The simple act of paying more attention to what’s in the background every time you hold a camera up to your face can improve your photography dramatically.
This applies regardless of whether you’re using a point-and-shoot camera or a digital single lens reflex camera.
What doesn’t add to your subject in the picture, detracts from your subject. Continue reading What’s in Your Background?
Previously, I compared the results of a group shot made with a wide angle and a telephoto lens.
Since I recently did this as demonstration, I thought you might like to see how it went.
I placed my camera on the tripod just so I keep about the same framing, filling the frame each time, for the pictures I took.
The reason: if you change  too many variables between pictures, you won’t be able to account for difference you see in the pictures.
We started inside the classroom with:
Obviously I can’t count. Picking up where I left off from the Top 10 Mistakes of Beginning Photographers
Knowing your camera well, even if it’s a point-and-shoot model, allows you more control than you might expect. I intentionally under-exposed this backlit shot of my kids walking on a seawall in Klamath, California to get a silhouette. Continue reading More Beginning Photographer Mistakes
Some of my phases of photography, I hope I’ve outgrown but it’s a battle, I’m only human.
But here’s more.
Contests serve a purpose. Besides the obvious, fame, prizes and cash, they get you off your rear end and give you a reason to be out and about looking at the world around you through that camera.
This is especially true if you aren’t very motivated and have little self-discipline.
Don’t enter a contest with dreams of making it big with one picture.
Continue reading My Phases of Photography Part 2