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6 Ways to Set White Balance
Getting white balance right in camera is an extra step when shooting, but it’s so worth it to get rid of all of those wonky color casts that make your photos look awful! Whilst you can always change your white balance later in processing, it’s much easier to get it right in camera, and will save you a ton of time in editing, promise.
Here are six different ways to set your white balance when taking your photos.
Lifestyle Photography: 8 Tips for Capturing your Own Children
If you have children that love getting their photo taken, then I totally envy you! As my son has grown up and developed his own (strong willed) personality, he has also grown more resistant to getting his picture taken. Of course that is fine – I mean, who wants to have a lens in their face everyday? – but as a mother who wants to document our family life, it can be downright tricky at times! However, I have my ways of making sure I can still take lifestyle shots, either by ensuring his co-opration, or by being sneaky :)
So, if you are one of those who have children who either cower or complain when the camera comes out, here are my tips for getting lifestyle images of your children, whilst ensuring that they are still comfortable with it.
Shooting with Photo Books in Mind
I been making a photo book a year for a couple of years now, and over that time I have (unwittingly!) developed a shooting style that helps me more easily develop page spreads that look good together in my family photo books. I still end up with a few pages of random photos, but for the most part, the pages look more like they were "meant" to be together, and I can put the thing whole together more quickly.
This is what I aim for when shooting day-to-day stuff that I know will make it into my photo books, but I think the following tips would apply if you are a lifestyle photographer and want to be able to sell photo books too.
6 Tips for Better Indoor Photos
As winter draws in, I do find myself shooting indoors more often, which presents it's own set of challenges - working in smaller locations, and dealing with less light are the two that spring first to mind! I used to shy away from shooting indoors, but as much of our normal, everyday lives take place indoors, it was important to me to get more comfortable with shooting there!
Here are my tips for improving your indoor photos:
Zooms vs Primes: Which is right for you?
One of the main benefits of owning a DSLR is the ability to change lenses to suit what and where you are photographing.
As you progress beyond the kit lens, and start to look at adding to your lens collection. one age old question pondered by many always crops up. Should I buy a zoom lens or prime lens?
It's a very difficult question to answer because there are a lot of factors to take into consideration: your preferred shooting style, your available budget, and what your main subjects are going to be.
Hopefully what I can do here today is give you some things to think about when you are comparing the two!
Ready? Let battle commence 😀
A Step by Step Guide to Using a Speedlight
Let me preface this post by saying I am by no means an expert at using flash. I know people who will use it during the day, or can light a scene in the pitch black using one speedlight and an umbrella, or use several as slaves and masters (?!)
I am not this person.
I only dig the speed light out when the days get shorter, and natural light indoors becomes less, and I need to supplement the existing light - that's it!
But as I'm willing to bet that is why most lifestyle photographers reach for their speed light, I wanted to give you a guide to use to use flash for this very purpose.
The other thing to note is that for this to make any sense whatsoever, you really must understand your exposure triangle and how everything goes together - but for the purposes of this article I'm just going to assume that you are confident about what each of the elements does :)
(Oh, and If you are unsure about why you would even want an external flash unit, i wrote about this recently with some examples here so you can read that first so you have some background!)
With all that caveats neatly out of the way, let's start on how to use flash!
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It's been quite a few years now since I made the switch from Aperture Priority Mode to shooting in Manual Mode, and it was one of the BEST things I ever did to improve my photography skills.
It was like a whole new world opened up to me, and I started TRULY understanding exposure, and in turn, getting the images that I wanted.
Of course, there was a lot to learn, and there are some things I wish I had known before I started!
So, here are 10 things about shooting in Manual Mode that you might just wish you knew…