Tips, tricks, and secrets to your perfect photograph.

[photocriticgirl]

Let’s be productive on this website and share the tips and tricks we have learned along the way that have been most useful and helpful to you.

One of my favorite tricks that a fellow photographer taught me was that in order to photograph a newborn well, place the mother or father, (possibly sibling) underneither the newborn and drape the fabric over them and rest the newborn on their stomach.

Please add your own to the list!

[openfocus]

Learn how to shoot in Manual, and ONLY Manual.

Never, ever, ever, ever EVER use your body flash. Invest in your equipment and purchase an off camera flash.

Don’t be afraid to learn something new. I learn new things about my D600 every day. Recently I somehow jammed up my sensor and I was not properly exposing images during a shoot. I pulled out my phone where I keep my digital copy of the manual and found out how to reset my body to factory settings. A few tweaks to the Manual settings and I was good to go.

If you have to ‘salvage’ an image in post, don’t use it.

Avoid over editing and overuse of actions. Learn how to create your own and practice to find YOUR style.

 

[nesgran]

Why shoot manual? I just don’t see the point when a camera has a very sophisticated light meter. If you want to control aperture there is aperture priority just like there is shutter priority if you need to maintain a minimum shutterspeed. It is a bit like manual focus, while it certainly works the majority of the time your camera will do a better job of it than you can.

My tip would be that if you have an emotional attachment to a photo for whatever reason you won’t be the best person to judge if it is a great shot.

[iliketag]

I agree about shooting in Manual. It’s important to learn the more minute detailing for settings. Does this mean you only ever shoot in it? No. I think most people learning should dive in and use the presets (Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority) when they need to fall back or shoot quickly. Take the time to shoot in manual when you have it. I think everyone should know how to use their camera well in manual.

As for the “salvaging” things, that I disagree. There are plenty of photos thatr are either underexposed/overexposed SOOC that make for great images thanks to RAW storing so much data. Thanks to advances in editing software, you can even fix grain left over from improper exposures. While many great photographers have beautiful images even SOOC, they’ll still admit to sometimes forgetting to change their settings and will repair an image that’s still lovely.

[openfocus]

I should have responded on my laptop but I had left it in my studio. My initial post was typed out on my phone so it may have came off short and abrupt, my apologies. 🙂

In my opinion, shooting in Manual is the best way to learn your camera. Many bad photographers don’t realize what aperture is or how shutter speed affects a moving shot. There was a local photographer I spoke with recently who said when she is shooting fast moving objects, she switches over to the “sport” scene mode because she doesn’t know how to do it on her camera.
How do you do this as a profession and not know how? That’s like not knowing where your hazard lights are on your car. I’m not nagging about shooting in Scene so much as nagging about the lack of knowledge of the fancy camera that cost a couple thousand dollars.

I shoot primarily in Manual, but I utilize my Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority.  On rare occasion do I shoot in any other mode. It’s a personal preference, and I’m sure you can achieve the same shooting in Auto Mode + RAW, but I like knowing I have that control over the image.

As for ‘salvaging’ images, there are simply some images that cannot be saved. I learned this the hard way. I had to shoot where we were fighting for light during winter hours.  The images were beautiful, but horribly underexposed. The grain from trying to bring up the light was noticeable even after processing and no matter what I did with the RAW file, it just continued to look worse. That’s when I learned to schedule outdoor winter portraits significantly earlier in the day. If you have to jump through hoops to fix* an image, chances are that it’s not going to turn out to be something worth putting on your client’s wall. Granted, I don’t nail every shot, and shooting in RAW helps me keep a consistency in my images.

*fix does not refer to composite images or adjustments such as head swapping. 😉

[openfocus]

 

 

[dont.care]

Haha, I’ll give you a tip — Learn your entire camera and how to use ALL the functions that it provides. Otherwise you’ll have no idea how HANDY AV and TV modes can be.

 

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