One of the areas I wish I had gotten control over much, much earlier in my photography journey was having an organisational framework for managing my digital photos. My older files are in such a mess, scattered over different devices (and some precious baby photos are currently held hostage on a broken laptop!) that will take me a long time to sort out. That is why I’m always recommend that one of the first things you do is get yourself organised for successfully managing your digital photos.

Which is why I’ve invited an expert to come onto the blog and give us her tips for organising your digital photos! Caroline Gunter is a certified photo organizer, with years of experience helping people organise and manage their photos, so she’s the real deal when it comes to this topic!

In this blog post, Caroline is going to break down her 3 part framework for successfully organising your digital photos, step by step. Let’s do this!

Over the years, we have written SO many photography tutorials for beginners here on the Live Snap Love blog, that I thought it was high time that I compiled a few of our best ones into one place!

If you are brand new to photography (heck, maybe you just got your hands on your first DSLR at Christmas!) you are going to find SO much good stuff here. I highly recommend you bookmark this page, or pin it to your Pinterest boards so you can come back to it later!

But even if you’ve been shooting for a little while, some of these tutorials are going to give you a new perspective or add to your knowledge (you don’t know what you don’t know!) so I recommend you still check them out. even if you’ve been shooting a while.

Did you just snag yourself a brand shiny new DSLR camera? Or maybe you’ve just blown the layer of dust off the one that’s been sitting in a cupboard since last year?!

However and whenever you got your hands on your new camera, it’s an exciting time, regardless of whether it’s your first camera or your third!

But of course, ANY new equipment can take a bit of getting used to, and if it’s your first camera ever, it can all be a little bit overwhelming too :)

This post lays out 10 things you should do when you get your camera. Obviously, if this is not your first ever camera, some of these suggestions will be a bit basic for you, but it can act as a checklist to make sure you’ve covered everything. And if this is your first one, this post will be a goldmine of information for you :)

If you’re interested in getting creative with your photos, challenging yourself to try something new each week, all whilst improving your photography skills, and then I have the PERFECT thing for you: our Project 52 photography challenge for 2021!

A Project 52 isn’t as scary as it sounds, it’s simply a weekly challenge to get you up off your armchair and out shooting.

You get a weekly theme or prompt, usually just one one or two words such as “Leading Lines” or “Connection” and your job is simply to head out and capture a photo that fits the prompt, and then share it with a group doing the exact same thing!

See? Told you it was simple :)

If that sounds like something you’re interested in doing, here are all the deets…

This is a question I get asked all the time: “How do I get smiles from the kids, or stop people from looking awkward during a photo session?”

Let’s face it, most people just simply aren’t a fan of getting their photo taken, and find the situation uncomfortable, and kids often find the whole thing one big bore (and they’ve probably already been told to be on their best behaviour so they are already expecting the worst!) The result can be images that look stiff and awkward.

To help you get those relaxed happy family photos you’ve been looking for (and get those all important smiles from the kids) I’ve invited professional photographer Melissa Gibson to give me her tips on how she manages a session to make sure she gets the shots that people will love!

Are you in need of some Christmas photography ideas, or do want some tips for capturing Christmas morning, or perhaps you’d like a guide to photographing Christmas lights?! Or all three?!

If you answered yes, then good news, because this week we’re talking all things Christmas, with ideas, tips and prompts to help you beautifully capture the holidays.

I loooove photographing Christmas, because there are many lifestyle family moments to capture, traditions to record, details to focus on, and of course, the different lighting opportunities that come around!

So without further ado, let’s dive into our Christmas photography ideas, tips, and prompts….

We all love a good deal, which is why Black Friday is such a lovely time of year! If you’ve had your eye on something for a little while, then Black Friday is a great time to see whether there are any deals to be had.

But in case you’re not quite sure what to get, or just want some ideas, I’ve curated a list of black friday deals for photographers in 2020, so you can see what’s available. Some of these I personally use and love, and others I’ve included as alternatives for you, as they might suit you better!

I’ve also broken these by category, so you can dismiss some of these outright, for example if you’re not in business. Ready? Let’s go!

Can you believe it? Only 44 days left until the end of the year!

Around this time, I'm often thinking about what I wish I'd done differently the last 11 months, and what I can do better in the next one.

With regard to photography, there is one area I still struggle with and that is shooting consistently.

There can sometimes be weeks in between each time I pick up my camera, and that lack of consistency hurts my creativity,....which in turn means every photo I take seems blah and uninteresting....which in turn means I'm less motivated and less likely to pick up my camera.

Vicious circle in action right there :)

So I want to make a change, starting now 💪

I'm committing to taking 31 days of photos in December - and I want to bring you along with me! 💖

If you want to take your own family photos this year, either due to practicalities or budget constraints, then this is the post for you! I’m going to walk you through how to take your own family photos, step by step.

This is such a handy thing to know how to do, because it means you can take your own family portraits for things like holiday cards, or to hang on your wall, but also for other occasions, for example if you are holiday, or birthdays, when it might be too costly to hire a professional photographer each time.

Now, I’m not going to lie, it is easier to have a professional come in and take your photos, because they are able to simply focus on getting the best shot and making sure everyone is posed at they should be (after taking a set of family photos where my then-young son had his finger up his nose and I didn’t notice, you begin to appreciate these things ) rather than also having to worry about what they look like too :)

But of course, it is entirely doable to take your own family photos, so let’s get cracking on how to approach this!

We live in an age where everything we do is shared across a multitude of platforms online. From our websites to social media accounts and everything in between, we’re sharing our intellectual property with the world.

Surely, as a photographer, that’s good for business?

Well, yes, it is. But it also puts your work at risk of being stolen and redistributed by unauthorized persons.

Our industry depends on our ability to produce unique works of art, and we cannot risk an intellectual rights battle with thieves and hackers. The good old right click “Save As” function can cause untold destruction on your business.

So, how can you protect yourself from theft? And more importantly, how do you protect your work?

As photographers, there are times when we need to change the colour of something, for example, a t-shirt that a subject was wearing, their shoes, lipstick colour, or even take down the redness of the ears in backlit image, or change the colour of a product.

Up until now, this was a job best handled by Photoshop, simply because it had more precise colour controls.

But then good ol’ Lightroom went and added a hue slider to the local adjustment tools, and (fanfare please) we can do these colour changes within Lightroom!

Watch the video below to see where to find this piece of editing magic, and how to use it. I’ve also used a few different images so you can see the different occasions you might want to use it too!

When I ask in my community Facebook group what they are struggling with, without fail, I’ll get a ton of people who tell me that getting tack sharp images is a problem for them. So if you are having trouble with the same thing, believe me when I tell you - you are not alone, far from it!

I thought this would be a great topic to discuss, because I know that so many of you struggle with this, and because I totally understand that it can be difficult at first to get tack sharp images - I had the same problems that you are facing right now too, believe me :)

So in this week’s post, I wanted to give you a little bit of a troubleshooting checklist so that you can run through to try to diagnose your focus issues. Now, there are techniques and strategies over and above what I’ve outlined here that we can use to really fine tune our focus, depending on where and what we are photographing, but I wanted to go right back to the beginning to make sure that you have the foundation right, and then when you are ready, you can layer the most advanced techniques on top.

If you want to make this post really super actionable, I recommend that you grab a few images that you don’t feel are as sharp as they could be, and then run down this list to see if any of these common issues could be the source of your problem.

October is almost upon us, so it’s time to share some Halloween Photography Ideas!

This mix of fun and spooky Halloween photography ideas will give you some great prompts for photos you can try to capture, image examples you can look at for inspiration, and kickstart some ideas for Halloween photoshoots too!

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on the differences between Lightroom Classic CC and Lightroom CC, going over the BIG difference between the two programs, how the features differ, along with questions to ask yourself when deciding which one was right with you (not read it? Start there and then come back here so this post makes sense!)

This week, I wanted to jump in and tell you the reasons why I personally use and in most cases, recommend, Lightroom Classic CC over Lightroom CC. I know for myself that I love hearing the “why” behind other people’s decisions, as it helps me make my own, so hopefully this is the same for you!

You can either watch a Facebook live I did on this very subject (it’s at the end of the post!) or you can simply read the blog post - whatever works for you :)

So without further ado, let’s go over why I use and love Lightroom Classic CC…

Are you struggling with getting tack sharp images? Do you feel like your images are too soft and that you’re consistently missing focus? Then keep reading!

Today I’m going to talk you about just ONE reason why you might be struggling to nail focus, and that’s due to your lens needing calibrated.

Before we start though, I should start out by saying that most of the time, our images are soft due to user error, not our equipment. There are so many factors that go into getting a tack sharp image (and can stop us from getting one) that it’s far more likely that you have gotten one of them wrong, rather than the lens be the problem.

That said, if you are not consistently getting the sharp focus you want, it might be an idea to quickly test your lens, that way you’ll know whether you have a problem with your equipment or not.

If you do, then you can calibrate your lens to fix the problem, or if you don’t, at least it will put your mind at rest that your equipment is fine and you simply need to learn the strategies that will help you get tack sharp focus!