Somewhere at the start of the adventure that is photography, a newer photographer will soon realize that having your subject stand out from the background, really gives the photo a near-3-dimensional effect. Your subject just pops out with the background blurred. The question of how to get blurred backgrounds in photos, is easily answered.
There are two ways to blur the background in a photography - In-camera (i.e., optical) vs Photoshop. Doing it in Photoshop is in my opinion, a boring way to spend an afternoon when you could be out Read more inside...
The focusing modes and options can be confusing for new camera owners. The instruction manual's dry distillation of facts might also be overwhelming. Where to start? Let's break it down to the basics and make this all much easier.
The photo at the top illustrates the most essential consideration when deciding on a focusing mode - deliberate choice. I deliberately focused on her eye closest to me. Not her hand in the front or the back. Definitely not the background. I chose what I wanted most sharp in the photo. It wasn't the camera's Read more inside...
When I posted the article with tips and advice for second-shooters, it generated a lot of conversation in the comments. I want to follow it up with a related article on how to improve your technique as a photographer. It is general advice for any photographer. And it is especially pertinent if you're a second photographer / 2nd shooter.
Camera technique can be distilled into a few elements:
- composition & framing, including lens choice
- timing of the photograph, ie that moment
- choice of aperture (for depth of field)
- choice Read more inside...
Off-camera flash in low light - choosing your shutter speed
With flash photography, the maximum flash sync speed is an important camera setting. It is the best go-to camera setting when you use flash in bright ambient light. But when we shoot in low ambient light levels, then we need to adjust our shutter speed accordingly. We would most likely be at a shutter speed where the ambient light shows up. We want some of the ambient light to register in our photographs, because it gives us context. Allowing more ambient light to appear in our low-light photos where we use flash, enhances Read more inside...
A presentation that I've given on several occasions, is called 'Just Give Me The F-Stop'. The presentation is based on the perception that many photographers, in trying to get to grips with flash photography, try to break it down into what they think are the understandable elements – the numerical values of the settings used. They want numbers, believing that in knowing a certain image was taken at 1/125th @ f4.5 @ 400 ISO, that they might get closer to understanding lighting. They want the f-stop.
However, the scenarios we Read more inside...
off-camera flash photography: what are your camera settings?
What are your settings? - a question that I am often asked about various images.
Sometimes, the answer is surprising - it doesn't really matter.
Sometimes the specific settings are of importance, but usually much less so than the method of getting to correct exposure of the ambient light and the flash.
This is the photographic equivalent of teaching someone to fish, versus just slapping a fish down on a dinner plate. Just telling my settings will reveal very little about the how. And yet, the how is far Read more inside...
