Sharpen Your Photography Skills, Knowledge and Passion

Cameras can capture all kinds of fun and my firm belief is that when we color outside the lines – play and not take things too seriously – we learn. I’ve been hand blending photographs for years. I love taking pictures of a subject from a lot of different angles. This method usually requires that I keep the subject in the middle of the frame and shoot anywhere from three to 20 shots. I load them as layers into Photoshop and then turn everything off visibly except the bottom layer. I then start blending from the bottom up until I [...]

Social Media – loved by some and hated by others – and not used often enough in the right way to benefit your photographic growth. Seven years ago, I was issued a challenge by one of the most gifted photographers I know. I was whining about how I couldn’t identify a genre to focus on – how I felt my work was stagnant – like I said – whining. He issued me a challenge that utterly changed my photographic path – accelerated my learning curve – and set me free to explore my own potential. I won’t issue that challenge [...]

Brief simple photo stories - Visualizing the story and accordingly shooting appropriate photos. Photo stories till date remain one of the highest forms of story telling. Incidents portrayed in the form of a series of well composed, content rich photos, while aesthetically pleasing, continue to be one the most attractive and arresting form of documentary. The power of illustrations, even when simplistic, is self evident. I did this simple photo story on road layers as part of one of my projects. A common enough occurrence.....but several photos documenting the process of work and the people when strung together complete a [...]

Panning a moving subject properly....well it usually creates stunning results. A blurred background with a mostly crisp, slightly blurred around the edges, subject.....by definition a pan, is a matter of practice. Certain basic rules apply though..   SLOWER SHUTTER SPEEDS The most important rule. Shutter speeds by definition need to be slowed down to allow tracking a subject over a period of time. This creates the beautifully blurred backgrounds.     Shutter speeds depend on the speed on the moving subject. Fast moving objects may need around 1/60th of a second. Most often 1/15th to 1/30th provide good results. But [...]

If you are new to photography, you may have heard about something called depth of field, but you are not entirely sure what it means and how to take advantage of it. Depth of field is basically the zone of sharpness in a photograph. In every picture you take, a certain part of it is in focus and some of it is not. When the zone of sharpness is small, we call that a shallow depth of field. Otherwise, when a large part of the image is sharp, that is a large depth of field. Let’s take a look at [...]

Street and documentary photography is a genre of photography where the sense of timing, more than anything else, usually differentiates a good photo from a not so good one.   Banks of Hooghly   Photographers have continually stressed on getting the timing right and discussions continue to focus on anticipation, preparation and techniques.   Similarities   The all important sense of anticipation A term is often used....."working the scene". That's when you make sense of a scene by moving around, observing a scene from different angles, looking for interesting subjects popping into the scene and building [...]

Before you fall in the trap of simply snapping away and wondering why your photos are nothing like the professionals, it might be time to evaluate your photography and look at some photo critique. By taking a step back, it might be a lot easier to determine what elements are missing from your work. Eventually it becomes much easier to read a photograph and distinguish between what works and what does not.   Make sure you have one main focus point Before you press the shutter button to take your next photo, you need to ask yourself one question. What [...]

Whether you are a wildlife photography lover, beautiful scenery takes your breath away or snapping people, it might not always possible to get out into the field and practise and improve your skills. That next holiday might still be a couple of months away, but this does not mean that you can’t shoot and become better. By looking at photography exercises for beginners, you too can improve in the comfort of your own home. ‘Practise makes perfect’ is an overused and clichéd phrase, could not be further from the truth. The more you use your camera, the better value you [...]

Have you ever been in the situation where you found the perfect picture on the internet, and it looked fine on your screen, but the moment you printed it, it appeared blocky and pixelated? Or taken photos with your phone camera only to realise that another device with less megapixels look much better in print? To understand why this happens, you need to understand image resolution and size.   Understanding image resolution Image resolution is measured by the number of pixels per inch that shows up on a digital screen. You have probably also heard of the term dots per [...]