We’re reaching the end of October now and with Halloween just a few days away, party season is well and truly here. A post on party photography might seem like a weird idea, but it’s not as simple as you may think; that is, if you want to get good photos. I’m known amongst my friends for my photography at parties, because I regularly have my camera with me, and record the parts of the night that are often forgotten by morning.

Low key photography is when you take a photo of a subject, and everything (or almost everything) except the subject in black. This can be achieved fairly easily and in brightly lit situations; it’s just all about having the right settings on your camera. It’s a cool technique which is useful for focusing the viewers attention onto a certain part of the photo, which is usually the subject. Here’s how it’s done.

The general idea is that you find a way of syncing you camera with your flash so that you can take it off of your camera and illuminate your subject for a different angle. You’ll need a separate, off camera flash, but there’s plenty of choice to suit your budget and needs. When you take your flash off your camera, you open up a whole load of different options when it comes to diffusing the light through various umbrellas, softboxes and beauty dishes.

When I first bought my camera, I read the manual straight away; I used to take it on photo walks and read it before bed. This wasn’t really like me, but I knew I wanted to become good at photography and to do so, I was going to have to learn. I’d encourage everybody to do the same, but there’s only so much you can read in there; websites with lots of photos like this are much better. Here’s a list of stupid mistakes I made.

The idea behind this series of tutorials is to walk you through the steps a photographer takes to reach their final shot, and the thought process behind those steps. There’s a long learning curve to taking a photo that you’ve never attempted before and this tutorial is all about helping you to cut out the time it takes to reach a shot you’re happy with.