You’ll find all kinds of things to photograph when the sun goes down, and each one requires a somewhat different technique. Here are some suggestions to get you started:
The moon
When shooting the moon, remember that it is a very bright object.The Sunny 16 Rule may work for you in this situation, but I’ve found that many cameras get confused by the dramatic variation in brightness with shots like this, so you may need to experiment a bit. If you can get enough magnification out of your lens so that the moon fills up at least half of the frame, you’ll need to shoot a fairly fast shutter speed or even set the EV value to underexpose the frame. And be sure to use a tripod.
Sunset
The sky is full of rich, gorgeous colors around sunset. Base your exposure on the sky itself, not your subject or anything on the ground. And take a few extra pictures, bracketing your exposure to make sure you get the shot.
Dusk
I have found that photographing lighted buildings and headlight trails works particularly well when you can get the rich blue colors of dusk in the sky at the same time.
A friend of mine, a professional photographer, recently had decided to get a disability insurance. Disability Insurance is a form of insurance that insures the beneficiary’s earned income against the risk that disability will make working (and therefore earning) impossible. It’s a unique financial planning vehicle because it insures what is usually one’s largest asset (often forgotten) the ability to earn an income and thus one’s future income.
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Most digital cameras let you choose from a small collection of white balance presets. In addition to automatic white balance selection, your camera probably includes white balance settings for conditions like incandescent lights, fluorescent lights, an external flash unit, and cloudy or overcast days.
A. Choosing a White Balance Preset
Changing your white balance setting varies from camera to camera, but the process is typically fairly simple. For the specifics on your camera model, check your camera’s user guide. In general though, this is the process:
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Comments Off, written by Fiona on 7th February 2008, filed under
Surefire Tips
A friend of mine -a freelance photographer from Miami- is an antique person. His house is full of antique craft. Not only he collected some marvelous stone, one hobby he has is collecting harley-davidson motorcycles. Heck, I don’t have any idea how can a freelance photographer can have that so much money to buy a harley.
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Many digital cameras come with a control for something called white balance. White balance is important because different light sources have different color temperatures, meaning that a scene will appear to have a slightly different color tone depending upon how it is illuminated.
You have probably noticed this yourself without really even paying attention. You may have seen, for instance, that ordinary light bulbs appear more yellow than the light that streams in from outdoors. And other sources—like candlelight and fluorescent lighting—are certainly a very different color than sunlight.
Photographers and scientists have gone to the trouble of cataloging the different color temperatures exhibited by various light sources. Higher temperatures appear warm, or slightly reddish, while cooler light sources tend to add a blue tone to your pictures. It’s not at all unlike the way a flame has different colors at its outside and center. Why? Because those different parts of the flame are different temperatures.
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Our digital lifestyle today is becoming more fast-paced and even heptic. We feel we just have so little time to accomplish our daily activities. This goes for everyone, including us, the photographer. Our needs on technology becoming increasing more than even. That’s when credit card plays its role.
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The most common complaint I hear about digital cameras is this: “There’s a long pause between when I press the shutter release and when the picture is actually taken.” The result: when trying to take an action shot, the subject sometimes moves before you can take the picture.
Indeed, that pause is responsible for more frustration than all of the world’s child-safe medicine bottles combined. Older digital cameras had a “shutter lag” that lasted nearly a second, but even the newest digital cameras have some lag.
Shutter lag happens because digital cameras have a veritable checklist of tasks to perform when you press the shutter release. Not only does the camera need to measure the distance to the subject and lock in the proper focus, but it has to measure the ambient light, calculate the best exposure, and lock in an aperture setting and shutter speed. It also has computer-like “housekeeping” chores to perform, like initializing the sensor chip, flushing buffers, and reading white level.
If your camera’s lag doesn’t bother you, fine. But if you want to minimize the lag, there are a few things you can do. The biggest time-saver is auto focus. If you pre-focus your picture, you can save valuable milliseconds of lag (see the discussion of the two-step shutter: “How To… Capture the Moment”). If you’re more adventurous, you can also try pre-setting the camera’s white balance. If the white balance is set on auto, the camera will have to adjust the colors in the image each and every time you take a picture. Instead, you can use the camera’s menu to set the white balance for whatever lighting conditions you’re actually shooting in, such as daylight, night time, fluorescent, or incandescent lighting. Just remember to change the white balance for every new lighting situation you find yourself in.
Almost every digital camera on the market makes it easy to take quick-and-dirty snapshots using an automatic exposure mode. Automatic exposure is great much of the time, but I hope that you will sometimes want to get a little more creative. And when that happens, you may need to adjust the exposure of your photographs as we talked about both in this post. Not all cameras provide manual exposure settings; if yours does not, then you might want to think about upgrading at some point in the future to a more full-featured camera. In my experience, most cameras that cost about $500 have at least some manual exposure adjustments. When you reach $1,000, these cameras are about as full featured as they come, with all of the amenities you’d expect from a 35mm SLR camera. The Nikon CoolPix 5000, for instance, is an excellent example of a camera that has automatic exposure modes as well as manual, priority, and program settings. Here’s what each of these settings does, and when you would want to use them:
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Now that you know what your camera’s various exposure modes are for, you can think about using them when you encounter unique photographic situations. Every situation is a little bit different, but here are a few general guidelines that can get you started.
A. Portrait Photography
Taking pictures of people can be fun but intimidating. It’s hard to get a natural pose from people when they know they are being photographed. The best way to capture good portraits is to work with your subjects so they are a little more at ease. If you’re trying to capture spontaneous, candid moments, then back off and try to blend in with the background. If you’re trying to capture a fairly formal-looking portrait, you have a little more work cut out for you. It’s up to you as the photographer to put your subjects at ease. Talk to your subjects and get them to respond. If you can get them to loosen up, they’ll exhibit more natural responses and look better on film. Take pictures periodically as you pose your subjects to get them used to the shutter going off, even if it isn’t a picture you intend to keep.
I should mention that digital cameras have a cool advantage for portraiture that SLRs don’t: the LCD display lets you put your subject more at ease. Try framing your picture using the LCD display, keeping the camera some distance away from your face. That leaves you free to interact with your subject without having an intimidating camera obscuring your head.
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Now that I’ve spent the last post telling you what the rules of composition actually are, we can talk a little about how to ignore them.
Don’t get me wrong—I love the rules of composition and I think you should follow them.After you become comfortable with concepts like the rule of thirds and filling the frame with the focal point, however, you’ll find that you can take even better pictures by bending or breaking those same rules. This is an area of photography that is best experimented with and learned on your own, but here are a few pointers to help you get started:
Change your perspective
Technically, we’re not breaking any rules of composition here, but this is something that few people think about, yet it can have a profound impact on the quality of your photos. Simply put, experiment with different ways to see the same scene. Try taking your picture by holding the camera horizontally, and then see how you might frame the picture by turning the camera vertically. Experiment and don’t be afraid to try something even if no one else thinks it’s a good idea. Get low to the ground or stand up on a chair or table to get a higher perspective on the same scene. You have a lot of options: try them.
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