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!

Colour projects - tips for great photography

Why not pick a favourite colour and make it into a project. Find as many objects in that colour and put them together into an album on a website like flickr. In this set I have chosen a square format and by getting in close increased the level of abstraction.

 Life-ring at the Albert Dock Liverpool. Notice the very shallow depth of field and the very blurred background.

Chester busker from Peru. Fantastic colours in his traditional costume.

 Maserati on the streets of Manchester. I like the drifting clouds reflected in the gloss.

 Had to include a flower I suppose! Getting in close makes it a little difference. Walton Hall near Warrington.

Tight crop again but the logo loses none of its power on this tail-fin at Liverpool Airport.

A lot of people make such colour collections into mosaics and montages and this might be one way to develop it. Happy colour hunting!

Breathing space - tips for good photography

Sometimes you need space in your pictures to allow the subject to breathe. Sometimes this is an important part of the context when a close up just will not give the whole story.

 Enjoyed watching these planes land and take off from Preesall Sands beach near Knott-End-on-Sea; the Lake District hills in the distance. The plane is taking off and the space in front and above seemed a right composition

This is the 'Darcy tree' at Lyme Park. It was taken in the last hour of the day when colours seemed much stronger. A solitary tree on the horizon surrounded by space is always a powerful image

 These horses had had a hard gallop on the sands at Lytham and again the pictures breathes
because of the space

Subjects like these need a simple background and it is often tough to find the right angle to achieve this. So always walk around the object you want to photograph, be prepared to walk the extra mile for the picture that might just be that little bit different. 

Silhouettes - tips for good photography

Silhouettes are created by a strong back-light, usually the sun or bright sky, which causes the near side of object to become dark. These four images show the effect well and perhaps the black and white ones best of all. In all cases there is a very high contrast which is always interesting to the eye, dark blacks and bright white areas. Highlights may become too overexposed and dark area too much underexposed, so getting the correct exposure can be difficult.

 Blackpool beach fishermen enjoy the Summer evening as shadows lengthen

Interesting lightening of these beautiful welsh mountains at different distances from

the camera as the atmosphere and mist help to reflect light around the valleys

A solitary bullrush against a bright winter clear sky

Beaches give strong contrast enhanced by the storm-light between clouds over

the Mersey and Irish Sea here at Formby

The crisp clear winter daylight that we can expect soon could be a good opportunity to try out your silhouette technique.

Getting things on the level - tips for good photography

The eye is very sensitive to imbalance and even though the horizon, or vertical lines might be only slightly out, the eye can pick still pick it up. Fortunately on many camera viewfinders there are lines to help get the horizontals and verticals right, but sometimes things go astray anyway even though we are sure everything was square when we took the picture. Not to worry though, because even the basic on line photo editing usually allows you to correct sloping horizons or wonky walls.

Derelict Crane on Dublin Harbour Breakwater - geometrical shapes will be a give away for wonky horizons!

When I am doing landscapes, and have my trusty tripod with me, I use the inbuilt spirit level to get things as horizontal as possible. I also have a small cube level which my son gave to me one Christmas to fit into the 'hotshoe' on top of my camera. This is really useful when I am doing panoramas and stitching multiple images together. If I had not got the pictures straight using the level I would have probably lost parts of the picture at the top and bottom when the software stuck the images together.

The Harp Bridge and the Jeanie Johnson tall ship on the Liffey

Sometimes you may want to deliberately tilt the camera over to create energy and abstraction in your image. That is great if meant! I have blogged on that before if you want to search for it.

The swing bridge that does swing! Looking upstream into Dublin

I liked these in black and white.

Keep it on the level!