• If your model is balding, shoot from a lower angle to show less of their hair and don’t use a hair light at all.
• If your model has a larger nose then have them look straight at the camera and shoot from a lower angle so their nose will not be so prominent.
• If your model has big ears, then turn their head so only one is showing and then feather the light so that the other ear will fall into shadows and not be noticeable.
• If your model has lots of wrinkles, light them straight on so that the light will not produce shadows from the wrinkles.
• As mentioned a little earlier, if your model has a double chin then have them lift their head slightly so that it stretches out the neck area. Also you can try to light them more from above which creates a shadow under the jaw line and makes under the chin less noticeable.
• If your model has a round or fat face, have them turn their face to the left or right, giving you a three quarter view. Also using a split lighting set up helps by keeping one side of the face in shadow.
• Another tip for making your model look slimmer is to make sure that you leave some space between their arms and torso. You will be surprised how much bigger they look with their arms at their side.

So how do you achieve great results using only natural light and how do you overcome the shortfalls & limitations of low light?  Learn these photography basics & creative photography tips … Read more

Natural light photo by xtianyves
http://www.flickr.com/photos/xtianyves/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

If you’re sick of dropping your camera or worrying about the same … here’s a great DIY camera strap project to put your mind at ease.

Get all the DIY details here

Depth of field is the range of distance within the subject that is acceptably sharp.  The depth of field varies depending on camera type, aperture and focusing distance, although print size and viewing distance can influence our perception of it.  This section is designed to give a better intuitive and technical understanding for photography, and provides a depth of field calculator to show how it varies with your camera settings.

Continue reading …

But in the midst of all that, I many times have doubted my own abilities & talents and got caught up in the “big picture” and lost my steps in the “now picture”.

Well today I stumbled upon a remarkable video which made me stop and breathe and continue to believe.  I trust it does the same for you too.

Just breathe!

Video by Zack Arias and made for Scott Kelby.

More on Zack’s blog.

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For my first exercise I decided to try the ‘SPAGHETTI’ experiment which I will document below.  I first heard of this exercise in an interview with Brian on the 7 Photography Questions podcast. I’ll quickly break the exercise down here, but if you would rather hear it in Bryan’s own words listen to episodes 20 and 21 of the podcast. The process is very simple and it is something that will lead you down a road that will completely open you up to things that you may never have envisioned before.

Let’s get started …

Grab a packet of spaghetti and a piece of white poster board around 2×3 or so or improvise with a towel or something if you don’t have any posterboard. The purpose of the poster board is to help frame your shot so pick any size you are comfortable working with.

The idea here is that you want to simulate straight lines on a page of paper where the lines extend off the edge of the page. In other words, none of the lines will come to an end on the page. The poster board will be our paper and the spaghetti our lines.  HINT: try mixing coloured pasta for an intriguing degree of contrast.

Grab the pasta in your hand, stand it up in the middle of your frame, and let go.

Compose your shot so you are looking directly down onto the pasta and adjust your field of view so that the ends of the spaghetti cannot be seen (ie.  the spaghetti should form lines that run off the edges of the frame)

After taking the first shot take another shot, again still pointing straight down onto the pasta ensuring that the lines run out of the frame but move around the frame.

You’ll need at least 3 different shots as indicated below with the lines being horizontal, vertical and another diagonal.

“Horizontal lines convey calm and tranquil picture, vertical lines show strength and dignity, while diagonal lines imply motion and speed. Changing perspective changes the message the photograph conveys, this Brian says is The Power of the Line.”

Moving On …

The next part of the exercise focuses on incorporating elements of shape and color.  Brian suggests adding a small red cherry tomato into the pasta pictures – you can choose.  Place your item of choice within the frame where you feel it best adds weight to your vision.

Don’t worry if you can’t “see it” … remember this is an exercise in “learning to see”. Here’s some more of my experiment …

Do yourself & your photography a huge favour and grab a copy of Bryan Peterson’s books at eBay | Amazon.com

Jim Talkington: “In this video we’ll look at three fundamental styles of portrait lighting. Whether you’re using a studio strobe or a Strobist setup, this is a great intro to portrait lighting with just one light.”

Standard
On full-frame digital SLRs standard lenses fall between 40mm and 55mm, though 50mm is the accepted norm. You’ll need a 35mm lens to get the same field-of-view on digital SLRs with the smaller APS-sized sensor. Closest to the field-of-view of the human eye, standard lenses offer an undistorted perspective and are often used for flattering portraits. Just for the record, the true field-of-view of the human eye is 43mm!

Wide-angle
With shorter focal lengths and wider angles-of-view than standard lenses, wide-angle lenses are employed by landscape and reportage specialists. Remember you’ll need a shorter focal length on many digital SLRs than a 35mm or full-frame digital model. This need for shorter focal lengths on many digital SLRs has produced a raft of new models. A 17-35mm model, such as the one shown below, gives a field-of-view equivalent to 25-52mm on a full-frame SLR.

Macro
If you’ve ever wondered how photographers fill the frame with small subjects such as petals and insects, the answer is the humble macro lens. Allowing for 1:1 (life-size) reproduction and focusing from as close as 2in, true macro lenses are specifically constructed for close-up photography. They are commonly available in focal lengths between 50mm and 180mm.

Telephoto
Any lens that weighs in with a focal length above 50mm is said to be a telephoto lens. Short telephotos (between 70mm and 120mm) are ideal for portraiture, while longer focal lengths (between 135mm and 300mm and above) are perfect for sports and wildlife. Remember, the magnification of a lens on most digital SLRs is increased by around 1.5x, so a 200mm lens is equivalent to a 300mm on a full-frame camera.

Learn more from this handy resource : Learn Digital Photography Now or find more resources

As I learned more and more about portrait photography i started to get overwhelmed. There are so many rules of thumb and hard and fast rules and compositional rules and focusing rules and goodness, RULES on what makes a good portrait. I naturally took decent photos, but when I tried to take great ones that abided by all these rules, I took awful pictures, the more I learned the worse I got. I stopped shooting with my heart and was too far in my head.

There is so much information out there these days, so many forums and websites with so much available to you it is mind blowing. So what did I do to correct the err of my ways. I took one single aspect of what makes a good portrait and focuses on “mastering” (photography is rarely ever really mastered) each point and then moved on, building upon each step as I went.

Generally this is the way we learn most things, we learn addition before multiplication and multiplication before exponents, because we need to build on each block moving up. Try and take on a project each week or couple of weeks if that is what it takes. Yet with photography for some reason, more often than not, we think we have to learn it all at once, all at the same time. This is simply not an effective way to learn, while you may learn it, you might go crazy in the meantime.

These are the steps I took to practice, mind you I am still learning a lot and am by no means a master of anything, I just learned how to put all the pieces together without going nuts. Mind you, I still screw up each of these steps at least once a week, mostly distracting or limb chopping

My plan as I executed it:

1. Get out of priority anything and learn manual mode

2. Work on exposure, what makes proper exposure, learn your light meter, when matrix metering works best for you, when spot works. Get to the point of where you are consistently making properly exposed photos in manual mode. I suggest Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson as a starting point for this. Start off at this point with available and natural light

3. work on focus, work on getting what you want in focus each time, make sure your photos are still properly exposed. You may find that when you start on this step exposure will go out the window, and proper focus may not seem like it is that hard, I mean I have autofocus don’t I? But this is actually a lot trickier than one would think and it has a lot to do with proper aperture and shutter speed. Proper focus is what separates the men from the boys in photography and is perhaps the hardest obstacle to tackle when you are first learning. A larger aperture makes spot on focus harder, as does slower shutter speeds so find what works. Might I suggest learning the back button focus technique if your camera offers it, it is better to learn it early and incorporate it than to try and reinvent the wheel later. Also, important to learning focus is learning manual focus. This is a very difficult and daunting task, but it will help you tremendously I promise. Learning manual focus, especially being able to hit it quickly, will make your autofocus shots come out more the way you intended them too.  And for goodness sakes do not use focus recompose.
http://visual-vacations.com/Photogra…pose_sucks.htm

4. Work on composition overall, avoid distracting backgrounds and items in a picture. Don’t worry about things like posing yet, master the art of seeing what is wrong with everything else in the photo, a car in the background, a bright yellow ball in the corner, anything that will take away from your subject. Learn to see these things through your lens, or when you frame the shot and not just after you take it. Make sure of course that your focus and exposure (two most important aspects of your photo) are still correct.

5. Avoid chopped limbs. This one is SUPER hard and when I tried to learn this one, everything else went out the window, I was so focused on not cutting off an arm, leg or finger my photos were over exposed, out of focus, crooked, everything was totally wrong. It is important in a portrait not to create oddly cropped limbs.

6. learn to set up your shot to account for the rule of thirds. If you do not know the rule of thirds please go spend some time reading about it on Google, this is the most important piece of information you will ever learn about composition, it helps you learn to make a balanced photo and one that is aesthetically pleasing as well as artistically creative.

7. Photoshop, Photoshop, Photoshop, Photoshop and some more photoshop. Don’t rely on actions to edit your photos, if you don’t know exactly the steps the action is taking to edit your photo and why it works, you shouldn’t be using it because you won’t be able to control it. Try learning a new tip, trick or tool everyday, yes I said everyday. Even Scott kelby who literally wrote the book on photoshop (one I highly recommend by the way) finds new things in photoshop all the time, not just when Adobe adds them. You can learn something new everyday and spend you life doing it, even if it is just a new way to combine tools. Of course you can use your own editing tool, but it is very likely it doesn’t come close to comparing to photoshop.

8. Now learn other lighting techniques, by now you should have working with natural light down to some sort of science. Many people would disagree with me adding lighting as a last step, but a great photograph is built on focus and exposure first and foremost, a good portrait needs to have all the little things in place or it is lacking and if you are working on exposure and composition, not blowing out parts of your subject should have fit in there. By the time you tackly artificial light you should have all your other building blocks in place.

Generally when creating portraits you want to focus on the eyes, the eyes should tell the story about the person. Make sure you have good catchlights, and if you somehow have an awesome photo with no catchlights, photoshop them in, a technique you should be able to find by googling but if you can’t you can try PM’ing me and I will try and explain. Try to avoid distracting clothing and harsh lighting and of course, distracting backgrounds.

So what happens when you “almost” get the shot… you work with it!

Great advice from Kat Seymour – you can find her on the DPS forum as SheSPawn

1. Locate your subject off center in your photo. Nothing is more boring than static composition. By having your subject off the center of you picture, you will create a more interesting photo.

2. Eliminate distracting elements. Sometimes it is as simple as picking up a piece of trash in the foreground. Other times you may have to change your camera angle to eliminate distracting elements in your shot. The most common distraction that I see is having a tree or telephone pole growing out of the subjects head.

3. Stop shooting everything from eye-level. This is another thing that makes pictures boring. You can always climb a ladder and get a bird’s eye view or on the ground and get a bugs eye view. You can also turn the camera on it’s side and create a vertical rather than the horizontal view that is so common. By trying different angles, you may create a much more interesting photo.

4. Use flash in the sunlight. If your subject is in deep shadow, you can use your flash to fill-in those dark areas and bring out detail. It is a simple technique that professional photographers use all of the time to create a balance between the highlights and the deep shadow areas. It will give your photos a professional touch. Sometimes the pros will carry a whiteboard or a reflective umbrella to create the same effect. The advantage of a reflector is that you have more control over the amount of fill light that you are using.

5. Back in the day, I was a newsphotographer and we had a saying-film is cheap. Well, with digital cameras, memory is even cheaper. Take lots and lots of pictures. Photograph your subject from every possible angle and then keep shooting some more. You can never be sure when you have gotten just the right angle and just the right expression on your subject’s face. The thing that makes this really easy today is that you can immediately review your photographs and delete any that are less than perfect. You don’t have to worry about the cost of film so shoot away and give yourself a chance at making a really great photograph.

6. Carry a tripod. Sometimes, you may want maximum depth of field (both the foreground and background in focus) this requires a very small aperature and often a very long exposure. If you don’t want the picture blurry, the tripod will save you. Also, if you are using a long zoom lens, camera shake is multiplied by the length of your zoom. In order to prevent blur, a tripod becomes an absolute necessity. It holds the camera firmly and your photos won’t suffer from camera shake.

Try these few tips out, they are ones that the pros use everyday and they are really simple things to do.