Always have a spare battery charged - tips for good photography

I am photographing a wedding tomorrow and expect to take nearly a thousand pictures! I have therefore spent the last two days making sure camera and flash batteries are charged and ready to go.

It is worth investing in a second battery for your camera so that you always have it ready to take pictures. Nothing worse than seeing a great image only for the battery indicator on the camera to blink 'no charge' and we are relying on the quality of the mobile phone!

So if you have a new camera for Christmas get a spare battery. Happy New Year shooting -  I'm off to London to get some street shots of the celebrations.

Another year of tips! - tips for great photography

Last blog before Christmas! I hope you are all having a good time. Many of you may well be giving and getting cameras for presents. The whole point of this blog is to make the most of that present and turn taking photographs into an enjoyable hobby.

Take plenty of images over the holidays and remember some of the tips I have given over the last year. It is interesting to view the most explored tips and these may be a good places to start with the new, or even old, camera. The most popular tips are listed on the left of the blog and below in order of popularity.

Finding a high or low viewpoint - tips for good Ph... 14 Jan 2011 157 Pageviews 157 Does a picture always have to be a rectangle? - ti... 21 Apr 2011 109 Pageviews 109 Lead in lines- tips for good Photography - Wishing... 31 Dec 2010  97 Pageviews 97 Turn some of your images into black and white - ti... 4 Jan 2011 90 Pageviews 90 Odd numbers are best? - tips for good Photography 11 Feb 2011 79 Pageviews 79

All the best and I hope you continue to read the blog and get something from it.

Pet portraits - tips for good photography

Photographing animals has given me a lot of pleasure recently. I have been taking a lot of pictures of dogs and have been very lucky that the recent ones have all been placid and well behaved, this does make everything much easier. It is the same for animals as it is or people, always try to get the eyes in focus. Remember to take lots of pictures, there is less posing control so capturing the right tilt to the dogs head is tricky. Try moving the dogs own ball or toy above your own head to get the dog to track it, this means the best picture will almost certainly be captured in a series of images. This does mean you may have to take the picture one handed though!

This lovely dog has epilepsy, so no flash photography. This meant outside shooting and the use of reflectors to bounce the light in the right way.

One way I got these three dogs to sit close together was to loop one dogs lead through the collars of the other two. It did not take too much work in Photoshop to remove any exposed pieces of the lead.

As with photographing children, get down low. A lowered perspective gives a much better and more natural composition, a very different image of your pet than the one usually taken from eye level looking down.

Left or right? - tips for good photography

After last weeks post I got to thinking about composing pictures to the left or right. I think the theory goes that if we read left to right then put the main subject on the right of the picture, so that as we 'read' the image we are led towards the key element.

Putting the subject on the left definitely adds a 'thinking' space to the image, a space into which the thoughts of the subject can also develop in a latent kind of way, if that makes sense. This is emphasized in portraits if people gaze into that space and adds another layer of meaning, asking the viewer to imagine the subjects thoughts.

Sometimes the middle may be the only place for the subject. There are no rules but instinct and our artistic  tells us when a picture is pleasing to the eye. Good photography is about deciding what the best composition is and having an artistic reason for framing the picture the way it is, others can always disagree and the debate can be fun!

Published a day early because tomorrow is busy and I don't want to let my readers down!

Getting it right in camera - tips for good photography

So busy I missed posting last Tuesday! It is not just the commissions that take the time it is preparing the pictures afterwards. That is why it is so important to work on using your camera properly so that you have to do less processing afterwards. However, there are so many creative things you can do on the computer afterwards it can consume a lot of time.

There are three things to get right in camera:

1. exposure - the right balance of contrast in a picture

Bride at the threshold of the Church door - didn't use the flash because it with the strong contrast that made the exposure right

2. focus - keeping the part of the image you want to be the centre of attention sharp

Controlling the depth of field required an understanding of aperture and  shutter speed

3. composition - the use of space and geography of picture elements that can please or disturb according to the intention of the image taker

Left or right, but rarely in the middle!

All three require technical expertise, an artistic appreciation and a empathy for the people and places being photographed. Perhaps I have learnt that it is the getting to know and understand people and places that actually makes for the very best images, you need much less of the first two to be a great photographer!