I signed up to participate in ProBlogger’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, which is just starting this week (it’s not too late to join if you’re interested!). I’m sure Darren plans to challenge and stretch us with his daily assignments, such as this one: write a list post. Here goes:
Photography Tips that Work for Me:
- Observing the Rule of Thirds will make your photos more interesting – I’m not going into a description of the rule of thirds; please click the link to Digital Photography School for a better understanding of the concept. In other words, don’t always put your subject dead center in your camera’s viewfinder. It’s much more interesting like this:
- Zoom or move in real tight – not only will your portrait shots be more interesting, you hide distracting elements like messy houses. The following two photos were taken of my daughters inside our van on a rainy day. Zooming in tight eliminated things like seat belts and other car parts. In the first one, I wasn’t able to completely avoid the seat back and armrest, but I used them to frame the girls. Unfortunately, I didn’t properly adjust for the light, and the hightlights are blown on my daughter’s face who was closest to the front window.
- Fix your photography mistakes in post-processing – Never fear! Even if you don’t take the perfect shot, you can work around a lot of mistakes using your photo editing software. My white balance lens cap is an amazing thing, but it’s not psychic. I have a really bad habit of setting a custom white balance for one situation, and then forgetting to reset it the next time I shoot. Here are some situations where post-processing made the shot:
This is my son and one of his buddies after church. There are lots of distracting elements, but I really liked my son’s expression and gesture. I cropped the picture and then removed the distracting sign behind his head. It is now printed and framed in a collage of my kids’ pictures.
When I decided to submit a photo to the I Heart Faces photo contest on creative cropping, I forgot to reset my white balance first. Oops. The original photo was pink, as you see here. The second photo was edited in Lightroom to remove that awful pink tint (although I painted some back on her lips). What would have been a throw away image came in second place in the competition that week.
Some of my favorite photos are actually near-rejects that were salvaged in the edits.
I’ve been working on the course by Darren as well. Excellent ideas, he sure has me encouraged with my travel photography blog.
Enjoyed reading through your post. It sure looks like you are having fun with photography, excellent pointers as well!
I put together a list of my Top 10 Favourite Photography Spots in Southern California. Would love to hear your comments.
I love your tips. Now I just need to remember to DO them! Oh and I am completely in love with the white balance lens cap!!! It has completely saved my indoor photos. Now I just need to figure out how to change out the little neutral cap for the “warm” cap… it is really stuck in there and I’m scared I’m going to break it. Any tips on that?
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A concise list. I do have problems going in tight sometimes, having part of the background cut quite irks me and it doesn’t turn out as nice as I would have liked. What’s your secret to getting by this?
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Darran, once I realized it was okay if I cut off the top of someone’s head, etc., I felt free to just capture the heart of the scene and not worry about the rest.
Here via Problogger. I’m also a keen photographer as well – even more so since I finally got a DSLR.
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Dawn, great list! I’ve signed up for the 31 day challenge as well, thanks to your post. Now, I just have to do the assignments! How do you find the time to do all you do?! 🙂 Thanks for the great tips, by the way. I love the Rule of thirds.
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Thanks I always crop as tight as I can, I refuse to let people see my house everyday! I am dreaming of doing photoshop, it really makes the photos sing.