In photography, it’s not just what you shoot that counts – the way that you shoot it is crucial, too. Poor photo composition can make a fantastic subject dull, but a well-set scene can create a wonderful image from the most ordinary of situations. With that in mind, we’ve picked our top 10 photo composition ‘rules’ to show you how to transform your images.
Don’t feel that you’ve got to remember every one of these laws and apply them to each photo you take. Instead, spend a little time practising each one in turn and they’ll become second nature. You’ll soon learn to spot situations where the different rules can be applied to best effect.
Retro is all the rage these days, and particularly the retro photo effect. Just because you shoot with a digital camera, though, doesn’t mean you can’t still get this lovely vintage film effect in your images.
In the quick Photoshop tutorial below we show you how you can get the retro photo effect in 4 easy steps.
You don’t need a movie mode function on your digital camera to make a motion picture. In fact, you don’t even need additional movie-editing software, such as Adobe Premiere. For this simple photography project we’ll show you how to use nothing more than your digital camera and Photoshop CS to put together a simple stop-motion animation sequence, then save it as a QuickTime movie. And seeing as today is Easter, we thought what better subject than to melt a chocolate Easter Bunny!
Using the basic principles of animation, we’ll take a series of images using our DSLR’s Interval Timer set to take a shot automatically every seven seconds,
while the chocolate bunny is slowly melted by a hair dryer.
Are your architectural photos starting to feel a bit samey? If you’re looking to spice up your portfolio, capturing pin-sharp night photos of buildings can be a real striking showpiece in your architectural archive. But night photography can also prove a real challenge if you don’t use the right settings and techniques.
To make sure your get off on the right foot, we’ve put together our best 7 tried-and-tested techniques that are guaranteed to improve your architectural night photography.
Auto-exposure bracketing enables you to automatically take a series of shots at different exposure settings. By changing the shutter speed (or aperture), the camera brackets the original exposure in preset increments (usually between 1/3 to two stops) to capture three or more successive shots. Bracketing ensures a correct exposure in situations when you need to shoot quickly and you don’t have time to check the histogram.
Auto-exposure bracketing makes this process much easier because it allows you to take a series of frames from precisely the same position (so that overlapping frames will align correctly) with different exposure settings to record both highlight and shadow detail.
Bokeh portrait photography is a fun way to experiment with cool effects at little cost. Here, we’ve used the bokeh effect to create a bright background using a set of fairy lights left over from Christmas. By placing the lights a distance behind our subject and using a wide aperture, we threw the lights out of focus, turning them into circular blobs of colour to create this bokeh portrait. Find out how to do it for yourself inside…
No matter how smart your camera’s built-in light meter, it will sometimes under- or over-expose. You can learn to compensate for such errors, but there’s a more accurate and reliable method – using a hand held light meter, such as the Sekonic L-308S hand held light meter shown here.
When using your DSLR’s internal light meter you’re measuring the light reflected from the subject, and the camera assumes that the tones in the scene will average out to a mid-grey. This is fine for most subjects, but when the subject is mainly white or black, the meter will set an exposure to record this as grey. So with white subjects you’ll end up with an under-exposed shot, and with black subjects you’ll end up with an over-exposed shot.
Despite all the fuss over the recent announcements of Photoshop CS6 and its new features, it’s worth remembering that Photoshop Elements is also quite a powerful piece of software. And a fraction of the CS6 price tag!
In the short video tutorial below, we show you how you can use some of Photoshop Elements’ new sharing options to post photos on Flickr and Facebook and start doing more with your photos.
Despite all the fuss over the recent announcements of Photoshop CS6 and its new features, it’s worth remembering that Photoshop Elements is also quite a powerful piece of software. And a fraction of the CS6 price tag!
In the video tutorial below we show you how you can make a photo book in Photoshop Elements that looks just as slick and professional as some of the templates you find on many photo printing websites.
When photographing landscapes, seascapes or architecture, there’s no excuse for not getting a level horizon. Even the slightest tilt of the camera can ruin an otherwise attractive shot. This can be difficult to get right by eye alone, even if your camera’s mounted on a tripod, but there are plenty of techniques and gadgets you can use to ensure your shots are perfectly straight and your horizon level.
