Getting in close - tips for good Valentine's Photography

Most modern cameras will allow you to get in pretty close, you may even want to use the close-up settings usually symbolised by a little flower which is kind of appropriate on Valentine's Day! Getting close also seemed an appropriate theme for the blog. None of the following were shot using the close-up functions and I might post more on this later.

The following pictures use a telephoto or zoom lens to do the jobof getting close. The advantage of a zoom or telephoto lens is that you do not have to be close to get a sense of the intimate. This does two things: makes it easier to get candid pictures, and it foreshortens perspective giving an apparently shorter depth of field which helps to isolate the subject.

The first picture is of Lucky the Cat, so called because he was picked up as a small kitten dying on the Dublin Cork Road  and nursed back to health by my inlaws before coming to live with us. He is a fat cat now who lies around in the grass in the summer, so was easy to photograph!

The next one was taken at a recent Christening I had the priveledge of attending and being the official photographer. By being close I eliminated the background detail and focused on the most important thing - the drops of water tumbling onto the baby, a picture of an importat moment in the child's and families life which they will want to relive through the picture.

The final image was taken in the winter when you get those bright blue frozen days. There were a mass of bullrushes but this one stood out as the best example of the lot, especially the way the wind had blown the downy seeds onto one side. A little bit of backlighting also caught my eye and the off-centre composition made it for me a good picture.

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