6 Tips for Getting Great Pictures With a Basic Camera

6 Tips for Getting Great Pictures With a Basic Camera
Using the Develop Module in Your Lightroom 5 Photography Workflow (Video)
How to Get Paid What You’re Worth as a Photographer (Video)

Posted: 10 Jan 2014 08:37 PM PST

Great pictures don’t necessarily come from high-end cameras and expensive lenses. Here are tips that you can apply even when using cameras like the one on the iPhone. If you can use these principles to get great pictures using basic cameras, imagine how much better a photographer you’ll be with serious photography gear!

1. Use Available Light

Available light usually means natural sunlight, but it can also include available sources of artificial light, e.g. an overhead dining table lamp. With the light positioned correctly, you can get professional looking pictures without any additional flash equipment.

“Untitled” captured by Whitney Stapleton (Click image to see more from Stapleton.)

2. Mind Your Composition

One element usually found in great pictures is great composition. Looking at the LCD, you’ll be able to see where you could ask your subject to move or move yourself so that you avoid having a tree jutting out from behind the subject’s head. This is even more crucial in basic cameras where you are unable to control depth of field to make the tree go out of focus.

“Little Hunter” captured by Cornelius Rahmadi Witono (Click image to see more from Witono.)

3. Use Complementary Light Sources

Take advantage of your surroundings when traveling. Imagine you want to take a picture of your spouse on a busy street in Hong Kong at night. Instead of resorting to using the built-in flash, get her/him to move closer to the rows of brightly-lit shop signs so that they become the light source. Not only will they give a more natural color cast in relation to the surroundings, the light distribution on your subject’s face should also be more flattering.

4. Know Which Direction To Shoot

If you are taking a picture of a person with the sun behind you, you’ll be able to get blue skies in an outdoor scene, assuming you actually have a blue sky on that day. If the sun is shining at you, instead of behind you, you may get a washed out sky, with only very light tones of blue. This is because the auto metering on basic cameras will try to expose for both the person and the background, rarely achieving a good exposure for either one.

5. Anticipate the Right Moment

Pictures with people usually benefit from having some element of emotion. Even with the best camera, emotion in pictures is not possible if the photographer does not know when to press the shutter button, or is not ready when the emotional moment happens.

“Passion” captured by Ed Ace (Click image to see more from Ace.)

6. Avoid Clutter

In a scene that has too much clutter, look for a plain wall to place your subjects against. Plain colored backgrounds like a plexiglass panel, a wooden door, or a brightly colored red wall also work well. For shooting still life, try reflective surfaces like a glass table or textured surfaces for an interesting background.

“Untitled” captured by Olga Filonova (Click image to see more from Filonova.)

Keep these simple principles in mind on your next photo opportunity, and you’ll be on your way to producing great pictures even with the most basic of camera gear.

About the Author
Andy Lim (www.simpleslr.info) runs a profitable photography business that spans wedding photography, commercial photography and conducting photography workshops.

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Article from: PictureCorrect Photography Tips

Using the Develop Module in Your Lightroom 5 Photography Workflow (Video)

Posted: 10 Jan 2014 07:23 PM PST

More and more photographers are turning to Adobe Lightroom 5 as their choice post-processing software. While Adobe Photoshop CS6 equips all manner of visual artists with tools for their various crafts, Lightroom is a streamlined processing software tailored to photographers who need advanced image editing and management capabilities without unnecessary clutter.

However, without an effective workflow, even Lightroom can become needlessly time-consuming.

In this video, landscape photographer Robert Rodriguez explains his creative workflow process in Lightroom, with particular emphasis on showing the “why” behind each step and providing tips for developing a personalized workflow that maximizes efficiency, flexibility, and accuracy:

An effective workflow is one that is flexible, efficient, and accurate as it works towards the goal of realizing the photographer’s vision for a particular photograph. To that end, Rodriguez offers three principles that guide his own workflow process.

1. Workflow starts in the field, not in Lightroom.

“Your workflow starts [at capture],” said Rodriguez, “because that’s the moment when you feel the impulse to press the shutter button… that’s when you should start to really form in your mind what you want the image to say [and] how you want it to look.”

2. Let your vision drive your editing.

“When you sit down to edit, you should have a vision in your mind already,” Rodriguez said, “Then the tools become a lot more accessible to you conceptually because then you know what tools you need to [use] in order to accomplish what you want to accomplish.”

3. Lead the viewer to see why you took the photograph.

“I want the viewer to see what it is that I’m seeing and experiencing,” said Rodriguez. “I’m going to try to draw the viewer’s attention towards certain things in the image that are essential to whatever it is that I’m trying to convey.”

sky rocks landscape nature robert rodriguez

Before he captured this photo, Rodriguez knew that he would keep it in color. He allowed his vision of showing the rhythm between the sky and the rocks to guide his editing and lead the viewer’s eye there from the foreground.

After incorporating these three principles into your workflow, it then becomes important to understand how and why to use the various tools in Lightroom. Throughout the aforementioned video, Rodriguez demonstrates and explains his general process while encouraging each photographer to develop his or her own unique process. He also provides at least five other useful overarching principles to keep in mind during Lightroom editing.

4. Use Snapshots to log important adjustment stages.

Unlike Photoshop, Lightroom does log an extensive adjustment history for each image, but sifting through the various steps to find a specific edit can be time-consuming. Taking a “snapshot” before you make any crucial decisions gives you an easy place to revert back to if needed.

“I like to use snapshots when I come to a fork in the road, meaning I’ve gotten to a spot in my processing where I’m not sure which way I want to go,” said Rodriguez.

5. Subtle changes are often better than drastic changes.

“I like to use a very light approach that emphasizes the details—not only details in terms of high frequency details, but details in terms of the things that the eye is going to see and appreciate,” Rodriguez said. “You’d be surprised at how the viewer picks that up.”

This image required only very subtle editing: the before image is top left and the after image is lower right.

6. Use your eyes.

Don’t be distracted by numbers or presets. Toggle between the before and after images when you make a change and, ultimately, let your eyes and brain be the judge of what looks appealing. For example, when setting White Balance, find the balance between coolness and warmness.

“It’s not so much about what’s neutral, but where does it feel too warm and where does it feel too cool?” Rodriguez said. “Let your eyes be the judge of what looks right.”

7. Know the keyboard shortcuts and use them regularly.

The shortcuts are different on Mac and PC computers and often do not intuitively match the names of tools and panels (e.g. the shortcut key for the Black & White Panel is “V”), but learning them will save you a great deal of time in the long run.

8. Make global adjustments in the Basic panel first.

Making general overarching adjustments first will allow you to see which, if any, local adjustments need to be made. Then, it’s always a good idea to go back into the Basic panel to put finishing touches on the image.

ocean sea shore beach black white clouds

Here, Rodriguez sought to emphasize the shapes and textures in the image, so he dropped the color.

Ultimately, as Rodriguez puts it, your ideal creative workflow is what works best for you and maximizes the effectiveness of your editing process. What works for Rodriguez may not work best for you and that’s okay.

In fact, subjectivity—that process where a photographer wrestles with an image to realize his or her unique vision for the shot—is arguably the most beautiful aspect of post-processing. It’s where the dreams we dream in our viewfinders come true.

For Further Training:

There is a popular photo editing training bundle, Super Photo Editing Skills. It is one of the most comprehensive with video tutorials, eBooks and actual presets that can help you start post-processing right away with your own photos. It is designed to help you gain confidence in your processing skills, and learn to get creative with your edits—you'll also be able to create an efficient workflow which is key these days. Also meaning you can spend less time on the computer, and more time out shooting.

It can be found here: Super Photo Editing Skills

Go to full article: Using the Develop Module in Your Lightroom 5 Photography Workflow (Video)

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Article from: PictureCorrect Photography Tips

How to Get Paid What You’re Worth as a Photographer (Video)

Posted: 10 Jan 2014 11:34 AM PST

Do you find it difficult to get the pay rate you think you deserve as a professional photographer? Do you often hear from potential clients that they love your work, but then they book someone else to do their shoot? Photographer Spencer Lum has some advice to help you raise prices without creating resistance:

In this video, Spencer talks about Marketing and Value Shifting.

He believes that when people or companies hiring a photographer say they just don’t have the budget, more often than not, it’s just not true.

If the client is not willing to pay more, then maybe you should take a closer look at how you’re presenting yourself and your work. Most likely, you’re not creating enough value or you’re not making people see your value.

It’s our job to educate our clients so that they can see more in us other than price.

When photographers say their main problem is that people love their work but not their price, they’re reducing business problems down to two variables: quality and price.

But the truth is there are tons of reasons people don’t buy and all kinds of ways to change their perceptions that have nothing to do with quality or price.

Spencer has a few tips for photographers running into what seem to be price problems. Most importantly, he says you should focus on needs because that’s the real reason people buy. Then, take a look at the market as a whole and redefine the way you fit into it.

earn more as a photograper

Find out how you can expand your market’s definition of quality and look for the real opportunities to create value. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself:

Do you do something that other people don’t?

Do your pictures address something other pictures aren’t addressing?

Are people looking for something no other photographers are supplying but you can?

So, how do you show value?

Spencer’s advice is to look at every part of your business and redefine what they mean to your potential clients.

Create an experience, a vocabulary and a way of doing things so unique that no one would ever think to compare you to anyone else.

Go to full article: How to Get Paid What You’re Worth as a Photographer (Video)

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Article from: PictureCorrect Photography Tips

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