Photography Tips

I am going to start posting up photography tips here on the blog. I will also label them under "photography tips" in the sidebar so that they can be easily found. The reason? I find myself sending pictures and tips to alot of my friends who have DSLRs, but don't really know too much about the advanced features of them. I might as well just start posting up the tips here in case if any of the readers also do photography that I don't know about. Or just in case you appreciate a great picture and always wondered how to do that! I've actually been asked by many people to start teaching classes on photography tips and or technique. I guess this is just one step closer to that reality.

Digital vs. Film
Sure you can really change and doctor a photo using Photoshop or almost any other program out there. There is a great debate out there about whether or not you are really doing photography. There is an unwanted person or car in the picture? Just click the healing brush in Photoshop and watch your picture become near perfect. Is that real photography? That is for you to decide.

As for me...I prefer to try to get the photo at it's best possible state while I'm behind the camera. Sure I might tweak the contrasts, hues, sharpness or color tones once at the computer. But that is about it. I rarely take items out of the pictures using post processing. The exception is if the photograph will be printed or for some formal event and the subjects are requesting the pictures. Photography takes alot of trial and error. Also lots of patience. I will take a half dozen of the same picture, just to get that timing right and not have the person or car in the frame!

I will admit, I'm pretty poor at using Photoshop. I learned my photography in the darkroom using 35mm film. In some ways that adds a sense of skill that is lost with today's digital photography and processing. I spent countless hours in class dissecting a photograph. The framing isn't right. The colors aren't good. The composition or subject isn't apparent. We were always taught to use every bit of the frame, so choose your frame composition carefully before you click that shutter button. That's probably why I can go on a week long trip and take 1000 plus pictures. While that may sound like alot (and it is), I often take multiple shots of the same picture. The reason being that sometimes there might be some camera shake, a bug might have flown in front of the subject, the lighting wasn't right, the wind was blowing causing the flower to move, etc. You get the picture? Ha, no pun intended.

And that was my hardest thing to overcome when I first started using my DSLR. I was spending too much time getting the picture and framing just right. When in actuality, you could go home, upload the photos, hit the crop or trim button and take out any unwanted part of the frame! Yeah, it was that easy. Back when using film, we would often use expensive Portra films. So every shot counted! And you could only carry so many rolls of film at once. We actually use to buy our film in bulk, then we rolled our own film into the canisters in a completely dark room. Boxes and boxes of negatives and contact sheets no more! Thank goodness for digital!!!