For this month, I have included some recent photography articles and videos on a wide range of topics.

Take some time to review the articles and videos to widen your knowledge in photography.  Only through continual experimenting will you increase your photographic abilities.

GENERAL

The 5 Elements That Can Help You Make A Great Photo – Often a great photo relies on a combination of factors coming together to produce the final result. On a few rare occasions, all of these elements present themselves in perfect harmony by chance. However, the majority of the time as a photographer, you have to research, plan, and put a lot of effort into capturing a photograph that has these elements in it. – READ MORE

COMPOSITION

10 Ideas To Instantly Improve Your Photography Composition – My photography training took place back in the early 90s, at an intense technical photo school in California. I love tech in all forms, and I love reading my camera manual. I love the precision and procedure of processing my own colour film, and I love learning the ever-advancing skills on photo software – I am a total tech nerd. But technical knowledge will only get you so far; it’s really the second part of the story in photography. Photography composition is the first part. – READ MORE

How To Improve Your Photos Using Micro-Composition – One of the most fundamental elements of photography is that of composition, or how your subject, foreground, background, light, and other elements work together to produce a complete picture. While understanding how this works is fundamental to mastering the art of photography, the underlying principles behind composition go much deeper than just getting all the big things right so they look good in the frame. Masters of the medium are able to balance many different techniques of composition at the same time ,and put them together to launch their work into the upper echelon, and one rung on that ladder is a concept known as micro-composition. – READ MORE

Photography Rules Are Made To Be Broken – As a beginner, wouldn’t it be nice if the whole thing could be explained with a simple set of rules that were easy to understand? Surely someone could just tell you what aperture to use in a given situation, or how to structure a composition to get the best results every time.

Photography is a lot like learning to drive. With a car, you need to know the road rules, and you need to know the basic skills of steering, accelerating, and braking. These can be learned easily with a bit of practice. But even when you have mastered the essentials, you still need to get to know your car, because each car is a little different. Then you need experience with night driving, wet-weather driving, off-road driving… – READ MORE

 

ACTION PHOTOGRAPHY

Beginner Tips For Shooting Action Photography -Digital camera owners who are not that experienced in taking photos often find it hard to capture the action scenes they so desire. With their subjects being mobile, they may not be aware of what to do with their camera to take the best action shots.

Indeed, it can be quite a challenge to engage in sports and action photography. Movements are fast and unpredictable, so you need to be quick in clicking your shutter. Whatever type of digital camera you have, you really need to take the extra effort to take clear pictures of people and animals in motion. It’s also best to learn the right techniques so you won’t get frustrated with your photos. – READ MORE

BLACK & WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY

Black & White Photography Techniques – Black and white photography is a rewarding and challenging field of artistic photography. Even people who don’t care about photography can find themselves drawn to a great black and white image. As a photographer, black and white can allow you to discover a whole new character in a familiar subject. For many digital photographers, black and white photography is nothing more than colour photography converted by software. It is a matter for your own judgement whether this is effective for your photographs. – READ MORE

 

PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY

Portrait Cropping Guide – Framing your subject up for a portrait can sometimes be difficult. Should you get closer? Further? Cropping in close is particularly challenging because you don’t want to change it in such a way that it looks like your subject is missing limbs. A poorly cropped photo can make all the difference when it comes to portraits. To help you out, here’s a little cropping guide shown from Digital Camera World that shows where to crop and where not to crop. Green lines mean it’s a good place for the edge of the frame, red means it’s a bad place: – READ MORE

5 Secrets For Finding Great Indoor Portrait Locations – Not all photographers choose to have a dedicated indoor studio, but sometimes you need to shoot a session indoors. Maybe it’s freezing outside, and you don’t want to be out in that weather. Maybe you have a bride who wants bridals, but is worried about her dress getting dirty. Maybe you just want something fresh and a little quirky. Maybe the building has special meaning to you or the person you are photographing. – READ MORE

6 Portrait Lighting Patters Every Photographer Should Know – In classical portraiture there are several things you need to control and think about to make a flattering portrait of your subjects, including: lighting ratio, lighting pattern, facial view, and angle of view. I suggest you get to know these basics inside out, and as with most things, then you can break the rules. But if you can nail this one thing you’ll be well on your way to great people photos. In this article we’re going to look at lighting pattern: what is it, why it’s important, and how to use it. Perhaps in another future article, if you enjoy this one, I’ll talk about the other aspects of good portraiture. – READ MORE

 

TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY

5 Reasons To Use Flash To Improve Your Travel Photography – When it comes to travel photography, I am all in for carrying less. However, a good flash is always within reach in my everyday camera bag. I strongly believe that a flash helps to achieve much better results in a number of situations, and here are five reasons and examples – READ MORE