Snappy Tips for Better Photos – part 5 – Composition
For this fifth and final post (for the time being in my Snappy Tips series), I’m going to focus on composition and some simple do’s and dont’s. Learn the rules and then learn why and how to break them. Rule of Thirds Imagine splitting your frame into 3 equal horizontal strips, and then 3 equal [...]
Snappy Tips for Better Photos – Part 4 – Landscapes
For part 4 of this series, I thought that after the basics of camera control, The Holy Trinity and portrait tips the next logical step would be to focus on landscape photography but there are so many possible tips I could mention that I could well get 2 or 3 posts out of this topic. [...]
Snappy Tips for Better Photos – Part 3 – People pictures
Hopefully, having been enthralled by my two previous Snappy Tips posts on Snappy Tips for Better photos and Snappy Tips for Better Photos – Part 2 – The Holy Trinity, you’ll now have been brave enough to venture out the safety of automatic even if only for a frame or 2 and see where you [...]
Snappy Tips for Better Photos – Part 2 – The Holy Trinity
For part 2 of my Snappy Tips series, I thought I’d write an article on the basics of any camera. These are the Holy Trinity of photography; shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Photography is the “language of light”, and these three are the tools you use to vary the amount of light hitting your camera’s [...]
The key to long exposures
I enjoy shooting long exposures. The longer the better, unless that is you’re stood on a very noisy motorway bridge in a very cold wind. I’ve posted on shooting long exposures several times over the years (for example “Silky Water Shots” and “Breathtaking examples of long exposure photography“) but as it’s something I really [...]
Using Lightroom catalogs on different computers
A slightly more in depth tip today….. I’ve seen a couple of different solutions lately for sharing Lightroom catalogs across multiple computers, but in my mind they’ve all felt a little clunky (like this and this). I don’t mean the ability for different users to work on the same catalog at the same time, because [...]
Snappy Tips for Better photos
I’ve had quite a lot of interest lately from people wanting to know how to get the best out of their camera, and with the holiday season rapidly approaching I thought I’d try and save you a little money by encouraging you to explore your existing gear a little more beforehand. The next few Tuesday [...]
Variable neutral density filters
Today I thought I’d write a little piece on using variable neutral density filters. These are not to be confused with graduated neutral density filters such as these where the variation of the opacity is fixed and graduated from top to bottom in a linear manner. Variable ND filters generally come in circular form, similar [...]
Silky water shots – it’s not that hard!
Several people have asked me how I created images such as this one of Khounagsi waterfall, about 30km from Luang Prabang. How did I get such a silky effect to the water? What did I do in Photoshop? Well the answer to the latter question is nothing. This image has never been near Photoshop. The [...]
Saigon or “London on steroids”
One of the biggest challenges I found on this trip was to try and maintain some sense of focus. Often the sights, sounds and smells were so prolific and intense, and the desire to try and photograph “it all” left me completely at a loss compositionally speaking. The “Big” Chinese market in Saigon was a [...]
Photographers’ Rights
The “Law in Action” series on BBC Radio 4 recently aired a very enlightening program titled “Conflicting Rights”. The middle section of the transmission (about 10 mins in) has an interesting feature on photographers’s rights in the UK and how the law affects one taking photographs in the street. They interview an ex-pro photog turned [...]
