No matter where we are in our photography journey, I'm willing to bet that there are always to improve what we do or how we do it.  Although everyone reading this will be at different stages along the road, and even on different paths, I hope that reading this post gives you some ideas of the areas you can work on this weekend regardless of where you are or what you do...

The rule of thirds is one of the most basic principles of composition in photography, and one you will use all the time going forward!  Here's how to do it: 

What you need to do is imagine that your photograph is divided into nine equal sections by two horizontal and two vertical lines (as shown below) Apparently, when we look at something, our eyes are naturally drawn to the points where these lines intersect. Placing a point of interest on one of these intersections, or placing elements along one of the lines, gives the photo more balance and is more appealing to the viewer. 

Still taking most of your photos on Auto and too scared to make the move to Manual?  

You probably already know that in order to get the shots your camera is capable of,  it really needs some guidance from you! 

The good news is that your camera has some features that allow you to begin to very, very gently move away from Auto and start to gain a little more control, which will in turn greatly improve your pics - all whilst you pluck up the courage to switch over to full manual control.  

(Go on, you know you want to!)

Although I confess to loving a bit of a play about in Lightroom or Photoshop, for some of my images I just want to be able to take them straight from camera to print without having to do much work to them!

Of course, it also helps if you have a great base image when you want to go further with your editing too, that way you have extra time to spend on the image without having to do a load of boring adjustments first :)

Other things, like skin tones, are always much better if you get them right in camera too.  So, my goal is always to make sure that I get a great shot straight out of camera (SOOC)

As you know, I don't have a studio or any kind of studio lighting - but I do have a garage, a cheap background stand, one roll of background paper, and that - coupled with some natural light - is all you need for a makeshift studio on a budget! 

Last week I finished photographing around three years worth of artwork and the resulting images are all now stored nice and neat on my hard drive.  Whilst this is great as it means it is all backed up - and out of the way! - I don't really like having things just stored digitally.  For me the whole point of keeping these is so that they can be enjoyed in years to come, but also in the here and now - people don't generally flip through a hard drive in quite the same way! 

So, I had two goals in mind when photographing the artwork - Firstly to have it out on display, and secondly to have it saved for long term, but in an accessible way.  Here's what I've done so far...

Every week my son will come home from school with at least two or three new works of art - and possibly a certificate or two - which up until now I've simply been tossing into a large storage basket. Even though not every single one makes it into the basket,  the pile is still getting pretty big, so to stop it from becoming overwhelming, I've decided to take action on the artwork! 

Negative space (sometimes also called White Space) is simply an area of "empty" space around the subject of your image. Space that is negative is usually either a neutral or contrasting background that draws your eye to the main subject of your photograph.

Want smooth, even skin and eyes that are full of life in your child portraits? I bet you do!  This simple tutorial will guide you through the first steps of using natural window or doorway light to create beautiful portraits.

Sometimes it can feel like we take the same images time and time again!  That's why I always try to mix it up by making sure that I include three types of photos when taking images of a person.   

Although that sounds like a little amount of options, within these basic types you will have a considerable amount of variation available on each one, depending on where you place your subject and where you shoot from, how you have them pose etc.  

If you keep these three simple types of portrait shots in mind when shooting, you will help make sure you get a good range of photos from one session. 

Ready? Let's go! 

White Balance is my nemesis, and I am sure it is many of yours too! There are a few ways you can set your white balance in camera - you can use Auto White Balance (not recommended!),  use one of the presets available in your camera (like Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsten etc) then tweak in processing, or set a Custom White Balance, or use Kelvin...

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.