Discover Digital Photography

High speed photography refers to the capture of an event that happens too fast for the human eye to see. Things like a splash of water frozen in mid-air, an egg as it smashes, or an insect in mid-flight.

There is no specific rule as to exactly how short a time period needs to be captured to qualify for high speed speed photography. But in general it would be considered to be an event captured at an effective shutter speed of 1/1000s or faster. In practice, effective shutter speeds of 1/10000s and faster are often used.

In this article we'll look at how you can take high speed photos, including how you can achieve super fast effective shutter speeds like 1/10000s even if you camera's shutter speed doesn't go that fast.

Photography is not something you can learn really quickly. Nor is it something you can ever really fully learn - it is a continual learning process.

But if you're just starting with photography, then it can certainly help to be pointed in the right direction as to what skills you should try and learn first. And that's what I hope to do in this article.

In this article we'll look at how you can create unusual images that look like they were taken with red, green, and blue lights, but are actually a composite of three different images taken with any light source (colored or not).

I'll cover how to create this type of image using a technique that works in Photoshop Elements and the full version of Photoshop (CS / CC), plus two alternative techniques that you can use in the full version of Photoshop.

Often in photography, the problem we feel we have is that the photos we take don't match what we saw at the time. The way the camera works is quite different from the human eye. While there is nothing wrong with trying to capture what you saw, have you ever thought about using your camera to capture what you can't see?

In this article I'll cover 10 things that your camera can see but you can't, with an added bonus point at the end. Capturing photos that don't exactly match what you see with your eyes can often give stronger images than just an exact record of reality.

When getting started with learning photography, you'll likely make a lot of mistakes in your photos. Even seasoned pros still make plenty of mistakes - they just don't show off the shots that didn't turn out so well.

We've all taken photos with Lamp posts or trees growing out of people's heads. Or forgotten to reset the camera settings after working in low light and then taken a load of photos in bright light with a high ISO, resulting in unnecessarily grainy images. Or got everything set up for a shot, only to realize you've forgotten the camera's memory card or battery.

In this article we'll look in more detail at how you can use the mistakes you make in your photography to help yourself learn, and reduce the probability that you'll make the same mistakes again. We'll also look at why purposefully making mistakes could expand your creative horizons.

Flash gels are thin pieces of colored plastic that you can place over your flashgun, studio strobe, or any other artificial light source to modify the color of the light. (Actually they don't always have to be colored - we'll look at some neutral flash gels at the end of the article).

The reason they are known as gels is because they were originally made from gelatin. Plastic is a lot more long lasting, cheaper, and easier to use, so you're unlikely to find any flash gels still made from actual gelatin today. In this article we'll look at how you can use flash gels for balancing flash with ambient light, creative use of gels for colored lighting effects, how they can be used for reducing the light power, and creating softer lighting.

If you have an interchangeable lens camera and you're interested in capturing photos that are more than simple snapshots, then there will likely come a time when you want to purchase a new lens for your camera. Although some photographers seem to always be obsessed with the latest and greatest camera bodies, in most cases a new lens will do much more for your photography than a camera body will.

The problem can come in choosing a lens - there are so many different lenses to choose from. Different focal lengths, zooms, and fixed focal length lenses, with and without image stabilization, and at many different price points. In this article I'll look at the different features you should consider when looking at a lens, and how to decide which lens is best for you.

There are quite a few good Black Friday deals for photographers this year. I thought I'd try and gather the best ones together in a single page for you, focusing on editing software and training / learning.

Applying digital filters to photos, particularly photos taken using a phone, is extremely popular. You can achieve many effects in modern software that previously required photographers to use a physical filter in front of the camera's lens.

However, this doesn't mean you should dismiss the use of physical filters. Some effects can't be replicated in software. And even if the effect can be duplicated, it still won't give quite the same result. In this article we'll look at some creative reasons why you should give physical filters a try.

Something that you may come across when browsing photography forums, or reading camera or lens reviews, is the mention of the camera or lens 'Front focusing' or 'Back focusing'. This means that the camera / lens focuses in front or behind of the subject, rather than where it should have focused. Obviously not a desirable trait.

In this article we'll look at what causes back and front focusing, how to check if your camera / lens suffers from it, and what you can do about it if it does.