Specialized Photography

In my experience, teaching digital photography I hear people ask me how to take digital pictures and most importantly how to get crisp sharp digital pictures. I am also asked if learning digital photography is easy or hard and how long does it take. Well I can safely tell you that there are lots of really advanced things you can learn such as what things to do to the camera to take pictures like a professional, aperture and shutter speed for night and extra special photography lighting techniques.

So let's get started:

Photography Lighting Techniques

Your lighting is everything when you learn digital photography. Once you master lighting techniques, then you'll master almost everything in photography. In my experience as a photographer you have two choices; add light or work with the light you have. There is really nothing complicated about this. You can add light via the flash, or reflectors, or additional lamps for example. The other way is to work with the light you have via window light, sunlight and overhead light you have from inside work.

Using reflectors sounds expensive, but it's not. Reflectors are just collapsible sheets of plastic gold, white or clear plastic sheeting that simply reflects a colour back onto the subject you are photographing. You can even make them yourself. Just get a piece of white cardboard or cardboard with gold gloss over the top to create your own. The only thing about cardboard is that they're not collapsible, but if you are creating your own home studio, then it doesn't matter. Collapsible is really needed when you are on location, shooting outside and have to carry them around. The flash is a necessary item you will need in your travels when learning digital photography. There are some pretty nifty external flash techniques to learn but for now, just keep in mind you can use flash front on, sideways, upside down....any direction you want, provided you can maneuver it independently from the camera. If not, then you may want to use additional lighting such as lamps, a torch or flashlight, or even another camera with a flash. The whole purpose to using an external flash unit is to get more light onto the subject, how you do it doesn't matter, it's the end result you are wanting.

Aperture and Shutter Speed

Before I knew what I was doing, I was so scared to put my camera in manual mode on the settings dial. I never knew how to work with the shutter and aperture individually. It's not that hard to work with. I created a small aperture and shutter speed chart out of cardboard to help me work out what shutter would work with what aperture. It came in very handy and I was able to start getting some pretty nice photos. You can do this to by simply taking the information from your camera and writing down the minimum to the maximum aperture. You may find out some interesting stuff about your camera this way. When I first did this, I had no idea my camera went right up to F32. I thought it had a minimum aperture of F22. It really surprised me and as a result of learning this information I was able to get more flexibility and work my camera a bit harder when I wanted it to. By changing your aperture and shutter speed manually you can even starting doing abstract photography.

How to take great composition in photography

You probably already have a good eye and don't need to be taught the major aspects of composition. Rule of thirds is when an imaginary grid is placed over a photograph. It's divided into three rows and three columns. When working to create great composition in photography, generally, you can place points of interest at each point of where the horizontal and vertical lines meet, called an intersection point. Not the rule of course, it is more like a guideline. With some helpful digital photography techniques, you'll learn how to make the most popular family photos come to life such as how to take professional portraits of children. Once you master lighting, you'll also know some really cool stuff like how to take photos of fireworks and some clever flash photography techniques.