Posts Tagged ‘digital photography tips’

Digital Photography Tips – What’s Wrong With This Picture? Part I

What’s wrong with this picture? Hey, what’s wrong with your pictures? Look, I’ve got news for you if you’re a photographer trying to sell your photos online. There’s some things you really NEED to do in order to sell more photos. So read this article. It’s about to give you a few digital photography tips on how to tweak your photos just right so that buyers absolutely love them…

Firstly, if you’ve already been shooting some pictures, I want you to take a good hard look at them. Then I want you to visit some of the top stock photo websites and see what type of images are popular. Keep your mind open to ideas here. The stock photo world is HUGE… And there’s always a need for good ‘art photography’ as there is for travel, close up, people, animal photography, etc.

Now as you observe some of the more popular stock photographs, you’ll see that the photographer not only captures a stunning image, but often there’s a lot of ‘use-able space’ in the image. What I mean is that, more often than not, a good stock photo is composed of not only a beautiful image, but also enough space so that a photo buyer, or art director, can add some specific text or a headline to the image.

In fact, try this. Go to Cnn.com or Time.com and look at the photo based advertisements that run on these sites. See how a lot of the photo advertising uses words (headline or text, inside the photo) to explain the story further? The photo gets your attention… and the words ‘pull’ you in. So, when you go to shoot stock photos, not only do you want to capture a great image, but you want to leave some ‘space’ in there so your photo is attractive for advertisers too!

Thus you discover that many of the good stock photos have a careful composition to them. Think about the photo buyer for a minute. Think about how your photo can help ‘sell’ or promote their product. Are you creating photos with enough space or room to move? Study this stuff. It’s one photography tip you can take to the bank, believe me!

Digital Photography Tips & Tricks – How to Maintain Your Digital Camera (DSLR)

Before reading this article, please note that, this is specifically for DSLR users. So if you are not, I suggest you ignore this article. But if you do own a DSLR, please read on. It is quite important. It is important to maintain your camera. One way to do that is to clean it often. Here I will assist you and provide you with some information necessary for you to clean your DSLR camera.

The Lens

There are generally three parts you need to clean in a lens. The three parts are: the front-side lens, the back-side lens, and the filter (if you have one).

1. Place your lens on a stable platform (i.e. table) in an isolated area: preferably the bathroom or somewhere that has very little dust.
2. Use a blower on the front-side of the lens to blow some of the larger dust away
3. Drop about 5-6 drops of lens solution onto the front-side of the lens
4. Using a micro-fiber cloth, gently wipe the lens in a spiral movement starting from the center.
5. Using the same micro-fiber cloth, repeat the spiral motion from the center a couple of times.
6. Use the blower to give it a final blow on the lens.
7. Repeat steps 2-6 to clean the filter as well.
8. For the back-side of the lens, use a blower to blow the dust away and use a soft brush to brush the dust away. I do not recommend you to use the lens solution on the back-side of the lens as it may damage the lens.

The Sensor

Before reading through this here is a disclaimer:

“I am not and will not be responsible for any damage occur to your camera. All camera damages are under the responsibility of the owner. The following information provided will assist you in cleaning the sensor of the camera. All physical activities done upon the camera are of the owner’s choice and judgment.”

I write this disclaimer because the sensor is the most expensive, delicate, fragile, and important component in your camera. Therefore YOU have to take care of it properly. The bad news is that your sensor WILL eventually become dirty and you will eventually have to clean it. The choice is yours.

To check whether or not your sensor is dirty you can run a simple test. Set your camera into aperture-priority mode and select the maximum F-number (smallest aperture). Set your focusing to manual-focus and focus to infinity. Point towards a bright, and plain source and take the photo. Preview the photo to detect any apparent black spots. The spots are dust in your sensor. To clean the sensor read the following steps.

1. Lock your mirror up (Refer to your owner’s manual for this feature)
2. Place the camera on a stable platform (i.e. table) in an isolated area: preferably the bathroom or somewhere that has very little dust.
3. Remove the lens from the camera body
4. Use a blower initially to blow the larger dust particle away.
5. Use a sensor cleaner to gently wipe the sensor.
6. Wipe the sensor either in a linear pattern, a star pattern or a spiral pattern starting from the center. (The aim is to remove all the dust by wiping away from the center).
7. Attach the lens back into the body and check if all the dust is gone.
8. If not, repeat steps 1 to 6

Cleaning Camera Don’t:

- Do not use the same brush for the lens and for the reflex-mirror
- Do not use a lens cleaner to clean the sensor
- Do not use any cleaner to clean your sensor unless it says ‘Sensor-Cleaner’
- Do not press on your sensor too hard while cleaning (Be patient!)
- Do not use too much lens solution for your lenses (All lens are coated with a fine digital film to protect the lens. You might “cleaned” this away!)
- Do not use a vacuum cleaner for your sensor (Although I’ve seen people done it, the risk is just too high!)

The cleaning process may sound simple but you really have to be careful! A clean camera is a happy camera. You’ll take better photos with a clean camera so plan to clean it once in a while.

When starting out in taking pictures, it can be hard to capture that perfect shot or a shot that looks somewhat decent. This article will teach you beginners photography in as little time as possible.

To begin, let us take a look at the camera you are using. Is it a fully automatic camera or an SLR? Now, either one will do, however, one will give you much more flexibility.

The next step you are going to do is learn how to use your camera as best as you can. What is the point of taking great shots if you cannot take clear, sharp images. If you have a great shot but a blurry image your shot isn’t great. It’s still “beginner” looking.

To get better at the technical part of using your camera you are really going to have to get your hands dirty and just take lots of pictures. Get used to taking pictures and focusing the image as sharp as possible. The good news is that this is all technical and with practice you will get better.

The next thing you are going to do is get better at composing shots. You can, of course, do both of these things at the same time. To take good pictures you should start looking around at other photos that are out there. Notice what makes them look great.

Look at how most photos around have the main subject off center. Rarely is the subject dead center and when the subject is, most of the time it is clearly obvious why.

So, get your camera skills better and compositional skills better and you will start taking better photos in no time.