Photography tips

I'm not at all an expert, but some people have asked, so why not share what I know!

For any camera:

-Shoot at the level of your subject. If you're taking pictures of children, dogs, flowers, whatever it is, it doesn't matter, get low.
-Get close. Spend a day trying not to use your camera's zoom capabilities. This will encourage you to move your feet and think about the composition of your shot. Zoom lenses are great and definitely serve their purpose but when they aren't necessary, they can make for a lazy photographer.
-Turn off your flash. You'd be surprised to find how little you actually need your flash. Try it. Your pictures will look more natural and you'll lose that annoying red eye problem.
-If your camera has a view-finder, use it. Sure, live-view is nice, but using the view-finder forces you to get close to your camera and actually see what you're taking a picture of instead of holding the camera several inches from your face and shooting what you think is a good composition.
-Don't take pictures aimlessly. Think about what you enjoy taking pictures of. Consider the best way to take those pictures (whatever they may be) and when you feel inspired, start shooting.
-Don't wait for smiles. How annoying is it when someone is trying to take a picture and they wait...and wait...and wait...and the whole time they're saying, "come on, smile, look at me, smile"...and then all of the kids start crying...and then the onlookers get angry and they're yelling, JUST TAKE THE DAMN PICTURE! Yeah, you know what I mean. There's a place for smiles, but if you're trying to catch moments, don't worry about the smile per se. Think more about expressions and emotions. Your pictures will say a lot more this way.
-Have your camera handy at all times. If you aren't carrying around your camera. Think about why. Is it too big, are you self-conscious while taking pictures...the first few months we had the DSLR, I was so used to using my little point and shoot that the new camera seemed so big and intimidating. Once I got over that and didn't mind just throwing the camera in my purse (trust me, they're pretty durable), it didn't take as much work to take my camera anywhere and everywhere.
-Keep your battery charged or if you use disposables have extras in your car or in your camera bag.
-If you take a lot of pictures, upload them regularly so that you aren't inundated with hundreds of pictures every time you upload.
-READ YOUR MANUAL!!!! The first night of the photography class I took, we had to sit in a circle and go through our manual. Before we started I was thinking, "man, this is going to be totally boring, who wants to sit and go through their camera manual. I want to learn how to take pictures!" So maybe reading your manual isn't the most exciting thing, but trust me, it's worth it. Get to know your camera inside and out. You need to know how it works and what all of the buttons do so that you can get the most out of your money and you can get the most out of your pictures.
-Don't take pictures of people who are eating...unless they want you to. Think about it, does anyone look good as they're shoving food in their mouth?
-Unless you're getting close or taking pictures of a group, shoot people vertically.

For D-SLR cameras:
-The day you get your camera, go buy a UV filter. They cost about $10.00 and it's basically an insurance policy for your lens. If you get a scratch on your lens, it's ruined; if you scratch the filter you're out $10.00 instead of hundreds.
-Stop taking pictures in Auto! Sure, Auto can take some great pictures, but that's the camera taking pictures not you. Practice using all of the modes your camera offers and learn what the different photographic results are. Ninety-nine percent of the time I shoot in Manual. Try it out. At first, your pictures might be really crappy, learn from them, delete them, and move on.
-What's all this noise about? When I first began researching using a D-SLR, I was totally confused, everyone was talking about noise and I was like, "so you have a noisy camera, oh well." Um, yeah, turns out noise refers to the graininess of your picture. If you increase the ISO, chances are you'll get some noise in your picture. If it doesn't bother you, don't worry about it. If it bothers you, stay at ISO 200 or 400. If a shot is really important to you, or you really like the composition, then that's what matters, not the noise level.

-Understanding Aperature: When I got my camera all I knew was that I wanted to take pictures with one focus and make the rest of the picture have a fuzzy background. After we got married we bought our Kodak Easy Share, which I loved by the way and literally wore out, I remember standing at Best Buy drooling (well, maybe not actually drooling) over the "fancy" cameras. Then the day Walter surprised me with a "fancy" camera, I was intimidated and disappointed because I couldn't make the picture look the way I wanted it to look. After my second photography class, I had a A-ha moment:

aperature - size of the opening in lense that lets light in - controls intensity of the light - halves or doubles for each full setting...

*depending on the lens you use, you may not be able to use a 1.4 aperature. The widest I have is on my 35mm lens and that is 1.8. If you are mainly using a kit lens (the one that came with your camera) then the widest aperature you probably have is 5.6, maybe a little wider if you're outside.

1.4       2         2.8        4         5.6        8        11        16        22         32        44        64

Larger Opening----------------------------------------------------------Smaller Opening

More Light---------------------------------------------------------------------Less Light

Less-----------------------Depth of Field (DOF)-----------------------------------More


-Understanding Shutter Speed - depending on the kind of photography you are interested in, shutter speed may be more important to you. Regardless, shutter speed and aperature go hand in hand and you need to understand both.

shutter speed - length of time the shutter is open - controls whether we stop or show motion/action.

*shutter speed can go faster than 1/1000 but this is just an example:

1       1/2         1/4      1/8      1/15      1/30         1/60       1/125        1/250         1/500     1/1000

Longer Time---------------------------------------------------------------------------Shorter Time

More Light--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Less Light

Less-----------------------------------------Action--------------------------------------------More

I'm not a math person AT ALL, so by trial and error I've found that I cannot go lower than 1/60 to take a decent indoor picture. If you are a surgeon and have a ridiculously steady hand, maybe you could do it. Otherwise, you'll need a tripod or a flat surface to use as a make-shift tripod.

-If you need to use your on-camera flash, try folding up a kleenex and holding it in front of the flash as you take the picture, that way you don't blow out the picture. (Sarah and I discovered this cool trick last week)
-Push all of the buttons and change all of the settings. You can always re-set the camera and this way you'll learn what everything does. I'm a visual learner, so I usually need people to show me things or I just need to fool around until I get it. I've read a lot of photography books, but it doesn't sink in until I try it on my own.

Editing:
-Until I started a 30-day trial of Adobe Lightroom about a month ago, I only used the Windows editing tools. They worked fine for the results I wanted: a little brightening and a tad more contrast. I decided to use my birthday money to buy Lightroom simply because I'm able to be more deliberate about what I adjust. If you've noticed, I absolutely love black and white pictures, and Lightroom converts to nicer black and whites. I'm not really into a whole lot of editing though. I prefer that the picture speak for itself instead of tons of editing to the point where the subject is in a different state than how I actually photographed it. That's personal preferance though. Some people love editing tools and that's the way they express their artistic nature and creativity. It's not for me and over-edited pictures just look fake to me.

That's all I have for now. I could write a bunch more but I need to get dressed before Isaac's helmet appointment. We start helmet therapy today so I'll let you know how it goes.

Recomended reading:

The Art of Photography by Bruce Barnbaum
Galen Rowell's Inner Game of Outdoor Photography by Galen Rowell
Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson
Understanding Shutter Speed by Bryan Peterson
Learning to See Creatively by Bryan Peterson
Digital Photography Masterclass by Tom Ang
How to Photograph Absolutely Everything by Tom Ang
National Geographic Photography Field Guide

web-sites:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/
http://www.lesjones.com/2008/07/15/megapixels-vs-print-size/
http://www.photopipe.com/
http://www.mpix.com/



A few thoughts from some people who know what they're doing:

Photography is a form of non-verbal communication. At its best, a photograph conveys a thought from one person, the photographer, to another, the viewer. In this respect, photography is similar to other forms of artistic, nonverbal communication such as painting, sculpture, and music. A Beethoven symphony says something to its listeners; a Rembrandt painting speaks to its viewers; a Michelangelo statue communicates with its admirers. Beethoven, Rembrandt, and Michelangelo are no longer available to explain the meaning behind their works, but their presence is unnessary. Communication is achieved without them. - Bruce Barnbaum

In the real world of direct observation, we are rarely aware of the aesthetic relationships of different natural objects in our visual field. If we walk through a meadow, we may respond to the pretty wildflowers and that neat cloud up in the sky, but unless we use the visionary imaging to actively search out a composition to render as secondary visual input, we are most unlikely to move our head down and right to a point 14 inches off the ground so that the pattern we perceive in the flowers leads our eye up to a matching one in the cloud. When the average person takes a photograph of the same meadow at eye level without having gone through a similar process, the resulting image of the clouds well separated from the flowers is unlikely to be compelling. - Galen Rowell

I hope this was helpful. Obviously this is what works for me and I am always learning new ways to make my photography skills better. Have fun with your camera!