard, you should zoom in on Suzy swinging and ignore all of the other activity in the yard like Grandpa barbequing or the dog playing with his toy. Simply by using this techniques you’ll start to see a noticeable difference in the appeal of your pictures. And once you’ve learned that, you can always learn other composition techniques like the “rule of thirds.”
Keep it Steady
It doesn’t take much movement to create a blurry picture and is a common problem with many pictures. With digital cameras, there is usually a delay from the time you press the shutter release and the time the picture is actually taken. This is called shutter lag and varies with each camera. So, the best trick to avoid blurry pictures is the following:
- Use a Tripod when using a slow shutter speed to make sure the camera is steady.
- Get used to the delay with your camera and keep the camera still until the green light on your camera flashes.
- Steady yourself by keeping your elbows down close to your body and your feet evenly planted on the ground.
Hopefully these tips will help you get improved results with your camera so you’ll have more pictures that you can enjoy displaying on your picture frame wall.
Digital Photography 101 – All About Resolution
With most people using digital cameras, often people end up with poor quality pictures when they go to enlarge them. Often times, the problem is that the image doesn’t have a high enough resolution. But, before we can talk about the basics of good resolution for printing pictures, we first have to start with the basics.
What is Resolution?
Resolution is the number of dots per linear inch in a printed photograph or could be the number of pixels on a display screen.So, when you hear the word “mega pixel” it’s referring to the number of pixels which ultimately impacts the quality of your resolution.
Either way, when you take a digital picture you want high enough resolution so you can have crisp and clear pictures especially when printing out pictures.
The problem is that sometimes people don’t realize the importance of resolution and are instead concerned with taking as many pictures as possible on their memory card. That’s why many people shoot images in low resolution because it takes more memory to shoot in high resolution. And more memory requires more memory cards and ultimately costs more.
However, if you want to print out pictures for giving as a gift or for displaying in a picture frame you should be shooting in high (or at least medium) resolution.
Image Resolution
The best advice for getting high quality pictures is to use the highest possible resolution on your camera. As technology continues to improve, the resolution of digital cameras will continue to get better. So, instead of giving specific mega pixels for printing different sizes of pictures, simply set your camera to the highest resolution possible (or the largest number of mega pixels) and you should be able to print a quality picture up to common photo sizes like 8×10 or possibly even larger.
Taking pictures in high resolution simply gives you more options for what you can do with your pictures. If you have a high resolution picture, you can always resize the picture for a smaller print. So, if you want to be sure that your photos will look good in a beautiful picture frame then make sure you’re always shooting your pictures in the highest possible resolution.