If you have experimented with long exposure photography, you may have seen light leakage issues in your images. For the uninitiated – your camera is a light tight body that is intended to allow light from one end only, and that’s the front of the lens. Light only enters when you press the shutter release. Normally, your camera wouldn’t allow light to enter through any other opening in the camera. However, unless you have a badly manufactured camera, there is…
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High Magnification Macro Photography on a Budget
Hey folks, my name is Siddhant Sahu, I am a 16 years old aspiring photographer from India. I have been shooting macro photographs for about a year now and I would try to encapsulate all I have learnt along my way in this short article. I believe that macro photography has the power of entering in a whole new world of tiny creatures. In fact with only modest piece of equipment you can shoot high magnification macro photographs. It’s good…
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The Truth in Photography
It is evident to me that images can carry and convey truth – small and capital T – and that most people aren’t actually talking about truth when they talk about objectivity and subjectivity. Strong statement, I know, but I think as usual, the people using the Internets simply bring their own ideas and not really paying attention to how writers define their terms.
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Gorilla Photography Tips
I have been fortunate over the years to see a few of the many great apes in the wild. My work includes photographs of some of the highly endangered species such as the mountain gorillas. In this article, I will present my thoughts on the best places to capture these wonderful animals on camera as well as some of the issues I have faced doing so. Finally, I will outline my suggestions for camera and lens selections.
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Travel Photography Tips
When traveling for personal or business reasons, many of us grab our cameras to photograph interesting subjects and places. After-all, we do want to come back with good memories and pictures from our adventures. In this article, we will explore the joy of travel photography and provide some tips on how you can take amazing images while on the road. Unless you have the luxury of close access to National Parks or scenic destinations or can travel during the off-seasons,…
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How to Photograph the Northern Lights
I have thoroughly enjoyed the response from my first article here at Photography Life – both the encouragement as well as the advice to follow my photographic instincts than to be led sideways. It is nice to have allowed a wider audience a peek at my work and hear some constructive feedback on my images and thought process. This article is a bit of a throwback post and is intended to be a general starter guide to photographing the Northern…
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Waterfall Photography Tips
Most landscape photographers, myself included, love to photograph gigantic, thunderous, raging waterfalls, quiet little babbling brooks, and just about everything in between. Successfully photographing them is not always easy, though. Here are some tips that I am constantly reminding both myself and tour participants alike while in the field:
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Long Exposure Photography Tips
Long exposure photography can produce stunning photos. Nighttime shots can bring out unexpected detail and create amazing light effects. Daytime long exposure can create images with haunting moods and ethereal imagery. None of this is actually hard to achieve, but it does take a little thought and preparation. Here are some tips to ease you into long exposure photography.
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The Versatility of Prime Lenses
Zoom lenses are convenient, as everyone knows. I’d imagine that the vast majority of us started our photography with a simple 18-55 kit lens – I know I did, and I used it to take some of my favorite photos. However, it never seemed like a good fit for my style of photography. My first prime lens was the Nikon 105mm f/2.8G VR macro, a truly fantastic lens. At the time, I had never attempted macro photography. It is no…
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Astrophotography Tutorial
Astrophotography is a hobby rapidly gaining popularity thanks to the fast advancing CMOS sensor technology. Over a decade ago, the light recording material employed in astrophotography was primarily chemical emulsion. Its low sensitivity makes it very hard to record the weak signal from deep space. In addition, the lack of real-time feedback is a huge source of frustration for beginners. Operational errors such as out-of-focus can only be realized after several nights of hard work after the film is developed.…
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Don’t Be a Gear Junkie
Lately, I’ve noticed a trend of stories popping up about a lucky break from a friend, a relative, a previous connection, and those lucky breaks launching a career. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that (I am kind of jealous!), but I also notice how people keep asking for a story of how work and perseverance paid off instead. As a shy introvert with cheap gear, I thought my story might be something worth sharing with other Photography Life readers –…
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How Much Resolution Do You Really Need?
Each year camera manufacturers are pushing the limits of sensor technology and the latest trend has been to increase sensor resolution to numbers that were considered unfathomable before. With full-frame cameras reaching 50 megapixels (MP) and medium format cameras pushing beyond 80 MP, we now know that the megapixel race won’t stop there and we will most likely be seeing cameras with even more resolution in the future. But the big question remains – how much resolution does one truly…
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Stitching Images with Microsoft ICE
I enjoy taking panoramic images of landscapes, cityscapes, street art or any other time when the view exceeds the frame. While an increasing number of cameras (particularly smartphones) are offering an in-camera panoramic mode, individual images and good stitching software is essential for high quality images.
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Exposure Stops in Photography – A Beginner’s Guide
There is so much duality in photography. On one hand, it’s the light and the subject, it’s the story we tell and the story the viewer sees, it’s a feeling, an emotion, a state, a symbol, a metaphor. Sounds poetic, doesn’t it? On the other hand, it’s pure science, every single bit of it – from the said light traveling through a complex lens design, all the way to the scene being imprinted whether on a piece of light-sensitive film…
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Underexposure vs Overexposure – A Beginner’s Guide
In this article, we discuss the topic of underexposure and overexposure in photography, with image samples and other relevant information for beginners. Now, on one hand, there’s not much to actually discuss – a simple explanation of the terms is what interests most beginner photographers. But here is my slightly-absurd-at-first-glance introduction to the article – there is no such thing as under- and overexposure. Dead serious.
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How to Use a Tripod
When dealing with slow shutter speeds, a solid tripod is a must-have tool for eliminating camera shake and capturing sharp photographs. Although setting up a tripod and effectively utilizing it for photography needs at first sounds simple and self-explanatory, I often come across photographers that do not know how to properly use a tripod. Even though you could own the most expensive tripod on the market and know exactly what to do to yield razor sharp images, your images could…
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Preparing for a Safari Trip to Africa
In September of 2014, my wife and I had the great fortune to take the trip of a lifetime to South Africa, Botswana and Zambia. The trip was more than a year in the planning which gave me the chance to think about what camera equipment I wanted to take along. Our itinerary was not one of the ones designed specifically for photographers however I had no doubt we would have plenty of opportunity to take pictures!
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Concert Photography Tips
I was recently asked how many concerts I’ve photographed, and realized that it is coming up on thousand in the last 15 years. Any given week you can find me shooting anything from a 20 person house concert to The Who in a 30,000 seat arena, and anywhere in between. Tonight, it will be an up-and-coming band called The Spring Standards, who I’ve shot 7 times in the past. They are a dynamic, high-energy band with a lot of emotion,…
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How to Make Facebook Show Images in Links
When publishing articles on our site, our team always cross-posts links to the same content on our Facebook fan page, where we have close to 250 thousand fans. One of the biggest frustrations we came across with Facebook, is when we post a link to an article that contains images, and Facebook refuses to show the image on top of the link. The strange thing is, sometimes deleting the URL and pasting it again will show images and other times,…
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Explore the Edges
If we see the rule of thirds as the default, “bread and butter” sort of composition guide, I can think of at least two ways to break that rule and distance your work from it. The first one is to use, against the advice of many photographers, central composition. It is a very natural, simple way of composing an image and generally results in a very “open”, peaceful, calm photograph. You could say it is classic. As I mentioned before,…
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