Tag Archives: How to take better photos

How Learning Composition Will Dramatically Improve Your Photography

This is a post that I’ve had in me for almost the entire life of my website, which is nearing a year now, but I’ve never been able to put it into words before now. I always try to bring you varied content on this website, so I will look at what I haven’t written about in a while, and write about that to make the site more interesting. The problem is though, no matter how much I write about composition, people are just never as interested.

I can track how many people have been on my website, and where they’ve come from, where in the world they live, how long they stay on the site, how many pages they visit, and which are the most popular pages (this sounds a little creepy, but I can’t tell who you are, and this is common practice through Google software). Time after time, I’ve found that my articles on composition have been the least popular content, even though I regard it as some of the most important content to learn.

I’d like to change how you view composition.

It sort of feels like you’re in school when you’re learning about composition, because there’s a lot to learn, and a lot of theory to go with it. Along with this theory, you need a fair about of practice to start seeing results too.

People seem to be afraid of hard work, and to be honest, I’m not surprised. It’s just the world we live in these days. If we want something, then we will Google it, and find out the answer in a matter of moments. We’re so used to having this wealth of knowledge on demand that sitting down and studying something seems like so much more of a chore. Even when there is so much to be gained from studying something, it just doesn’t seem worth the effort. For most at least.

But what if you were different? What if you went the extra mile?

There’s a video that I would like to quote; it’s the last lecture of Randy Pausch. I hope you’ve seen it before, because it really opened my eyes (which is rare), but if not, then here is the video.

The quote I would like to reference, or at least paraphrase is:

“The brick walls aren’t there to stop you, they’re there to stop the people that don’t want it bad enough.”

Now I’m not here to get all deep and meaningful on you, but I would like to pose a question to you: What if you went the extra mile and put in the work and practice that other people seem to think is so hard (it’s not)? If they got stopped by the brick walls (studying composition), but you powered through, then what does that leave you? Well, it leaves you with a less crowded market of better photographers, which you can be a part of.

Studying composition is not hard, but it does take extra effort that most people don’t seem to be willing to put in, so you’re already at an advantage if you do decide to pursue it.

Portfolio Export Print 471 How Learning Composition Will Dramatically Improve Your Photography

“There are no rules to composition”

Technically, no, you’re right, there are no rules to composition. There are no rules to any artform, but there are guides, and we call these guides, rules, just to make things easier for us. So when I say that you should follow the rules of composition, what I really mean is that you should study the rules so that you have them in your knowledge and use them to your advantage.

Mixed Messages

If you’ve just bought your camera, then it’s pretty standard practice (at least I hope it is) for people to start learning about exposure when they buy their first camera, and them move onto slightly more complicated aspects of their camera, such as metering modes and white balance. This is good and it’s all in my beginner’s guide to photography. If you want to make the most out of your camera, you need to do this. This is what I teach with my beginner’s guide to photography, and I would suggest you look at it if you haven’t already.

Now that’s out of the way, lets have a look at what people seem to be doing next…

Well, mostly, it would seem that the answer is not a lot. I’m usually pretty happy if people make it this far, because learning from the internet is hard enough as it is, and if I can get my reach to go just that far, then it’s happy days around here. I want to reach further though, because the content is here, and that’s why I do it, so that people will learn. If you take on the full package, and start learning composition, then you’ll really start to see the big changes.

Here it goes…

The Rules of Composition

In my tutorial archive, you will see plenty of tutorials on composition, which I’ve written over the past year. I count around 20 different articles to get you started with the basics, moving onto more complicated aspects. If you’re just getting started, then I would suggest looking at my beginner’s guide to composition.

You will cover the basics such as the rule of thirds, and visual weight, and move onto dynamic tension and juxtaposition. You will start to understand more than just how to take a photo, but how to think about your photos, and what to do before you take them. This will change where you stand, how you crop, how to balance the photo, and how you view the scene, and so on.

How will it change my photography?

Well, I made a pretty bold claim with the title of this post, saying that it will dramatically improve the quality of your photos, and I stand by that. I can’t say exactly what it will do to your photography, but here’s what it’s done for mine, and if this isn’t enough to convince you, then I dont know what is:

I think MUCH more about a photo before I take it.
I think MUCH faster about the potential photo.
I see with the eyes of a photographer, rather than those of a bystander.
I look for depth in a photo.
I see dynamic tension with ease, where as the viewer just feel it, which is exactly how it should be.
I frame my photos so that they stay interesting, and so that they’re 3D, rather than 2D.
I’ve stopped trying to make a boring scene interesting, and easily see potential in scenes that I would have missed before.
My progression from a bad photo to a good photo is a lot faster.
I’ve learned how to focus the attention of the viewer to where I want them to look.
I’ve started to fix my mistakes while I’m taking the photos, instead of getting back to the computer and seeing what I should have done.
I know how to balance a photo to evoke a certain feeling.
I can make much more from a single point.
I can create invisible lines with eye-lines.
I can use a variety of lines to change how the viewer sees and feels about a photo.
The list goes on and on… I could be here for hours.

I really hope that this has helped to convince you to focus your learning onto the right aspects of photography.

Separate yourself from the competition by learning composition today.

Why Nikon Is Wrong: “A photographer is only as good as the equipment he uses”

What Happened?

Nikon made a bit of a mistake yesterday when they posted this on their fan page:

“A photographer is only as good as the equipment he uses, and a good lens is essential to taking good pictures! Do any of our facebook fans use any of the NIKKOR lenses? Which is your favorite and what types of situations do you use it for?”

We all know that what they said was wrong, but the important question is what makes it so wrong and why has it gotten us so riled up? Firstly It would be fair to say that they got it completely backwards, so much so that part of it could almost be a typo – the equipment is really only as good as the photographer using it, not the other way around.

The idea that it all comes down to the gear that you’re using is ridiculous, even for a camera and lens manufacturer to suggest it. I think the reason it ruffled so many feathers is because a lot of good photographers have had something like this said to them: “Wow, your photos are really good, you must have a great camera”, or overhead a statement like this: “look at the size of his lens, mine is bigger than that, his doesn’t even zoom”, and statements like that don’t really go down so well, so for Nikon to suggest it too, is pretty poor.

A good photograph is not the product of buying the best gear that money can buy, it’s about how you use that gear to your advantage. A good photo stands up by itself without the need for special effects or editing. More often then not, when I’ve found that I’ve produced a good photo, it’s a result of good composition, used subtly so that the viewer can tell it’s good without having having to have it explained to them, like in this photo below.

But Aren’t They Kind Of Right?

Well, no, but in a very twisted way… yes. Let me explain. There are certain things that budget equipment can’t do, such as take really good low light photos, so in that way, they have a very small point. Don’t get me wrong, I buy the best quality gear that I can afford, but that’s because from personal experience, I always end up regret buying inferior products. I will buy the top of the range Canon lenses and I absolutely love using them and I get some excellent result while using them, but it’s not the lens that’s doing the work for me; it’s me. When it comes down to it, it’s the photo that’s being seen, not the camera that was used to take it.

It would also be unprofessional to turn up to a photography job without the correct gear, which helps to produce a good photo, such as an external flash and a low light lens if you’re shooting indoors, but taking photos on a job doesn’t make you a good photographer either. Even taking good photos doesn’t necessarily make you a good photographer; everyone gets lucky once and a while, it’s all about consistently good results.

So Then, What Makes A Good Photographer?

This is a very subjective question as it’s mostly a matter of opinion more than anything, so someone I may think is awesome, you may think to be rubbish. You should only ever shoot for yourself, as trying to please everyone will prove itself to be completely pointless as it’s unlikely you’ll ever succeed. There’s popular opinion on who is a good photographer, but there’s no rule which you can follow to take you there – mostly it’s down to practice.

“Your first 10,000 photos are your worst” – Henri Cartier Bresson

The quote above will ring true to anyone who actually uses their camera enough to take over 10,000 photos, as the improvement in this time is huge. There’s only so long you can go into photography ignorant to the elements, before you have to learn how to take better photos, and it’s likely that if you’ve reached that many photos, you’ll have learnt something by now. Practice really is the key to good photography, and when you compliment that with study of composition and photography, you’ll start to see your photography improving a big way.

As cameras get better and better, the quality of the images improve, and that’s something we’re all appreciative of because they begin to allow us to do stuff we couldn’t do before by providing features such as an improved dynamic range, but that’s still not what good photography is. The camera is not your tool, it’s your eyes and your mind that make the photos. If you want to become better at photography, I strongly suggest that you carry your camera around with you much more often, and before long, you’ll be thinking like a photographer.

So What Now With Nikon?

Nikon is a fantastic company and they make some really great gear. They should not be thought any less of for the twisted thought process of someone in their PR department, as I assure you, there will be plenty of outrage within the company’s staff about what was said. When it comes down to it, it was just a sentence that was very foolishly said by one of the largest camera suppliers in the world. It doesn’t make them look good, but something very good has come out of this; photographers all over the world are throwing in their 2 cents on this matter and a discussion has developed about photography, and not just the gear which we use.

I hope you’ve taken something away from this today. I originally posted this link on my Facebook fan page so if you’re interested in seeing more links and discussions like this then come and like us. Thanks – Josh

Are You Still Making These 10 Photography Clichés?

Very Important Introduction: Please Read First

Photography is subjective, and people’s opinions on what’s cliché and what’s not is entirely up to them. Everything in moderation is the key to avoiding cliche photos, as you can get away with doing certain things a few times before it becomes boring and repetitive. If you’re new to photography, then avoiding the list of cliches below will help you to avoid taking photos that may well be dismissed as amateur.

A good photo will stand up to criticism, without the need for clichés or post processing.

Flowers, Pets & Sunsets

Almost all of us have been guilty of it at some point in our lives; you’ve got a new camera and nothing to take a photo of, so you venture into the garden, with your pet, in the evening. I’m not saying that these sorts of photos can’t be taken without, being a cliché, i’m just saying that the majority of them are very poorly taken, and they’re widely associated with amateurs. Flowers, pets and sunsets are typically quite nice things to look at, and the majority of people starting out think that taking a photo of something pretty is half the battle, when in reality, if you can take a photo of something ugly or boring, and make it interesting, you’ve got a much better photo. My top tip is to stop shooting these things altogether, and because you’ll still want to use your shiney new camera, you’re forced to take photos of something more interesting.

Fake Lens Flare

I’m my opinion, there’s no substitute for the real thing, and if you can’t produce lens flare in your photo naturally, then it clearly doesn’t belong there – it just looks out of place. Natural lens flare comes from light shining into your lens at an angle, so when you see a photo with fake lens flare, and the only light source behind the camera, it stands out like a sore thumb. Real lens flare can look really good in photos and the best way to get this is to shoot into the sun in the late evening, when the sun is going down. Click on that post to read more and to see some really cool photos.

Vintage iPhone Apps

I resented paying the £1.19 for Hipstamatic, just so that I could take the photo below, but I feel it serves as an example to an important point. I have no problem with using iPhones for photography, what I do have a problem with is the needless post processing and effects used to create a ‘cool’ photo. An edgy border, some funny colouring and a weird angle, does not a photo make. These tricks may get a small wow factor, but if you really want to start taking good photos, you need to strip back all the unnecessary effects and work on your exposure and composition – you can’t rely on an iPhone to do the work for you.

Unnecessary Black & White

There are plenty of reasons to shoot in black and white, like wanting to emphasise form or contrast, but there’s even more reasons to not shoot in black and white. Colour is a wonderful thing in photography, as different colours evoke different feelings or thoughts, and when you desaturate them to black and white, you lose all of this. Black and White for the purpose of looking artsy has no place in photography, and if you’re new to photography, you should really try to get a better grasp of it before you mindlessly turn all your photos black and white.

Selective Colour

Worse then mindless black and white is selective colouring; it’s taking a usually uninteresting photo, turning it black and white, and then bringing back the colour onto only a certain part of the photo. You’ve probably seen this before, in dodgy prom photos where only a tie or a handkerchief will be in colour and the rest is in black and white. All this is doing is drawing the attention to a tie or a handkerchief, which is an unusual focus for a photo. It’s often perceived as a pretty effect, but you shouldn’t rely on this sort of post processing to produce a good photo, if you use it too much, it’ll hold you back from learning composition techniques that will make a real difference. My example below is of a flower that I used in ISO vs exposure demonstration.

Naff Borders and Garish Watermarks

They’re distracting, unprofessional and will not make your photos look any better. I have no problems with a carefully thought out border when you’re mounting a photo, or a watermark when you feel that a photo is going to be of particular interest to people, but they have no place in professional or commercial photography. I’ve even seen watermarks on wedding photos, and it shocks me that anyone would ever allow that. It’s important to share your work without it getting stolen, so try to come up with a simple watermark for the corner of your photo so that it doesn’t distract from your photo. If you’re worried about people stealing your work and passing it off as their own, use TinEye to find where your photos have been used on the internet.

Over Saturated HDR

If you’ve been following this site for long, you’ll know by now that i’m not really a bit fan of post processing for the sake of it. In my opinion, HDR, which stands for High Dynamic Range, can be done well and has it’s uses, but the majority of the time, it’s overdone and over saturated. When you process a photo into HDR, you’re effectively removing a lot of the contrast which flattens the image. My friend Richard kindly allowed me to use one of his early HDR photos below to demonstrate how HDR photos are often over saturated. As you can see, the photo was taken on a fairly overcast day, and yet the blues and greens shine brighter then they would have in the sun. The attraction to this photo heavily relies on HDR, rather than photographic technique.

The ‘Dutch Tilt’

The Dutch tilt is when you hold your camera somewhere between landscape and portrait, usually so that you can get more key features into the frame. It’s easy to find yourself doing this because your eyes don’t see a rotated image, they see the same image with more details in the frame, so you may find yourself doing this more often then you should. The trouble is that the end result is at an unusual angle and hard to look at. Try taking a step back and reframing to include more of a subject in a photo, or use a shorter focal length for a wider viewing angle.

Heavy Vignetting

A small amount of vignetting is a good way of helping the viewers eyes to focus on the center of the photo, but once you can tell it’s being done, it’s become a part of the photo, rather then a feature used to improve a certain part of the photo. It distracts heavily for the main features of the photo, and is largely used to make the photo look more artistic. Good photography will stand up to critics, without the need for excessive post processing like this. Try avoiding these techniques all together if you want to try and improve your photography.

Writing On Photos

There’s subtle post processing and there’s obvious processing; this is painfully obvious, and you see it a lot from amateur photographers. I’m not a big fan of titling photos, as it’s hard to think of a name that doesn’t evoke a thought or a feeling, which influences the viewers perception of it. I like to leave the photo bare so that the viewer can make up their own mind on the photo and decide what they like or dislike about it. When you add writing to a photo, you firstly ruin the photo by taking a chunk of the photo away and coving it up with writing, and then you distract the viewer from the part of the photo that they’re supposed to be looking at.

10 Reasons Your Photos Suck (and How to Fix Them)

Why You Should Read This

If you’re trying to improve your photography, then it helps to know where you’re going wrong. This article is all about pointing out where you’re going wrong and what you should be doing to fix it. It’s not easy taking consistently good photos, but once you’ve gotten the hang of it, it becomes incredibly rewarding. Your photos suck and it’s time to fix them.

1 – Bad Lighting

All too often photos are taken on compact cameras and digital SLR’s where the lighting isn’t adequate. The lighting is the most key part of taking a good photo, I know it sounds simple, but a photo is a collection of light, so has to be good. Pop up flashes can cast a very harsh light over your subject; flattening the image. Off camera flashes that can be rotated to point to a wall, or a ceiling have the ability create much more natural light. They also cast shadows over the subject, where shadows would usually be which gives them a lot more depth and make the whole photo look more natural.

2 – You’re Making Excuses

Even today I was walking though London and saw a building I wanted to take a photo of, but found myself thinking ‘oh well, I haven’t got my wide angle lens on, another time’. I made myself take a photo anyway and I actually think it’s a lot stronger then it would have been had I had my other lens on me because it made me actually think about the photo I was taking and how I could get something interesting into the frame. Stop making excuses as to why you can’t take photos and start challenging yourself.

3 – Wrong White Balance

White balance is very important to making a photo look natural, having the wrong WB will produce a nasty color cast to your photos and will make skin colors, among other things, look unnatural. The most common example of this is when shooting under tungsten light – skin color can look almost orange. IMG 5828 10 Reasons Your Photos Suck (and How to Fix Them)

4 – Motion Blur

Shooting in low light often results in compromises such as having to use a high ISO, but one compromise you can’t allow is motion blur as it renders your photos unusable. Raise your shutter speed so that it’s at least the same as your focal length: For example, if you’re shooting using a 50mm lens on a crop sensor, your focal length is effectively 75mm, so your shutter speed should be 1/75 of a second or higher

5 – Bad Depth of Field

Often when people get their first f/1.8 lens, (and for those of you that don’t understand aperture, click here) they tend to put it on f/1.8 and leave it there for a while. Shallow depth of field has it’s creative uses, but it has no place in every photo. Your photos will start to all look the same and will cease to be impressive. Same can be said about too much DoF, you need to try and find a compromise and use it when it’s best suited. IMG 5873 10 Reasons Your Photos Suck (and How to Fix Them)

6 – Shooting at the Wrong Time

For example: Shooting in the evening or early morning when the sun in low in the sky produces much better results then in the midday sun where your photos will appear bright and harsh. If you’re struggling to capture a scene that looks really good during the day, that’s because your eyes can adjust the exposure in ways your camera cannot. Shooting in the evening will help remove silhouettes and produce a much more even exposure.

7 – Distractions

Anything that’s not adding to a photo, is taking away from it. Think about what you’re photographing, before you take it. Ask yourself: Does that object/person add anything to this photo? More often or not when I ask this question I end up moving my camera to a different angle and take a much more interesting shot.

8 – You’re trying to impress Others

Shoot what you like, not what you think others will like, or you’ll never be happy. You know what looks good and that means that you have a realistic target that you can picture in your head. That’s much more obtainable than what you think the masses will enjoy and at the end of the day, you’ll be happy with the results. If you see other photos that you love, take inspiration from it, stop trying to replicate it.

9 – Poor Composition

If you’re not too familiar with composition, try to at least follow the rule of thirds. That means that anything key lines up within a third of the way in from any side of the photo. One thing that bugs me about photos found on facebook is how they’re all too often framed poorly; a group of people in one corner with lots of dead space above and to the side of the photo. Think about what you want to include in a photo and wait for the right moment to capture it.

10 – Too Much Photoshop

I’m all for a bit of post processing, but when it’s over done and on every photo, it looks pretty terrible. Try to get the exposure right in the camera and restrict post production to cropping, contrast and enhancing techniques. Purposely overexposing a photo, adding fake lens flare, going black and white for no reason, and too much contract will detract from what could be a very good photo. IMG 4632 10 Reasons Your Photos Suck (and How to Fix Them)

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

Take Sharper Photos with These 10 Timeless Tips

Taking sharper photos is easy when you know how, and these timeless tips will help your in your efforts. All very simple, and no photoshop involved.

1 – Fast Shutter Speed

When trying to take a sharp photo, the last thing you want is motion blur. This is the most important step so make sure you get it right. I mentioned in my post about shutter speed; as a rule of thumb the average person can take a sharp unblurred image by setting the speed to a fraction of a focal length. For example, if you want to take photo at 30mm, you would set the shutter speed to 1/30 of a second. Any slower and you’re likely to get motion blur. It’s worth noting however this rule is only relevant to full frame cameras. For a crop sensor, due to the magnification effect, you would be better off choosing a speed of 1/45 of a second.

If you’re having trouble holding your camera steady and taking sharper photos, then I suggest shooting in burst mode and picking an image from the middle with the least camera shake.

2 – Use a Tripod

When a fast shutter speed isn’t an option, and your subject is stationary then it’s best to use a tripod. This will hold the camera steady and the various spirit levels on a good tripod will ensure that you’ll still manage to get a level photo on uneven ground. IMG 6701 Take Sharper Photos with These 10 Timeless Tips

3 – Focus Properly!

There are 2 ways to fix this; the first is to take the camera off of auto selection and manually select the points at which you want to focus on, or alternatively, you can use your camera’s focal lock. This will also help when you want to have a shallow depth of field. When taking a photo of a person, I recommend focusing on the eyes because that’s where eyes are naturally drawn to and if they’re in focus then it’ll generally be an acceptable photo.

When using a camera on a tripod, I like to switch my camera to live view mode and digitally zoom in 10X to where I want to focus and then focus manually. That way I know that it is exactly how I want it.

4 – Use a Good Lens

Your photos are only as good as the lens they pass through. When you buy your first camera, I recommend upgrading to an inexpensive prime (can’t zoom) lens as soon as you can. You’ll find immediately that the quality will vastly improve as prime lenses are designed with only one job in mind – they don’t have to compromise to cover a range of focal lengths. I recommend a 50mm
or 35mm 1.8 that can be picked up for less than $150.

5 – Keep your Lens Clean

A good lens is no good if it’s covered in dirt. Clean it at the beginning of every day that you use it and put a filter on it to keep it safe. Dirty lenses are going to have a noticeable affect on your photos.

6 – Image Stabilization

If you’re lucky enough to have stabilization in your lens, then turn it on. This will allow you to shoot at slower shutter speeds and narrower apertures. If you’re using a tripod then remember to turn it back off as it will have a negative effect while trying to stabilize when it doesn’t need to.

7 – Use your Base ISO

Set your camera ISO to as low as it will go – usually between 100-200 where you will get the sharpest photos. As I mentioned in my lesson on ISO; the higher the value, the more noise there will be. If you want really clear, crisp photos then you want as little noise as possible. IMG 5628 Take Sharper Photos with These 10 Timeless Tips

8 – Find your Lens’ Sweet Spot

The sharpest point in your lens will likely be between f/8-f/11. If you don’t understand aperture then I suggest you go back and read this post now. Using a wide aperture gives you a shallow depth of field, which produces a lot of blur. When you get to about f/8, you’ll find that the images are much crisper as the majority of what you’re shooting will be clearly focused.

9 – Use The Light

The more light, the better really – you don’t have to use it all. When I can’t use daylight and still want a really sharp photo, I use an off camera flash and bounce it off a wall or ceiling to make the photo feel like there was good natural lighting. Lighting is key to taking a sharp photo. In the photo below, the sun was behind the berries so I used a flash to fill in the light that would have been a silhouette otherwise.

10 – Shoot in RAW

Shooting in RAW has many advantages, it means that you can still adjust a lot of settings after you’ve taken the photo. One of those settings is the sharpness. When done properly it can add a really good final detail to a photo, but be careful not to overdo it though as photos that are too sharp are a strain to look at. IMG 7872 Take Sharper Photos with These 10 Timeless Tips