Discover Digital Photography

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.

Exposure compensation is a handy feature built into most cameras that allows you to adjust the exposure when taking a photo. Applying positive exposure compensation results in a brighter image, while negative exposure compensation will give a darker image.

Although cameras often get the exposure right in automatic shooting modes, sometimes an image can turn out too bright or too dark. By adjusting the exposure compensation and taking another shot, you can get an image that is exposed just how you want it.

There are some common perceptions of photography and how great photographs are captured that just aren't true. In this article I want to look at and debunk some of these myths.

Sometimes when reading photography articles or camera reviews, you may find that they refer to 'crop factor'. Crop factor is only really relevant to interchangeable lens cameras, but it is worth understanding what crop factor means.

Crop factor all comes down to the fact that most digital cameras use a smaller image sensor size than a frame of 35mm film. Where this comes into play is (primarily) when looking at lens focal lengths.

Winter time can be quite cold, which might put you off going out with your camera. But this time of year brings with it photographic opportunities not available at other times of year. So wrap up warm and brave the cold to grab some great shots.

Snow and water by Tambako the Jaguar on flickr (licensed CC-BY-ND)

In this article I'll share a few tips about shooting in cold weather, and how to make the most of what the winter season offers.

Most cameras offer you a range of different exposure modes. These often include a fully automatic mode, Program (P), Aperture Priority (A or Av), Shutter Priority (S or Tv), and sometimes some scene modes. In this article I want to explore the Manual exposure mode, usually indicated on the mode dial by a capital 'M'.

Why would you want to use a manual exposure mode when your camera features fancy algorithms to work out the exposure in automatic modes? Read on to find out.

Very few digital cameras are made today with built-in memory, so a memory card is an essential accessory to be able to record photos. There are many different types of memory cards, and within each type, different capacities, speeds, and of course, costs.

In this article I'll look at memory cards and explain the differences between them. I'll also look at why some cost more than others for the same capacity, and why it's not always best to get the largest capacity card you can afford.

When taking a photo, you need to decide which part(s) of the photo you want to emphasize, and which parts you don't want to emphasize. The use of focus is a great way to achieve this.

Whatever is in focus in the photo will stand out much more than the areas that are of focus. In this article I'll share a few pointers on where to place the focus in your photos to really emphasize your subject.