7 tips on photography
Never use flash when photographing through glass
If you ever want to take a picture of something behind a glass window (or a fish inside aquarium) - never use your flash!
The flash will light the glass and you will probably get just a big white spot covering exactly what you were trying to take picture of! Instead - disable the flash, but photograph with high ISO settings to compensate for the low light conditions.
Shooting portraits on a sunny day
If you're taking pictures of people on a sunny day, always use the flash, especially in the middle of the day, when the sun light is coming from above.
The flash will usually not be strong enough to make a big difference, but it will help to reduce the shadows from eyebrows and nose, making the portrait look much more natural.
Taking sharp images without a tripod
When you take pictures with long exposure (anything longer than 1/50 sec) you will get a blurry image unless you are using a tripod. But what if you don't have a tripod around?
One solution is to find something to lay the camera on while shooting. Another (although not as good) is to hold it in hands, but fixate the hands on something, for example a window ledge.
Use external shutter release when shooting with tripod
If you are taking a picture with a camera mounted on a tripod, you should use the external shutter release (cable or infrared) rather than the shutter release button of the camera itself.
The shutter is opened once the button is pressed, and the release of the button will usually cause the camera to move a bit, making your image less sharp.
Keep your pictures underexposed
The pictures you take should always be a little underexposed, especially when there is a lot of light around. The levels of those images should be later on fixed in Photoshop, but the results will be much more realistic.
The reason for that is that the human eye is more sensitive to the bright color changes than the dark ones, therefore keeping the image underexposed you allow the camera to capture a wider range of bright colors.
Get more focus in your images
Since the lens is only truly focused for a certain distance from the camera, any object closer or further away will be out of focus – how much out of focus is determined by the aperture. The higher is the aperture – the more depth of the picture will be in focus.
Photography on a Cloudy Day
One of my favourite tips from a fashion photographer:
When photographing a person on a cloudy day, pick the brightest cloud in the sky and have them face it.
You, therefore, will have your back to it and your subject will be beautifully lit with the darkest part of the sky behind them.
