Category: Photography Tips & Tricks

Shooting in overcast conditions

By John Watson
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One thing you can count on during the Spring and Summer months in southern California is the marine layer: a cool, foggy layer of air blown ashore each evening that doesn’t burn off until around noon. Every morning starts out cool and overcast. Overcast conditions aren’t typically what photographers talk about when they discuss beautiful light. The “golden hour” (dawn and dusk) is only golden if you can see the sun. But overcast conditions have their advantages as well and you can still take great photographs under a gray sky as long as you choose your subjects carefully.

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Capturing motion with panning

By John Watson
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Photographs have always fascinated people with their ability to capture a fleeting moment, to freeze it and preserve it, in a very tangible way, forever. It’s an extremely powerful form of expression. But, through the use of creative exposures, a photograph can do much more than document the world and people around us. Photographs can record emotions, feelings, movement and pass those on to anyone who views them. One way of doing this is through the use of a technique called “panning.”

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There is no such thing as a “perfect” histogram

By John Watson
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Yesterday I wrote a little bit about histograms and dynamic range. Histograms are a very useful tool for evaluating an exposure. You should activate the histogram display on your camera and learn to use it. But you must remember that a histogram does not, by itself, say anything about image quality. Histograms must be evaluated within the context of the image that they represent for them to have any value.

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Managing dynamic range through better metering

By John Watson
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Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake? — Leonardo da Vinci

Have you ever shot a photograph of someone with their back to a bright source of light such as the setting sun or sky? Was the person underexposed (too dark)? This is a direct consequence of what is called dynamic range and “compromise” metering being done by your digital camera. The human eye is an amazing thing. Modern cameras don’t even come close to touching the capabilities of your average, human optic system. One astounding feat is its ability to see detail in every part of a scene consisting of a huge range of dark and bright areas. You can see detail in shadow and in bright areas simultaneously. It’s something you take for granted — until you start taking photographs with a digital camera.

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Zooming with your feet vs zooming with your lens

By John Watson
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Conventional wisdom says that prime (non-zoom) lenses are the highest quality lenses money can buy. But that wisdom is being challenged by high quality zoom lenses that match or even rival the sharpness and contrast of the best primes. Make no mistake, the best zoom lenses aren’t cheap or small. But the convenience afforded by a zoom lens, even an inexpensive one, to crop with a twist of the wrist or the touch of a button is hard to resist.

The ubiquity of the zoom on compact cameras and as part of SLR kits may have led some to believe that zooming in on a subject is the same as getting physically closer. But there is a big difference between zooming with your lens and “zooming” with your feet.

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How to find out who is blogging your photos

By John Watson
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One of the facts of life on the internet is that if you put something online, publicly, that is in the least bit interesting, someone is eventually going to link to it. This rule applies to everything, including photographs. [If that bothers you, well, you have one option: don’t put your photos online in a public location.] It would be nice if everyone who linked to one of your photographs told you about it, but that doesn’t happen too often. So, how do you know when someone links to one of your photos? Read on to find out.

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How do you get good portrait lighting indoors?

By John Watson
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Lighting is obviously an essential element of photography. Making photos, after all, is about catching those stray photons that bounce off of the world in a creative way.

Getting good lighting can be tough in any situation but indoor lighting can be especially tricky. Normal indoor light levels are fine for eyeballs but are usually pretty low for a camera. So what’s an indoor shutterbug to do?

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Learning composition: simplify, simplify, simplify

By John Watson
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What’s really important is to simplify. The work of most photographers would be improved immensely if they could do one thing: get rid of the extraneous. If you strive for simplicity, you are more likely to reach the viewer. — William Albert Allard, National Geographic

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
— Albert Einstein, Smart Guy

Like a cluttered room in a house or an overstuffed closet, a photo with too much random stuff can make it difficult for a viewer to find the subject. How many times have you taken a photograph of something only to have something else completely unrelated (and unwanted) in the frame like a car or a telephone pole? This isn’t to say that all photos should be minimalist affairs with a single subject and a plain background ala Apple Macintosh ads. But you should strive to only include elements in a photo that add something to it rather than serve as distractions. One way to do this is to simplify your compositions.

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Abstract photography: something a little different

By John Watson
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Many of you probably bought a camera with the intention of documenting something. Documenting the world around us is common among photographers—and wonderful! please keep it up!—whether it is a beautiful landscape, a family portrait, or a hectic street scene.

But there’s another kind of photography full of blurry lines, swirling colors, and indefinite forms that I encourage everyone to try your hand at.

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