Panoramas - Tips for great photography

I was recently commissioned by a company who wanted a set of pictures of Chester and Crewe. One thing I tried out which I have mentioned before is the way photoshop, and many other software packages, can stitch images together. My previous example was a beautifully lonely spot in Wales called Cwm Idwal. This time I took on the picturesque, but urban landscape of Chester. You will need to click on the pictures to see them larger. To make them internet friendly I have reduced the pixel size of each file quite dramatically so the quality has suffered. Have a go yourself and explore this side of the software you use. I will look to see if there is any free online software that does it for you.

Competition! Can you name 7 landmarks, one in each of the pictures? No prizes but I would enjoy your involvement.

Panorama 1

Panorama 2

Panorama 3

Panorama 4

Panorama 5

Panorama 6

Panorama 7

Making a slide show or film out of your images - tips for good photography

I have recently been making some simple slide shows and movies to improve the presentation of my images. I have deliberately not tried to be too clever or fussy about this on the bases of 'less is more' and simple means elegant. It really is very easy using a package such as Windows Live Movie Maker which also makes it very easy to upload to the web. The hard bit for me is to find the right music to go with the pictures. Fortunately for me I have a beautiful and musical wife who helps me.

Here are the two 'movies' I made most recently. I hope you enjoy them.

To see this movie larger follow this link: Wedding dresses from Oxfam

To see this movie larger follow this link: Bride to be - A portrait

Fast shutter speeds - tips for good photography

Fantastic! Brilliant! Amazing! Awesome!

Yesterday a firm of solicitors had booked me to photograph them and their clients having a taster day at The National Cycling Centre in Manchester. Had a great time photographing them learning to cycle fixed wheel around the velodrome, and doing a time trial.

After lunch we all went back into the velodrome to watch the UK cycling team in training. If it had been a challenge to photograph the racing clients under lowish lighting conditions in the morning, I had my hands very full trying to capture some of the fastest people in the world on two wheels in the afternoon!

Anyway, I think I got some pretty good images, and here are some of them.

To freeze action you have to use a high shutter speed. The shutter is a curtain that opens and closes across the cameras sensor, its array of pixels. The faster this curtain moves the less light gets to the sensor which means to compensate you normally have to have a larger aperture. Even so, unless you have a lens with a really large aperture of 1.4 or 1.8 the chances of freezing the action can be even more difficult if you are not allowed to use a flash. Guess what the coach told me when he spotted me taking photos? The only other thing to do is to change the ISO setting on your camera. This increases the sensitivity of the sensor in the camera but usually leads to increased grain and noise on the finished picture. Noise appears as flecks of bright colours in dark areas of the image or dark flecks in lighter areas. More expensive cameras have better sensors and noise reduction, but it remains a problem.

Getting the balance right between shutter speed, aperture, ISO sensitivity and flash, if you are allowed to use it that is, is what either the camera does automatically or you choose. The more you choose to do, the more challenging and fun the photography becomes. It also means you can be creative in exposure control and, in this case, how much you want to freeze the action to create a more 'arty' effect.

Feel free to comment and ask questions and I will try to respond.

Aperture priority - tips for good photography

As a professional photographer I spend a lot of time, particularly at weddings, shooting in aperture priority so that I can control the depth of field. Depth of field is the range of distance in which people and objects appear sharp and the aperture has a great deal to do with controlling this.

Wide apertures have shallow depths of field so focusing has to be spot on. When it is people in the frame make sure as mentioned in previous advice that the eyes are in focus. Wide apertures allow the foreground and background to be blurred and much of the creative content of a photograph is down to this effect.

Small apertures give greater depth of filed bringing more of the foreground and background into focus. This might be essential where the context is important in a landscape or in an architectural picture. It might also be important in a lifestyle photograph although it is important to avoid a cluttered and distracting background, remembering it is actually a portrait and something must draw the viewers attention to the person.

The widest apertures are 1.4 and 1.8, numbers that are usually followed by a letter 'f'. When buying lenses for your camera always look for as low a number as you can find as this will give you the greatest control over depth of field and allow you to work in lower light conditions without a flash.

Have a go at the aperture setting, it usually is represented as an 'A' on the programme dial and ther camera should then allow you to choose the aperture.