Take Better Pictures

There are some basic things we photographers absolutely should do in order to take better pictures. 5 Tips to Help You on Your Shoot When we head out to take pictures, it is best to be prepared for whatever you may encounter.  Here are 5 things that you should do before you head out the door to go shooting. Make sure your battery is charged!!!   This is a common mistake.  You head out the door with the greatest intentions only to discover that your battery is almost used up when you go to take a picture.  It happens to everyone, beginner and pro.  Once I headed out to a shooting location about an hour from my home. I began to shoot and things went smoothly.  Smoothly until a half hour after I started shooting.  I looked at my battery level:  FLAT .  I was so disappointed. What was even worse, I did not have a charger I could use in my car.  My day had ended.  I turned around and went home.   How do you solve this pro...

  Let there be light! Obviously one of the key ingredients for making a photograph is light. Without light, we cannot take the pictures we want to make.   For our purposes today, we are going to discuss the light that falls on your subject.  Your subject may be a landscape or a person.  The quality of the light and the position of the light source determines how you use light to make your picture.  What does your camera see? Let's talk about how your camera’s light meter sees light.  The light meter in your camera is calibrated based on 18% neutral gray.   Remember when you took a picture of a beautiful white snowy landscape?  If you made no adjustments, what you got in your picture is snow that looked a bit gray.  That is because the meter was trying to deliver 18% neutral gray.  The picture on the left below was shot normally.  Notice how gray the snow looks.  The picture on the right was taken compensating for the ...

It is time to take a break.   I hope you have enjoyed the blog and the information we have been sharing.   Let's go over what we have covered so far.   Take Better Pictures with the Camera You Already Own Many people do not think that their point and shoot camera or the camera on their phones are capable of taking great pictures.  I can tell you that they are wrong.  Let me give you an example:      Here are two pictures.  One was taken with my Nikon D90 DSLR and the other with a Nikon point and shoot camera.  I have sold both pictures in an art gallery.  Can you tell which was the point and shoot? And the Winner Is? The point and shoot is the picture of the dome. Phone Cameras Do Well Too Here is a picture I took with my iPhone.  It was just a quick shot of a butterfly.   The real key is getting to know the capabilities of your camera and then to understand some of the techniques we have covered thus f...