February 2008 Archives

Introduction to shooting macro's or closeups with a telephoto lens While not all photographers own a real macro lens, most do have a telephoto lens. By telephoto lens, I am referring to one has a 200 or 300mm focal lenth. Hard core macro photographers often refer to these types of shots as being closeups and not true macro's. However, it's hard to argue with the fact that telephoto lenses definately do a great job in photographing objects at close range. Quick tips for photographing macro's with a...

Baby photography tips Professional photographer and mom Tracey Clark, shows you how to create treasured baby photo's you'll want to keep and show off to all your friends and family. Her top tips for photographing babies include: Take lots of photographs. More than you normally would in any other photo shoot. This gives you a greater chance of getting that perfect shot. Don't do it all yourself. Have someone help you entertain your baby, while you concentrate on taking the photographs. This will minimise your...

How to photograph perfect sunrises. Nature photographer Rick Sammon, shares with us his best tips for photographing sunrises. Includes camera settings and composition tips.

Find out the best time of the day for taking macro photographs of insects and why. What hours will give you the best chance of photographing them settled still and not moving around. Also find out what time of the day is best for colorful macro shots.

Post production tips for macro photographers who edit their images with Photoshop One question I'm asked on a weekly basis is: What editing or post production work do you make on your macro photographs? While most of these types of questions come from those who use the same camera and macro lens as I own, the post production tips listed below will assist all macro photographers who edit their images with Photoshop. It's also important to note, that no amount of post production...

Digital Camera photographer of the year 2007 The winners have been announced for Digital Camera Magazine's annual photo competition, where photographers competed for the title of Photographer Of The Year 2007 and prize money of £15,000. For those that enjoy submitting their work to photography competitions, it's useful to view past winners, taking note especially of judges comments so you can see what it was about the image that stood out from the rest. Studying the reasoning behind winning photographs can be a huge...

Hundreds of free Photoshop actions for photographers including black and white, scorching sunsets, portrait and wedding action sets, infrared, lomo, airbrushing, color boosting, vintage, contrast, vignetting, dodging and burning, bluring effects and many others. Also included, a video tutorial on how to install and use Photoshop actions.

Photography tips for beginners by Rick Sammon Rick Sammon shares with us ten of his top photography tips for beginners and amatuer photographers. Rick Sammon is a famous nature and travel photographer who has published 27 books and writes for 3 photography magazines including PC Photo, Outdoor Photographer and Layers magazine. Rick's 10 Photography Tips: Learn how to see light. Look specifically for shadows and highlights, then you can set the exposure accordingly. Try to recreate the depth and dimension...

Macro photography tips with example photographs. Shown here is a set of 10 amazing macro photographs. Each photograph includes an explanation of the camera equipment that was used and tips on how it was taken. While many of the images have been taken with a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens, the settings can be reproduced with any macro lens.

What is the difference between macro, micro and closeup photography? There is often much confusion amongst new photographers over the terms macro, micro and close up photography and how they differ. For starters, macro and micro usually refers to the same thing, in that Nikon names their range of 'macro lenses' with the word 'micro'. Canon on the other hand, calls them macro lenses. For example, Nikons top macro lens is called AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED lens. Notice the term micro in that name....

Tips for photographing portraits outside during the daytime One of the biggest gripes of photographers shooting portraits outside during the daytime, is that photo's often turn out with a perfectly exposed background or skyline, yet the person they are photographing are too dark or underexposed. Take the image below for example. The camera has adjusted the exposure on the scenery as a whole, therefore mistakenly underexposing the actual person seen on the right. This problem occured because the camera gave...

Inspirational wildlife and nature photographer Steve Parish It was great to see wildlife / nature photographer Steve Parish honoured in the 2008 Australia Day awards recently. I remember the first time I'd seen Steve's photography was when my children were younger and their school used many of his published books to teach them about animals and their wildlife habitats.   With his primary motivation being to educate people, Steve considers himself to be more of a photo journalist than a wildlife photographer....

What's involved with photographing fashion models? The equipment used to photograph fashion models, isn't that different to portrait photography. Fashion photography equipment should include: A backdrop that needs to be placed behind the model. In the demonstration shown below, the photographer used a metalic sheet, however a simple material sheet would have also been sufficient. A studio flash with a soft box is used in the example below for the main source of light. However, if your taking fashion shots at home, natural light coming through a...

Photographing seagulls   Living near the ocean, one of the first birds I tried to photograph after buying a digital SLR camera, was a seagull. Like most photographers, I aimed my camera at a bird flying overhead and continuously pressed the shutter button, hoping for the best. Using this method of photography did work from time to time, however as you can imagine, it wasn't a very efficient technique. For starters, it takes a lot of room on your camera's memory...

A technique for changing your digital SLR camera lens quickly and easily, when out in the field. Personally, I used to have a rather odd technique for changing a camera lens when out and about in the field. The technique involved tightly holding one lens under my chin while I took the other off the camera's body. After taking it off the body, I'd place it under my arm while attaching the one that was under my chin, to the camera....

Nikon D300 digital SLR camera review The Nikon D300 is a semi-professional SLR camera for the serious amateur. The quality and price range is somewhere between the cheap entry level camera's (Nikon D40x) and the more expensive professional models like D2Hs or D2Xs. For a Nikon D300 you can expect to pay around $1800 for the body only. If you're after key features and specifications, you can already find this information on the Nikon website (and hundreds of other review...

Canon EOS 450D / Rebel XSi digital camera. So far, the new Canon EOS D450 (EOS Rebel XSi) due out around April this year looks like it will be a popular choice for many new photographers or those wanting to upgrade from earlier models. What are the improvements made to Canon's new digital EOS 450D (also called Rebel XSi), when compared to it's predecessor 400D / XTi.

How to photograph flowers with background blur. In contrast to popular belief, you don't necessarily need a dedicated macro lens to achieve a nice background blur when photographing flowers. It can just as easily be achieved with a telephoto zoom lens.