Waterfall pictures are some of the most satisfying subjects you can shoot with your digital camera. However, the fast moving water throws up some challenges for photographers.
Often, exposures end up disappointing – you may have set the wrong shutter speed, for instance, and won’t get the traditional blurred-water effect in your waterfall pictures. Other times the exposure ends up being too dark or light, due to having to cope with the combination of dark rocks and bright, foamy moving water.
Pictures of planes, like pictures of birds, can be incredibly difficult to capture, if not more. Their size and speed can lead to shots with awkward compositions or poor focusing, let alone exposing against a bright sky.
Inside we offer 6 of our best tips for getting yourself into position and your digital camera set up ideally to take top-notch pictures of planes in flight or on the ground.
Exposure blending enables you to mix images to get perfectly exposed skies, not always from the same scene. It’s not only a simple way of making HDR images, but it’s also a way of making more realistic-looking HDR images.
The process when shooting is simple and most cameras have a built-in Bracketing feature to aid you further. It’s crucial that one image captures the detail of the sky and the other that of the foreground – then you use Layers and Masks to blend the two.
Panoramic photos are a great way to showcase sweeping landscapes. By shooting a series of overlapping images and combining them on your computer, you can take in a much wider angle of view. This technique also means you don’t need an expensive wide-angle lens – your 18-55mm standard lens is fine.
This photo stitching technique is much better than taking a wide-angle shot and simply cropping it because it produces a picture with a much higher resolution. Stitching photos together in this way might sound complicated, but it’s not. All you need is a tripod and Photoshop Elements or higher. We’ve used Elements because it has a Photomerge Panorama tool that makes stitching photos really easy.
If you use a point-and-shoot camera or cameraphone, it’s often almost impossible not to get everything from your feet to the distant horizon in focus. But the large sensors built into DSLRs means it can be surprisingly difficult to get everything in the frame looking sharp.
That’s because the bigger sensors used on DSLR cameras mean less depth of field (DOF). While blurred backgrounds can be a real bonus for subjects such as portraits, the limited zone of sharpness can be a problem for other types of photography.
What is hyperfocal distance? Hyperfocal focusing is a specialised application of depth of field theory that’s perfectly suited to landscape photography. Calculating hyperfocal distance actually quite simple to get your head around.
When managing depth of field, you need to think in terms of the zone of sharp focus as a distance range, from the near limit (the closest object that will appear sharp) to the far limit (the farthest). With hyperfocal focusing, you place the far limit at infinity, and this automatically maximises the depth of field available.
Steam trains remain a popular subject no matter what letter your generation may be. Thick plumes of smoke, strong leading lines and big wide angles: this classic shot of steam trains is forever etched in our minds.
But often you only get one attempt at getting this. Below we’ve offered 6 essential train photography tips that will help you be ready to capture stunning rail pictures the next time you go out to photograph steam trains.
Why should you learn how to use manual focus (MF or M), especially with all the amazing advances in autofocus (AF or A) technology? Well, there’ll be times when all the AF points in the world won’t help you get sharp shots. Often, activating MF is the only way of beating the dreaded blur.
Macro photographers often use manual focus to dictate their focus point. So do low-light shooters and photographers working in tricky situations, such as shooting through glass, or perhaps focusing on a distant horizon on a misty morning, when autofocus may struggle to get a lock. Sports photographers benefit from pre-focusing in manual focus, especially if they can predict exactly where the action is going to take place.
Babies, toddlers and teenagers (oh my!). After the Panamanian kinkjou they might be one of the most challenging subjects to take a portrait of. Below we’ve spoken to the pros who do this for a living and found the 13 best portrait photography tips for getting better pictures of babies, toddlers and teenagers.
Are you having trouble taking decent photos of birds in flight? Don’t worry, it’s a common problem and doesn’t mean you’re not a talon-ted photographer.
From getting an accurate exposure of your subject against all that bright sky to simply being in the right place at the right time, one of the more challenging genres you’ll ever attempt will be bird photography. Tips and techniques abound, but we’ve put together what we believe are the 10 most fundamental rules you should follow when taking pictures of birds in flight.
