Mikayla M. FINKEL =): September 2010

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

5 picture taking tips (:

1.Move in as close to the subject(s) as possible. Unless you're taking a scenic shot, a lot of background in the picture is not important.

2. don't pose your subject(s) facing the sun causes eye squinting and wrinkles or with their back to the sun causes lighting issues. Position the subject with the sun to their side.
3.How you hold the camera, vertical (up & down) or horizontal (left to right), will help in framing the subject. This will also help you to get as close as possible. Can you get the subjects in the camera's viewfinder when holding it vertically. If so, that's how you should take the photo.

4. Gradulated filters- with Landscape photography in particular, there is usually too much contrast between the sky and the foreground. Neither film or Digital cameras can cope with this contrast range like the human eye can. If you leave it to your camera's meter, it will often expose correctly for the sky, but this means the foreground will be too dark. Graduated filters compensate for this difference (see the examples (Fig 1a and b below). The best ones are ND (Neutral Density) grads or Grey grads, which don't affect the natural colours in the image. Experiment with bracketing exposures (see below), so that you learn how the filter affects your images.
5. Point of Focus- For a given subject distance, a telephoto lens captures the scene with a much shallower depth of field than does other lenses. Out of focus distant objects are also made much larger, which enlarges their blur. It's therefore critical that you achieve pinpoint accuracy with your chosen point of focus.