Are you getting tired of taking the same old photos and fancy mixing it up a bit? One way you can do that is simply be changing the angle you shoot from!  Instead of only shooting the front of your subject, why not try shooting from above or below? Or get behind your subject, or get down low and be on the same level? You never know what will look the best until you take the shot, so move around you subject and shoot from as many angles as you can think of. Here's some more information and tips for taking images from all the different angles, and of course some example images to get you going!

Although we can literally do a ton of things in editing, and fix many in-camera mistakes from the safety of our computer desk, there are some things we just can't fix in processing, no matter how hard we try! Out of focus images, bad lighting, and clipped highlights are some of the things that we simply can't make right after the fact. 

Here's are the five things I believe you should get right in camera every time...

If you are a photographer parent, or a photographer who shoots event and birthdays, you will inevitably need to know how to take great pictures of children blowing out their birthday candles.

Although it might seem like a challenging task at hand, taking birthday candle pictures is honestly very simple! With the right knowledge of camera settings and lighting, taking birthday cake pictures will be a breeze.

I just love taking silhouettes - they are dramatic yet simple, and they always seem to stand out in a group of photos. And the best news? The are actually pretty easy to do! You just want to keep a few key things in mind when taking your shot to get the image you are going for :) 

So let’s get crackin’ with the steps to an awesome silhouette! 

Photographing children can be pretty challenging! Especially so if you are photographing your own children, since they would rather be doing ANYTHING else rather than sitting you with and having a camera thrust in their face. (And it can be the same if you are the hired photographer too!)  I have had my fair share of pouty faces and cheesy grins over the years, along with some not-so-awesome shots of the back of their head as they are running away, and of course, the images that capture a beautiful, natural expression....but they are totally out of focus! 

In future posts I'm going to be giving you some specific tips and strategies for working with different age groups, but to kick us off, here are my top 8 tips and tricks for photographing children. 

Photography is a meeting of the technical and artistic.  We are often focused more on the technical side of our craft, learning about our equipment, which settings to use, how to use editing software and so on, but often we don't set ourselves the same time for learning or nurturing our creativity.  What a mistake! 

So why aren't we taking the same to time to grow creatively as we are technically?  Maybe because most people feel that you are either born with a creative mind or not, rather than it being a tool that you can learn and practice, just like any other skill!  Whilst learning the tools of your trade is undoubtedly valuable (we need to know HOW to create the vision in our head into a photograph, which takes technical skill) maybe spending a little bit of time nurturing our creativity wouldn't go a miss every once in a while :) 

Unless you are brand spanking new to photography, you will have heard about using the rule of thirds to compose your images.   It's a useful guideline that helps you move away from having your subject slap bang in the middle of frame, by giving you a grid that shows you where to position your subjects.  (If you haven't used that yet,  I suggest you start by reading all about it here, then come back to this!)

If you are still reading this, then it means you are ready to move on from the rule of thirds! Yay!

The good news is there are more "guides" that we can use to compose our images, and these are called the golden compositions. 

One of the things I get asked a lot is how to choose your settings when shooting in Manual Mode on your DSLR.  I understand that it can seem a little bit overwhelming at first - you are used to the camera making all of these decisions for you, so it can be difficult to even know where to start!  Never fear though, as today, I'm going to walk you through the steps for choosing your settings in manual mode, and give you some example photos (along with the camera settings too) so you can see it all together.

Buying yourself a new lens - particularly if this is your first purchase away from the kit lens - can be an overwhelming experience!  It's an important decision for you to make too, since your lens choice plays a critical role in making sure you images look the way you want them to! Unfortunately, there is no one single lens that will suit everybody, all of the time, so which lens is best definitely comes down to personal choice. 

With that in mind, I've come up with 8 questions that you can ask yourself before you buy a lens to determine which is the best lens choice for  YOU, and help you narrow down all the options that are out there. 

Last year I created a photo book of all my Project 365 photos from 2015, and I cannot tell you how much I LOVE it!  After looking through it at the end of last year, it really renewed my motivation to continue with the project for another year.  So, for 2016, I'm doing pretty much the same thing again, but I thought I'd share again in case any one else would like to do something similar with their 365 photos. 

Get started on your photography journey with these top photography tips for beginners! 

If you are brand new to digital photography, I know it can seem a little overwhelming with everything you need to learn. So here are 8 beginner photography tips which will get you started on the right path, and help you on your way to taking beautiful pictures in no time. Each tip has links to further reading too, so you might also want to pin / bookmark this one for future reference!

Photography can be a very expensive hobby - the gear alone can run pretty steep, and once you add on things like editing software and so on, there sometimes isn't a lot left over to use on learning how to use the darn things!  However, at all ages and stages of your photography journey, you will want to keep learning!  The good news is, there are lots of ways to learn photography that don't cost the earth, or even better, are free!  Here's six of them: 

When shooting with a DSLR, you have two choices of file formats in which to take your image - RAW or JPEG.   Most amateurs shoot in JPEG.  If you do, and are happy with the results you are getting, then of course by all means you can continue to do so! However, if you worry about not getting your settings right, or you want to improve the final look of your images, then I strongly suggest giving shooting in RAW a chance.  Although it’s not a magic pill for getting good images, shooting in RAW can help enormously as it gives you another chance to get it right!  You get much more leeway once you come to edit the photo in RAW, you will be able to bring up under exposed photos without introducing wonky color casts and grey skin, or bring back highlights and detail in images that you have over-exposed.  

I have to say, I find self portraits quite hard going! I'm much more comfortable being on the other side of the camera, for sure. There’s nothing really more complicated about self photography than ”normal” photography, the biggest problem is the logistics of getting yourself behind the camera, and making sure that you are in focus (and not feeling silly having a camera trained on you!) and actually pressing the shutter!

Here's a step by step guide to taking your own self portraits. 

White Balance can be a source of huge frustration in photography!   I've written quite a few posts on white balance previously, showcasing some different ways to set it and so on, but I felt it might be useful if these were all together in one place, so you could learn all about white balance from start to finish in one single post. Let's start with a quick recap on white balance actually is.