Articles – Page 9 – CanonBlogger

For the Love of Gravy Focus on the Eyes …. Please

September 24, 2009 Jason17 Comments

I hear a lot of chatter out there about how many photographers are in the market, and how soccer moms with a camera are taking your clients. Are you sure they are taking your clients, or are you losing them because you are not trying to be the best photographer you can be? (sounds like the army!) Just because Digital SLR cameras are affordable doesn’t mean everyone can be an amazing photographer. Your job is to be the best photographer you can be, and stand out among the others. How, you ask? Well, start with the basics as it builds a solid foundation:

1. Focus on the eyes…please!

I see so many portraits where the focus is on someone’s arm, knee, elbow. Until the elbow is the window into the soul let’s try focusing on the eyes (yes there are exceptions… but the elbow usually isn’t it). By learning how to control your focus on your camera you can stop your camera from focusing on the closest thing to it (like the nose not the eyes)

2. You look like your brother Yoda

Skin tones are usually not green, or orange. Proper white balance and exposure will fix this issue most of the time. I personally use a target to calibrate my white balance card (it has black/white/18% grey on it). If you are still catching a color reflection from a nearby object or clothing, you can fix this in post processing. Some of the ways I suggest are MCP actions or PictoColor iCorrect Portrait

3. Reach out and touch your neighbor

We have heard it over and over and over again: get closer to your subject. Unless you are photographing a wild animal, chances are they won’t bite. If you are capturing a family, they want to see their faces, not everything around them. Same goes for product, the client is trying to sell the product, so show it off!

4. Target called…they want their sign back

A.K.A. bulls-eye syndrome. Your image will be more interesting if the subject is not smack dab in the middle of the image. Play with the rule of thirds (hint, the focus points in your camera are conveniently placed in one of the thirds). What is the rule of thirds, you ask? Divide the area into thirds from side to side and top to bottom. Place the subject on an intersection of the lines at one side or the other. Go try it!

5. Get it right in camera

There is this cute little book that came in the same box as your camera. Read it. Learn it. Live it! Knowing how your gear works will not only help you become a better photographer, but it will also benefit you in that you will spend less time working on post-production! The less time you spend in post, the more you can spend shooting. The more you spend shooting, the better you get… Alternatively, you could think of this in terms of music: “Just because you can buy piano, doesn’t mean you don’t still have to learn to play it!” A lot of what you do in Photoshop can be done in camera. After realizing I did the same thing over and over in Photoshop, I set my user-defined picture style. The contrast is bumped up and the saturation bumped up. That is 2 less steps I have to do in post which in turn lets me spend more time in the field and actually doing what I enjoy – taking pictures!

6. Part of being a good photographer, is being a good editor

Here, I don’t mean post processing editing, I mean what are you going to even pull into post, and then what will you show your client and the world. I was recently teaching a private lesson, and my student said “I bet you never take a bad picture”. Well she was in for a surprise when I handed over my Compact Flash card to see the images I took that day. There were bad ones on there, but she will be the only person who sees them besides me. Show only your best, and you will look like the best photographer you can be!

Thanks go out to Andie Smith for delivering such an amazing and well-received first “Guest Blogger” post! More Guest Bloggers should be forthcoming. If you are interested in becoming a Guest Blogger, please feel free to email me at: jason <AT> canonblogger <DOT> com!

Five Elements of Control: #5 Composition

September 18, 2009 Jason3 Comments

You knew it had to come back to this, right? I know, everyone is screaming by now “But Jason, you’ve talked about the Rule of Thirds until the cows literally came home!” Truth be told though, most people think about compositional positioning with their subject matter. While it’s true that subjects are ideally placed on a hot spot or along one of the gridlines in the ROT grid, but you can break the rules too, ya know! I say, put anything you want on a grid spot. Or don’t have a specific point of interest! Make the subject of your photo the space – negative space, as previously mentioned, can be a powerful thing!

You can also think of the ROT grid for any point of interest, not just subject points of interest. And, since we know that light (luminance, contrast, whatever your semantics prefer), geometry, color, and context can all be points of interest, then you can put any of these there and create visually grabbing photographs.

The greatest part of this exercise though, is that now we are looking at everything in a lot of new and creative ways. I bet you are asking yourselves lots of questions now: Does that light look good? DO those colors complement each other? What about that round wheel in a square table – that could be interesting, right? Keep on thinking and looking at the world around you from different angles and perspectives. Sooner than you realize it (if not already), your eyes will dart all over the place looking at things and you might not even be conscious that you are doing it.

When we migrate these exercises from the front of our brain to the back of our brains, making them automatic to the point where we no longer need to even think about looking for things – we just do it, then believe it or not, the compositional perspective also becomes second nature. You are already looking at how the light and colors on this corner of the room are really awesome contrasts to the darker shadows on the other side – and how cool is it that the funnel of light literally cuts through the darkness on that gridline?!

Some days you’ll have epiphanies, realizations, and great moments to capture, while others you may not see as many. Rest assured though, once your brain and eyes are trained to look for it – you’ll see it everywhere you go. So, take a look at the world around you – see what catches your eye – ask why if you like, but enjoy your moments, because these are the ones where you can really get creative with composition and take your photography to the next level! Just remember the Five Elements of Control:

Luminance
Color
Geometry
Context
Composition

Have a great weekend everyone – this officially wraps up my first week-long thematic series of blog posts. Hopefully you’ve found each one rewarding individually, and I would welcome any feedback, thoughts critiques, and comments, because this will likely become an eBook download. I’ll expand on each element some more, and include even more photos as examples of each, along with detailed critiques and highlights to help show readers why certain ones work, and others don’t.

So please let me know your thought! Who knows, feedback may get you a free copy of the eBook and a mention in the credits if you do! Thanks too, for all the comments already throughout this week, with your comments and insights on both the written word and photographs. We’ll be back to regular posting starting Monday! Until then, Happy Shooting!

Grab the Feed

Five Elements of Control: #3 Geometry

September 16, 2009 Jason3 Comments

Earlier this week, we looked at the idea of how contrast/luminance can impact a photo, and that your creative style may tend toward a wider contrast or a narrower contrast. Then, yesterday we looked at how the element of color can impact a photo, both in the sense of how colors can balance and compete against one another, and how bright versus dark colors can play off each other. Since we’re moving from more theoretical to more tangible elements that we want to include in our photos, next up is the geometry of our photos.

So, what is geometry? Basically, it’s shapes! Shapes are everywhere, and the types of shapes (or the geometry) can play a huge role in the impact of your photos. So, it makes sense to include geometry as an element of control. Since shapes are nothing more than lines that are connected together, this also means we are looking at the lines in a photo. Whether it’s long rectangular lines of grass or circular lines of a persons eyes, the sharpness of square and angles lines in architecture or the looping curves of ovals in a landscape, shapes and lines can really define our work. So, with that in mind, let’s look at a few photos here to help illustrate what kind of impact different shapes can have. Look through the images and see if you can find all the different types of geometric shapes. What kinds of shapes do you see? DO they help or hurt the photos? Share your thoughts in the comments! In the meantime, Happy Shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for #4 of the Five Elements of Control…(any guess what it is? 🙂 )

Grab the Feed

Covering the Photo Beat

September 10, 2009 Jason2 Comments

In the latest release of the LDP podcast, a shorter show this week as I prep for some other ventures, but there’s still enough material to really sink your teeth into. To start things off, Leica released two new cameras in a synchronized announcement including a full frame ranger finder camera for $6995 and a crop factor camera with 12 MP for just under $2K which will release around the holidays. More info on both cameras here

The other big photo news of the week comes to us courtesy of Apple, with the latest updates to iPods not only by adding features, but also by decreasing cost. Find out how this all relates to photography (very cool ways) on the podcast today! You can get Apple-specific details on their main page.

Second up on the show, the contest news which regular readers mostly know about except for the October announcement of two new sponsors! Find out who the new sponsors are and what will be the giveaway for October in this episode.

Finally, I also let you know about the latest project to be looking for from CB and LDP – a monthly newsletter, and let you know how to become a featured artist in a monthly newsletter. Details in the podcast so be sure to tune in and catch all the details today!

We cover the usual spate of listener Questions and Answers, so here’s the links to help answer the issues in this weeks show:

I’d also like to give some special cross-promo props to Kerry Garrison of Camera Dojo last week to talk about the Canon 7D! It was a lot of fun, and I would encourage anyone looking to add photography-related podcasts to their listening libraries to visit Camera Dojo and pick that up today! (Also, while you are there, don’t forget to say hey in his community too as he’s got a lot of great resources available. His website is linked here.)

That’s enough news and excitement for one day, so make sure to stop back in tomorrow for more photography news and info as we head into the tail end of summer weekend photography fun. Happy shooting all! Don’t forget to visit the Podcast site here and Digg it! (Or download through iTunes) and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

Grab the Feed

Follow me on Twitter

Taking it to the next level!

September 1, 2009 Jason5 Comments

Writing, writing everywhere

We all have aspirations of taking our work to “the next level”. How we define our “levels” of success is largely a personal matter. Here I am always happy to share my aspirations and goals with the larger community. It is likely no secret that as a blogger, the written word is an enjoyable “tool” for me. In writing both blog posts here, and articles for the PhotographyBB magazine (and special shout outs and thanks to Dave Seeram, editor-in-chief of said magazine), it has become pretty clear that writing for blogs and writing for magazines requires different approaches. To that end, there is some content on the blog that has never been incorporated into any magazine. Likewise, some magazine content has never seen the light of the blogosphere. Well, that convergence begins today, courtesy of my good friend, Eizabeth Gast (a.k.a. “Firgs” of Design by Firgs).

In looking at her work online with her own blog, and her social presence as well, I thought she might enjoy reading an article I wrote for the magazine. Well, she has helped with editing, and it now also has a great blog form to it as well. Since she was so instrumental in its transition from magazine to blog, I offered it up to her for use if she liked – needless to say, I think she liked it enough because it’s on her blog today! Thanks Firgs! You are the best! If you want to read more about the importance of how social networking can play into photography – stop over and read her blog. Heck, stop over anyway and tell her thanks for me! 🙂

The Comment Contest Winner

In other news, the Comments Contest was a huge success! With only one repeat and one tweeted link, the count totaled 15, matching the highest total ever received for a single post! After taking out the repeat and the tweet, lucky #13 is the number I plugged in over at www.Random.org (another link I picked up from Firgs!). Wit the Random Number Generator (drumroll please…) the winner in the Comments Contest is – believe it or not, lucky #13! That winner is is andie! So, Andie, if you could drop me an email, you are the lucky winner of a $25 gift card to B&H Photo!

The “Win a Wacom” Giveaway

Submissions for this giveaway are now closed. Over the next few days I will be going through all the entries and winnowing out the best of the best and choosing a winner! Be sure to tune in as we move toward Friday!

The Super September Giveaway

Remember the Topaz Labs software I mentioned yesterday? And the Thinktank Photo Multimedia Bag System? Yup, it’s now time and they are up for grabs in the latest and greatest giveaway over on the Flickr page. A new thread has been created (yes, a little ahead of schedule), so feel free to start putting your work in there. The direct link to that thread is here. The theme is Think in Color, so I am sure a rainbow will appear in short order, with lots of creativity!

I was going to do a write-up of some more plugins from the Topaz Suite, but time and space just got away from me, so if you wanna see more about this great plugin set, be sure to stop back in tomorrow as I promise to have that review together for your reading enjoyment. On that note, have a rockin’ day and happy shooting!

Canon 550EX Review/Eulogy

August 3, 2009 Jason3 Comments

Hardware Review/Eulogy – The Canon 550 EX

550ex_586x225
Ah, how I loved thee, the Canon 550 EX, with your 3 flash modes, ETTL, Manual and Multi mode. You were especially wonderful because of how well the ETTL worked in conjunction with the Canon bodies. Your typical standard hotshoe fit every Canon SLR from the first days of DSLR’s (I think)), and you worked beautifully both as a slave and as a master via the toggle just below the button panel.

Another especially nice feature you had was the variable power settings when in manual, where I was able to adjust you from full power down to 1/128th power. YOu also were very kind in allowing me to adjust your zoom range from 24mm to 105mm for the range of output too. Compatability with the ST-E2 and the infra-red line of sight was another added benefit, although the infra-red technology has dated you beyond use in the current spectrum of choices.

When it comes to working in master-slave modes, you were pretty rockin’ though. The ability to adjust ratios from 1:1 all the way to +/- 1:8 was pretty sweet, as was the ability to assign you to one of three different groups, A, B, or C. Although I’ve never used you in the multi-mode, the options there seem quite nice as well.

The Flash exposure bracketing, and High Speed sync with later EOS models has been a nice feature for me too, which is why I’ve hung on to you as long as I have – provided I’ve got the batteries and power to support it!

However, it was your time to go as you did not have a full-360 degree rotation on the head (without a hack), and your vertical tilt only had 3 adjustments at 60, 75, and 90 degrees. You also went through your 4 AA batteries like a hot knife through butter without the accessory battery pack (pricey in its own right).

Additionally, at a smidge over 14 ounces without batteries, and your large size (3.1 x 5.4 x 4.4) you’ve taken up a lot of space in the gear bag. YOur remote limitations also had their downside since I could only fire you with the ST-E2 or Canon proprietary cable. Don’t get me wrong, I love Canon gear, but sometimes others had flashes that I would like to have been able to use or borrow and could have if only you had a PC-sync plug. Sure, workarounds and jerry-rigged devices are out there (which I have ended up using), but the endless testing, mis-fires, and other tangential effects of a home-made brew had some less than desirable outputs.

Ahhh…550EX, I loved thee well – you shall work well as a secondary with your newer cousin, the 580 EX II when she arrives in another month or so! But when she arrives, I shall bid thee farewell, relegating you to the dust mites of my camera bag. Good thing your owner kept your vitals intact here

Until that day, I’ll shoot again tomorrow! (Happy shooting everyone!)

Grab the Feed

Show Notes for Episode #28

July 29, 2009 Jason3 Comments

No cheeky title today, just a straight up informational one because the podcast was a super long one with all the news, interview time, and listener Q&A so I’ll stick to the meat and potatoes.

On the Photo News Beat
1. Canon Announces Hybrid IS technology
2. Stock Exchange joins Getty Images
3. Think Tank Photo Announces a New Bag System
4. OnOne Software expecting to release a Remote Capture update soon
LDP/CB Notes
1. The OnOne Software Plugin Suite Ends Friday – last chance to get your best image in the Numbers Contest
2. The August Prize is announced: A Bamboo Fun, courtesy from the folks at Wacom
3. Exposure Denver Photo Club
Interview With Matt Timmons – MTM Studios
Listener Q&A
1. The Sony A100 DO Range Optimizer – Bog Segrell from NJ
2. Martini Memory Lighting Setup? – Alistair M from New Zealand
3. Where do you get the EOS Digital Capture from Canon? – George Maskaly from Nevada

Here’s links, as promised for the show notes to for those coming over from either PLM or iTunes. Please let me know if I missed any (it’s getting late here)…

Flickr “Numbers Contest” thread – Win a copy of OnOne Software Suite 4.5
Canon News Feed
Stock Exchange-Getty Merger
Think Tank Photo Multi-Media bag
OnOne Remote Capture News -( thanks to Mike Wong for his blog reports!)
Matt Timmons Media
Elinchrom at B&H
Learning Resource courtesy of Bob Segrell
Contact Canon Support

A last little bit of blog news – closing in on 2 yrs, 500 posts, and 1000 feeds – I don’t know how this ever happened, but there’s definitely going to be some prizes coming soon in celebration and to say thanks to all the loyal, faithful readers and listeners! I teased the date a few days ago on Twitter so if you’re not on Twitter, get there for extra added value too! Happy Shooting All, and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Grab the Feed

Repost: Quality versus Quantity

July 28, 2009 Jason10 Comments

I’ve got a few software reviews up my sleeve for both Windows and mac, but ratehr than rush them out the door prematurely, I’d rather postpone that material in the interests of sharing some rather thought-provoking content on the question of quality versus quantity. I’d written this post before, and the first publication got a few interesting email responses – so we’ll see if the debate is still holding true. Tell me what you think: Does quality trump quantity or vice versa? Here’s my take:

“Okay, I’m done.”

“That’s it? You’ve only been shooting for ten minutes!”

“Yep, got about 50 shots, I should have 4-6 proofs for you from that bunch.”

“So we’re done?”

“Pretty much…I mean I can keep shooting, but there’s really no point, it’ll just be duplicates of the same stuff.”

This was the dialog I had with a co-worker a short fair time ago when I went to take pictures of her son for her. It is indicative of a mentality that exists in society…not only is size king, but so is quantity. If you were to take two photographers and set them side by side, who would you think is a better photographer: the one who took 40 shots or the one who took 400? Many of the general public would probably respond by saying the latter, without giving it much thought.

Yeah, I took 50 instead of 40, because I have not been a pro shooter for 20 years, so I gave myself a little bit more of a margin for error. Having checked ISO, white balance and histogram settings though, I was pretty confidant that all that was left was composition – so I went with my instinct for what would make a good composition, took 3 or 4 different angles and was done. Ten shots of each pose was enough. I have photographer friends who still take 25 shots of each pose with only negligible differences in lighting or facial expression. Can you see it when blowing up to 200%? Sure, but who looks at pictures that close?

Nevertheless, photographers fall victim to this mentality of delivering a massive quantity of images. I know of several studios that just inundate their clients with hundreds of shots to choose from. They can’t understand why these clients never get any prints or very few prints from the studio. They think that people like to have a choice, and that the more choices you give them, the better. While the idea is not without merit, (because choice is a good thing) it can go to an extreme… and I think that’s where it’s going. The reason why they’re not getting prints done is because too many choices can also be paralyzing. If presented with 4 options, it is very easy to pick out which one you like best, whether it’s cars, cameras, televisions or photos. Presented with 400 cars, cameras, televisions or photos, the choice becomes more difficult and time consuming, primarily because you become concerned over picking the “wrong one”.

My perspective, in contrast, is to deliver just a select few shots. It makes the choices easier for the client. In a world where time is an increasingly valuable commodity, getting bogged down in sorting through hundreds of images trying to find one or two to print and hang can be more frustrating and lead to inaction. In essence it’s like you are transferring the process of elimination part of the work flow from your hands to the client. This has several downsides with minimal upsides. The one upside is that “Hey, the client chose this, not me.” can absolve you of responsibility for getting a bad shot framed. I would venture to ask though: why was a bad shot among the choices?

As I told a friend via email recently, it also comes to one of work flow management. Which would you rather deal with as a photographer – a work flow where you process 50 images or 500 images? The argument that “it’s digital, so what’s the big deal?” always seems to get under my skin a little bit. For me, the big deal is that some are going out there and not putting much time or thought into capturing the essence of a scene. They just lift the camera, point in the general direction of what they want and just fire away. I’ve actually heard the term “spray and pray” used for such shooters. The idea of slowing down and taking your time to both enjoy the moment and to really take into consideration all the nuances of things like lighting, shadows, and minimizing distractions has benefits. For me, the benefits far outweigh the downsides. Firstly, it is a much more enjoyable situation to be in. Not only do you have fewer images to process, but you can really take your time, pay attention to the detail, and get every nuance of the image pegged!

Secondly, you will probably find that you are less stressed yourself. You’re not worried about missing the shot because you didn’t have time to consider all the aspects – primarily because you are considering the nuances. Third, and most importantly, when you relax and aren’t stressed, your clients aren’t stressed either…a photographer and their subject often feed off each other. I have so much fun when taking pictures of subjects, I often forget that I am there for a specific reason – we’re enjoying the moment.

That’s right…we are enjoying the moment – client and photographer! We’re laughing, and having fun, and I just happen to have a camera in hand recording it. Yeah, the first shots are often always a little awkward for them, but once they see my mug grinning over the camera at them and laughing and joking around, the stress level decreases by a factor of ten! When your client is less stressed, they photograph better! They are more willing to strike goofy (in their eyes) poses! You can capture the shot!

So, that’s pretty much it: taking fewer shots will do three things for you:

Cut down on post processing (both for quantity and quality)
You stress less, and thus, your client stresses less.
You increase your keeper percentage!

Having said this, I realize that there are some situations where you have to mass produce images. Another friend of mine talked about a basketball or softball tournament where they had to take pics of every person on every team over the course of a weekend. With 50 players per team and upwards of 30-40 teams, that is 2000 shots to process – and that’s a small regional event even if it’s only one shot per person. Take it on to a national event, and it just ratchets up another notch. While the quantity is there, it’s also a different shot every frame. This is also not a fine art or a studio environment. This is a very fast-moving, fast-paced environment and is not applicable to the type of photography I am talking about here.

I would venture to guess though that most of us do not fall in that category…we’re shooting far less than this on average, so the quality versus quantity rule does apply in most scenarios. Now, if only I could take that principle and apply it to the writing here on the blog!

Before signing off today, just a couple closing thoughts to share that are non-related to this article:

Some link-love from two friends who are doing some cool 365/blogs (a picture a day for a year: very creative minds at work and so inspiring!
- – Rob Weiher (whom I’ve interviewed before here on the blog)
- – Peter (GrfxGuru)
Don’t forget the Numbers Contest – only 4 days to go for your chance to win a $500 software package: Flickr Thread for submissions

Happy shooting all, and watch those apertures!

Grab the Feed

The Rule of Thirds Revisited

July 8, 2009 Jason3 Comments

We’ve all seen the term used, and the approach should not be a novel one to most of us at this point. Heck, I’ve even talked about it here before to a certain degree. But today, I’d like to take the Rule of Thirds and look at it from two distinct approaches: landscape and portrait photography. The reason is because the rule can be applied in different ways and these two genres illustrate well how the same rule can be applied completely differently.

To start, let’s just review real quick…

The Principle

The Rule of Thirds is a general rule of composition that suggests we divide our image up mentally into horizontal and vertical thirds to try and compose things interestingly. In general, the rule suggests that you can make things more interesting by placing the subject either on a hotspot or on one of the imaginary lines. I’d written on this in the past, so even have a demo grid to illustrate it:

The problem comes in defining what is interesting. Do we place our subject on a hotspot or on one of the lines? It also is a matter of which hotspot or line to place your subject on. Think about it, we can put a subject on the lower third or upper third, but which looks better? One person may look at the picture and say the upper third looks better, while another may say the lower does, and yet another may say that the image calls for breaking the Rule of Thirds and centering the subject! Clearly, there are many different interpretations. Today though, we’re focusing on the two distinct approaches of using the hotspots versus the lines.

The Results

The upshot here is that it seems the hot-spot approach works well with portraiture while the linear approach seems to work well with landscapes. If you look back in your own image libraries, I bet your favorite landscapes have the horizon on one of the horizontal “thirds” lines. If the horizon is on a bottom third, then the emphasis is likely on the sky, while if the horizon is on an upper third, the emphasis is more focused (pardon the pun) on the foreground. Here’s a few examples of landscapes that incorporate the Rule of Thirds to illustrate what I am talking about…

Can you see the “thirds” lines? I could do the overlays, but think you can probably get the gist. But now, try to visualize the hot spots in these images. A little trickier isn’t it? I think it’s because hot spots as subject points in landscapes are scarcer. This is not to say they do not exist because they do, and there is sufficient evidence to support that, but overall a landscape image is more about the entire scene, and the best way to convey that scene is by composing to accent the best elements, which are often the lines – whether it’s lines of water rippling, lines of trees, or lines of mountains and such, the best way to position these is with lines rather than hotspots.

Likewise, if you are shooting portraiture, some of the best results I’ve seen have been where the subjects face (and particularly, the eyes) land on a hotspot. Take a look at these examples here:

Can you see the hot spots and where their eyes are? I could do the overlays but again, think you probably get the gist here. Where are the imaginary “thirds” lines though? Not as easy to imagine here either, and for similar reasons. Because it seems as though portraits tend to lend themselves toward what I am calling “hot spot composition”, while landscapes seem to tend toward “thirds line composition”.

Then again, I could be completely off my rocker – so what do you think? Is there merit in the idea? Should I patent this, write my first book and become insanely wealthy? Or, is this a farce? Should I give up trying to come up with new ways of looking at classic approaches to composition? Okay, obviously I am probably somewhere in between these two extremes, not completely off in Bizzaro world, but also not poised to make a mint either! Regardless, I’d really like to hear the reader thoughts on this approach – do you notice certain types of photography lend themselves toward particular rules of composition? If so, which ones go best with which rules? What about the “why”? Why do you think some rules seem to work better for some images and others not at all? Or, do you tend to avoid the rules of composition and make things up as you go along? Chime in with your thoughts in the comments or via email.

Happy Shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Seven Super Summer Tips

June 18, 2009 Jason2 Comments

Since the podcast went live yesterday, the compositional theme was kind of put on the back burner, so I’d like to bring that back to the forefront today with something everybody likes…a list!

For some reason lists of bullet points seem to generate a lot of feedback, and garner the most interest, so here we go with a set of what I am calling “Seven Summer Super Photo Tips”

Shoot early, shoot late – it’s the “Golden Rule” – and I think we all know about it, so this is just a reminder.
Shoot often – seriously, the eye does not improve creatively without practice, so get out as often as you can
Shoot outside your comfort zone – Like landscapes eh? Shoot some portraiture, macros, or event work. Nothing gets creative juices flowing better than a challenge.
Shoot lower than you stand – or higher, whatever – take a different vantage point as that can make all the difference.
Shoot with one lens – Preferably with a prime as this will force you to zoom in or out with your feet, changing your perspective and getting your skills down really rote on the focal length you chose.
Shoot with a friend – nothing makes the post shoot high more gratifying than chimping your shots with a photo buddy.
Shoot for yourself – often photographers are thinking of what clients want, what an editor would like to see, or what may sell well on a stock site. While it’s true that money puts bread on the table, it’s often liberating to shoot without the pressure of a paycheck. Your results may surprise you!

So, there they are – seven super summer shooting photo tips! There’s got to be more thoughts out there though on how to get the most of your imaging eforts, so let’s here from everyone – what are your best tips and tricks for capturing the world around you? Sound off in the comments. As always, happy shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Grab the feed