Photography Tips (Page 21)

Taking photos around midday is often shunned by many photographers. Certainly it is more difficult to get nice photos at midday than it is around sunset or sunrise, but this doesn't mean you can't get great shots at this time of day as well.

The main problem with photographing at midday is the harsh overhead light of the sun. This causes strong highlights and shadows, and can be particularly unflattering for portraits. There are still plenty of photo opportunities about though.

There are very few photographers that work out the exposure settings for each photo manually in their head with no help from the camera. Whether you use your camera in manual mode or in fully automatic mode, almost undoubtedly you rely on your camera's metering system for setting the exposure.

Most more advanced cameras offer a range of exposure metering modes. Each one works in a slightly different way. It is worth understanding how these different modes work, which is what we'll look at in this article.

Adding a texture overlay to a photo can be a quick and easy way to create a distressed, vintage look. Depending on the texture and any other effects applied, you can achieve looks from a slightly old photo to a painting on canvas.

In this article I'll cover how to add a texture to a photo in Photoshop Elements / CS. The process is very similar in other image editing software as well, so if you don't have a copy of Photoshop, hopefully this guide will still give you a good idea of how the texturing process works.

If you've considered making money from your photography, licensing your photos can be a good way to do it. (Working on commissions and selling prints are the other popular ways of making money).

There is quite a high demand for stock photos. Businesses are looking for photos to use on their products, or for advertising their products. Magazines and websites want photos to illustrate their articles. And there are many other uses.

In the last two articles we've looked at how to use a shallow depth of field to blur the background using in-camera techniques, and how to replicate the effect using Photoshop or other image editing software. In this article I want to look at a couple of more advanced ways of blurring the background using image editing software.

We'll look at two specialist programs that can replicate the effect of a shallow depth of field, along with a large variety of other lens effects. First we have Lens Effects by Topaz Labs, then we have FocalPoint2 by onOne Software. We'll use the same two images used in the previous article so you can compare the results of each technique against each other.

In this article we'll look at how to use image editing software to blur the background of a photo while keeping the subject sharp. This is a good way to help draw viewer's attention to your subject, rather than the background.

Although it is best to achieve a blurred background in-camera (see previous article: How to take photos with a blurred background by using a shallow depth of field), this is not always possible. In this case we can use image editing software to simulate the effect of a shallow depth of field instead.

We've all seen beautiful photos where the subject is in focus but the background is blurred. These sorts of photos may seem difficult to create. But with an understanding of depth of field, you can make photos like this too.

In this article we'll look how you can achieve a shallow depth of field to create photos with a blurred background.

The Aggressive Black Drongo! by VinothChandar on flickr (licensed CC-BY)

Recently I was asked to create a poster to advertise an event. As a background image for the poster, I decided I wanted a nice sunset image with sunbeams emanating from the clouds.

Looking at my (rather meager) stock library of cloud photos, I couldn't find anything that looked like what I wanted. But I knew that with a little help from Photoshop I could get the image I was looking for.

So, I thought I'd share how I created the background image for the poster. Hopefully you will find it helpful.

People make great subjects for photos, but finding people that are happy to have their photo taken is not always easy. Even friends and family can often be camera-shy.

But there is a way you can get great photos of your friends and family. In fact, once they've seen the results, they will probably be asking you to take more photos of them in the future!

One of the best ways to improve your photography is through practice. But sometimes it can be difficult to motivate yourself without a specific subject to photograph in mind. This is where photography challenges can help.

My Most Treasured Gift by -Gep- on flickr (licensed CC-BY-ND)

Photography challenges will provide a theme or idea, and then you must try and take the best photo you can that satisfies that theme. You upload your best photo to the challenge, along with many other photographers. There is nearly always a specified time limit to the challenge that you must take and submit the photo within.

When the challenge is completed, some challenge groups will have a voting process where members can vote for whichever photo they like best.