Back in the days of film cameras, creating a panoramic photograph meant either buying a particular, expensive camera or hours in the darkroom stitching images together by overlapping exposures onto the finished photo paper.
Panoramic photos were the realm of the professional with the time and funds to create gorgeous super wide angle shots.
Colorado River - Stitched from 33 images Copyright Peter West Carey
You have promised yourself that your next portrait shoot would be “next level” for your abilities. You want a set of portraits that could be considered fine art, and perfect for gallery enlargements. You want to capture your subject well, but you also want to grow in your abilities as a creative photographer.
Fortunately, fate would grant you both opportunities.
(more…)
It’s easy to get complacent when shooting with a digital camera. It’s all so easy: line up the shot, press the button and move on.
Get back to base and you download your collection of shots, maybe send some to friends over the Web, perhaps make some prints for the album.
But take a good look at your work over the last year or so. How’s the colour? OK? So so? Or just plain brilliant?
(more…)
Wildlife photography is one of the most challenging yet rewarding forms of nature photography. The best wildlife images create a powerful emotional connection between the viewer and the animal, but success requires planning, timing, and technique. Here are a few tips for getting started:
(more…)
ou’ve probably heard or read this a gazillion times by other photographers so I thought that I would be the gazilionth and one to tell you that creating a great photo is all about lighting. Light is what sculpts your scene. You can have the best composed shot but if your lighting is crap, good chances that your shot will be also. And sometimes to get good light, you’ll need to work with artificial light sources. One of the most popular light source used by photographers are strobes; also called flashes.
So I figured that I would give you my insights on small strobes (also known as flash guns or speedlights) in this multi part saga here on DIYPhotography.net. So let’s get right to it, shall we.
(more…)
In the last twenty years, video and film have become the predominant forms of modern storytelling. But before video, there was photography. And for the last one hundred years photography and storytelling went hand in hand.
Now more than ever, the power of storytelling ought to be harnessed. But telling a story with photos takes more than just a skillful photographer. An impacting photo story can only be developed by skillful photographers who understand the emotions and concepts behind ever-great story.
The form of such a story is called the photo essay.
(more…)
In this article Christina Nichole sheds some light on the Kelvin Scale.
Have you ever gone into a shooting scenario and struggled to match your white balance to the available light? Have you ever wondered how to intensify the color of a sunset without digital enhancement, or create a mood with the color of your available light?
Have you ever wanted to experiment with macro photography but didn’t have the budget to buy a dedicated macro lens?
In this video Jim from ProPhotolife shows us a trick using two lenses that you might already have to achieve 1:1 magnification.
As he mentions in the video – if you like this technique you can purchase a reversing ring that will allow you to do it without needing to manually hold the lenses together with your spare hand.
In my previous manual focus post I discussed nine reasons to use manual focus. But wait, isn’t manual focus slow and inaccurate? Not if you do it correctly.
In this post I will describe six ways to get the perfect (and fastest) manual focus. As will all things photography, practice makes perfect – You make not have your first manual focus pictures right, but as you keep practicing, you’ll get better and better, until manual focus becomes a second nature to you.
