Note the shallow depth of field, allowing you to totally isolate your subject from busy backgrounds.

Of course, you need to use your camera’s Closeup mode and please please please disable the flash function. They usually don’t work well. Bring your subject outdoors if possible for best lighting.

Photographed at dusk or dawn, natural light will tend to take a hue, a bluish or reddish tint. Contrast this with the warm glow of of a tungsten (oops, in this environmentally challenged days, go for warm glow energy saving bulbs), and you have drama, contrast and of course, deep saturated colours.

Sounds so easy? It is!

Only snag is, you got to train your eye as the camera doesn’t see things like our human eyes. Also, timing plays a very very important role here. Shoot the scene 5 minutes later, and things look very different.

Here’s what this scene looks like.

5 minutes later!

See how dramatic a contrast 5 minute makes! Believe me, the actual scenery doesn’t look like that. The sky wasn’t that dark but the camera sees things differently.

In this digital age, just keep on shooting, every 5 minutes. Once you see the effect you want, you have trained your eye! Easy!

My Norwegian friend here, Knut-Jonas sends pics of his house. Same concept.

One more reason to walk around your neighbourhood during the evenings. Your wife thinks you are romantic too, until you begin to snap pics. : )

Enjoy!

One of my pet peeve is improperly exposed photos. Now as smart as we would like them to be, except for the most advanced types of exposure cells like those in the Nikon flagship F5, most camera sensors just do not see/understand colors.

Why is this a problem? It affects your exposure! You see, the camera’s exposure meter will adjust everything for middle exposure. Meaning it won’t be over-exposed, it won’t be under-exposed but the exposure will be just right at the center. The proper term is, the camera adjusts for 18% grey tone. Between white and black, the middle zone will be an 18% grey. This is where the problem with colours appear.

White is perceived as too bright, too much light, so your camera will reduce the exposure.
Black is perceived as too dark, not bright enough, so your camera will increase the exposure.

Yellow is a brigher than blue, maroon is darker than pink…

Get the picture?

Now if the subjects in your pics “blend” out to 18% grey tone (which most of the time this works), then everything’s okay. However, if you are shooting a pure white, or black subject… you have been warned!

Take these 3 photos of Vishnu, the Hindu deity.

The first was shot directly.

This time, I set the exposure to +1. Look for “Exposure Adjustment/Compensation”. We call this “increase by one stop”.

Lastly, increased by “two stops”, or set to +2.

As you can see above, a +2 exposure compensation is required for a pure white subject. So if you are shooting a pure black subject, like a black cat, a -2 exposure compensation will be just right.

Gimp, the GNU Image Manipulation Program.

http://gimp.org

Now installing is a piece of cake but using it might not be that intuitive if you are new to photo editing. But if you played with Photoshop before, that helps!

I wanted to create a photo montage of my new product and none of the photo editing software in my Mac could cut it, so here comes Gimp!

First, I cleaned up the background of my 2 subjects. Using the “magic wand tool”, you could select the region around your subject, then “Cut” away all the “clutter”. Works like magic. Also, you could rotate your subject to the desired orientation.

From

to

From

to

Place each image in a separate “layer”, then you could place them together. This is the montage I created.

The controls might look intimidating but it’s actually quite easy. Go through the documentation to start out. Or just spend some time playing with it.

However, as I placed them in my car porch, the much brighter background poses problems to me.

If you just Point and Shoot, this is what you’ll get.

Note that due to the much brighter background, the camera’s light meter adjusts exposure for the background, thus the foreground, your subject, is now under-exposed.
Damn…

You could use some flash to fill in the subject. Like below.


The background is now nicely exposed but the flash highlights are a distraction. It just looks so unnatural.
Damn…

You could take the subject out so that they are all illuminated under the same light, or there is another way though. Just recompose your shot to show less of the bright background.


See? By omitting the sky in the background, the camera now doesn’t have to grapple with the overly bright sky. The background building is over-exposed but it doesn’t matter as it serves to reduce background clutter.

Now the subject is nicely exposed and I get to show them off on my website.

I got to know John Amato when he bought something from me more than a year ago. He told me he was posted to China. Little did I know he’s a photographer as well!

The photos in his gallery show how powerful still images can be. In the hands of a deft photographer, all kinds of emotions can be coaxed out of the viewer.

The section on the poor/needy is particularly touching. If you feel something when looking at these photos, they have done their job!

Visit John’s photo gallery.

With autofocus, you shouldn’t have any focussing problem. But sometimes they do crop up.

Most cameras use the viewfinder center as the focus area. Any subject placed at this spot will be focussed sharply.

This is bad for composition as it encourages you to “use your camera like a gun”, resulting in dull photos with subjects only in the center.

For composition sake, it’s best to place the subject Off center, but how to maintain sharp focus this way?

Fortunately, there is an easy way. Place your subject at the center of the viewfinder as before. Then press the shutter release key, not fully, but midway through. While still holding the shutter release key, recompose your shot by placing the subject elsewhere on the frame. Doing this, you’ll have the subject still sharp in focus.

Some cameras have very advanced focussing mechanism (using a microprocessor just for this!), with a much wider focussing area, or with eye sensors to detect movement of your eye. Nikon even has “Face Priority” focussing to help you.

I’m really not a fan of this as I prefer to decide which subject I want to focus on, rather than let the camera decide for me.

Try the above tip and let me know!

Yes, don’t use your camera like a gun. When shooting, most folks do it literally by aiming the center of the viewfinder at the main subject and just shoot.

This results in subjects being dead right in the center, looking very very dull.

Hopefully you have read the Composition page on how to compose your shot.

By moving the subject off-center, you already achieve this goal!

So please, your camera is not a gun. And your subject, not your bull’s eye!