One of the things I have done differently this year to my family photo books was to add video to them!  This is such a fun little addition - hearing voices and sounds along with the photographs really helps bring some of them to life, especially videos of things like school performances or dancing, but even just hearing how voices sound adds a little extra! 

After you have mastered the basics of photography, it's time to get started on the fun stuff - and for me, composition is one of them!  Interesting composiiton can take an ordinary lifestyle image and elevate from a snapshot into something much more artistic so it's worth wrapping your head around a few tools  So, today, I'm running through some compositional "rules" (I say, "rules" but really you should think of them more as guidelines to experiment with) that I think can add the most impact to your images. 

Give your mom an amazing gift with this FREE Mother's Day Template for creating your own Interactive album in Photoshop! 

I appreciate i'm a little early, but if you are anything like me, projects that used to take one or two days to complete now can take weeks instead, so I thought I'd post early to make sure you have enough time to use this Mother's Day Template if you wanted to! 

The idea for this album came about after my mother received a christmas card from my son. It was the first time she had been given anything with his handwriting, and there were tears in her eyes as she read it. (bless her, she also wanted to frame it!) I knew then that a little book with some recent photographs, along with his writing and drawings would make a perfect gift for Mother's Day, so this album was created. I love it so much that I thought I'd share it with you guys if you wanted it too. 

The Canon 50mm F1.8 s a little gem of a lens for it's price, and because of that it's one that I recommend to all beginners over the kit lens. However, there is another 50mm made by Canon which is not too mind-crushingly expensive - the Canon 50mm F1.4. I know many people with the F1.8 will have considered upgrading to the F1.4 (or wondering whether just to buy that one straight off and bypass the F1.8 version), and wondered whether it was worth the price. Well, I upgraded a couple of years ago, but before I sent my old lens off to it's new home, I did some comparison shots to see how much difference there was between the two.

Fancy treating yourself to a new photography book to curl up with this weekend but don't know what to get? Don't worry, help is here! I know it can be hard to know which to buy from the multitude available out there, so - seeing as I appear to have my own mini library of them -  I've compiled a list of books that should give you some idea of what to add to your Amazon cart this weekend!  I should point out, I don't have all of these: some are books that I have read and enjoyed, others are ones that have been recommended to me by people I trust, and I've thrown in a couple that have caught my eye but that haven't actually got around to buying yet!

I love black and white images - they are beautifully timeless and allow you to see the world in a completely different way.

However, there are many images that are just not a good candidate for a black and white conversion. If you have ever converted an image and thought it looked a bit "meh", the chances are it was just because that particular image wasn't a good fit. 

Although there are no hard and fast rules about what makes a good black and white image, here are the things that I watch out for if I am looking to convert the image into black & white. You can use this in processing, or even when you are shooting if you know you want to convert the image later. 

Ready? Let's go! 

One of the best things I did in my photography journey was to start setting my white balance in camera, rather than relying on AUTO.  I was really struggling with getting the right colour in my image - in particular skin tones - and I could spend ages mucking around in Lightroom or Photoshop trying to get the image to look "right". When you can't "see' colour correctly, this is a really, really hard task! 

As  I've been sharing a few photoshop templates here on the blog,  I thought I'd take a moment to show you how to add images to a collage or storyboard template. It's actually very easy to do but I know that some of you may be totally unfamiliar with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and it can take a while to learn where everything is, so this should allow you to get started. You can use this same method regardless of template type (such as cards or album pages etc) as they all use pretty much the same steps. 

First of all, how many of you have heard of the term Bokeh? It comes from a japanese word meaning ”blur” or ”haze” and refers to the part of the image that you have intentionally blurred by using a selective depth of field. This affect is used a lot in photography to focus the eye on a specific subject within the frame (used a lot in portrait photography to isolate the person from a background) and just to create a more pleasing image. It’s probably one of the keys things that will make people think of a portrait looking more ”professional” so it is a good little trick to have in your photography arsenal!

You have probably heard numerous times that if you are trying to get better quality images and improve your photography, you shouldn’t use your cameras pop up flash. Why? Because it produces a very hard light which will a) look unnatural and give you lots of hard shadows b) hit your subject straight on so that he or she will look flat and drained and c) will probably always leave your subject with red-eye. All in all, deeply unflattering! For this reason, I definitely prefer taking images using natural light, and strive to do so, but there are times when you simply do need to use flash, for example taking photos indoors when there is little light available.

I'm in the middle of giving my home office a bit of a makeover and have just made one of these photo collage prints for over my computer desk so I thought I'd give you a bit of a tutorial on it. 

I am forever changing out images (drives my husband insane) so over the years I have grown adverse to actually hammering any nails into the wall so this particular way of displaying photos is ideal for me!  Creating a collage also allows me to show lots of completely different lifestyle images, without having to worry that they are not "arty" or making sure that they go together - again, ideal since that is the type of images I mainly take! The best thing is it is so simple to do, and you can have it up on your wall in a couple of hours tops so there's instant gratification. 

One of the things I am asked most frequently about is whether I have any tips for photographing toddlers, so I thought I'd put together some for you!  Although these tips certainly apply to professional photographers wanting to capture this age group, I've written these more with a parent photographing their own child in mind - so in natural situations, not necessarily studios or formally posed. 

We talk a lot in photography about making sure that we get the "correct" exposure in camera.  This is particularly important in portraiture, as pulling your exposure up or down significantly in processing can make their skin look a weird colour, and gives a harsher contrast which is generally unflattering and best avoided! .

Great skin happens first in camera, so for the most part when taking images of people, we want to make sure that our subject is currently exposed. The best way to to do that is to use your subjects skin as your metering point!

And here's how do it :)