Holiday photography

We all like to bring home pictures to remember from our holidays. Turn so-so snapshots to fabulous photos, by taking a moment to review these tips and advice.

Preparations before you leave home - make sure you're familiar with how your camera works and take the manual - if you haven't read the manual, do so. Your camera may have capabilities you didn't know about, or you may find answers to questions that have been bothering you for some time. Decide if you have enough gear to warrant a camera bag, and try to find one that doesn't scream "Steal me now". Consider a backpack-like style because they're easy to carry around all day, leave your hands free, and appear relatively inconspicuous to the thief.

As you pack for your trip, bring your manual, extra camera batteries or a battery charger, and digital storage cards or film for your camera equipment. Now, if you plan on taking lots of digital photos and you have a laptop, it may be a wise idea to bring it so you can download your images and reuse your cards as needed.

With air travel, pack your camera in a carry-on bag, especially if you're fortunate enough to own sophisticated cameras. Note that even when locked, checked luggage can be broken into, and if your equipment is stolen, most airlines will not reimburse you at all. Do not put your camera in a jacket pocket, too, since it's easy to leave a jacket on the plane or in the airport lounge. As you exit the plane, double-check to make sure you have all your equipment.

Make sure you fully understand your camera's settings. Your camera's automatic settings control the f-stop and shutter speed. A camera's f-stop determines how blurry the background is. Now, the smaller the number (like 5.6), the more the background blurs out. And the larger the number (like 16), the sharper everything in the picture will be. Note that neither one is inherently better than the other; it all depends on what you're photographing and what effect you want to achieve.

The shutter speed refers to how quickly the camera's shutter opens and closes in real time. Now, the higher the shutter speed, the faster it takes the shot. In order to freeze action, you need to shoot at a minimum of 125th. Below a 60th, you need a tripod to keep the image sharp because your hand will move enough to affect the image.

Note that point-and-shoot cameras may not allow you to manually adjust both settings. But understanding your camera's automatic settings can help you control how your photos end up. As an example, portrait settings are designed to keep the main subject sharp and blur the background, while landscape settings keep everything in sharp focus. Try shooting a variety of subjects on each of your camera's settings to see what they do and what you like best.

Note that some cameras have semi-automatic settings which allow you to set either the f-stop or the shutter speed yourself, while the camera sets the other adjustment. Semi-auto settings are often ideal: you still have a good amount of control over how your image looks, but you don't have to worry about meter-reading or quickly changing lighting.

Photographic composition

Photographic composition is the foundation upon which we build our photo images by the correct selection, arranging, organising and combining the visual elements within the picture area to produce a harmonious and pleasing image. These rules of photo-composition are for guidance only, not for absolute and complete obedience. Pictures are never made by rules alone, since Photo-Composition involves your personal tastes. Instincts are worth more in photography than many rigid regulations.

You must know the rules before you can break them and only break them when you have a good reason for improving the photograph. Normally, Photo-Composition is based on artistic composition. Photographers always used composition in all their works and of course broke the rules when they thought it was necessary for the improvement of the image.

Now, artists have the advantage over photographers. Artists can move objects around in their picture frame to suit their own artistic decisions. If a tree is not in the right place in nature, the artist will move it to another place on his canvas to make a better view. When a fence or house is not situated correctly in the natural scene the artist moves them around to suit his own artistic desires.

But photographers are limited to the use of objects in the scene.  That does not mean they have to photograph them like a tourist, head on, without looking around for the best angle and lighting conditions in which to take the pic. 

The photographer's job is much harder than that of an artist who can take artistic liberties by moving objects around. Photographers must find a scene that has the best composition by finding the right angle, choosing the right lenses, being there at the right time of day for the best lighting condition.

The Basic Elements Of Photo-Composition. There are objects the photographer is stuck with and has to do the best with what is in front of the camera. Formal Balance and Informal Balance are very important.

Formal balance is sometimes called Equal Balance or Classical Balance. Formal balance illicits feelings of dignity and repose but makes static, unimaginative photo images as the objects in the picture area are of equal size, one balancing the other. A seesaw will not move up or down, it stays horizontal with each child balancing the other.

Formal balance has been used in large public buildings where each side of the building matches each other with wings and the entrance is in the centr. This makes the building uninteresting and boring. This type of photo balance will also be boring and very un-interesting so be sure to avoid it whenever possible, unless you have a definite reason for it.

Shooting in subdued light

If you are shooting in subdued light, classic photography method is to select a very low shutter speed (tens of seconds or even more) to reveal the faintest objects in the scene. The conclusion is to take just one long exposure for the image. An alternative way to proceed, however, is to take several short exposures of the same scene and then adding them up with editing software like Photoshop packages. Now, this technique offers a wealth of advantages, leading up to better images and greater creativity for the photographer.

This method of summing up several pictures of the same scene is conceptually simple and easy to carry out. Many people take as many photographs as necessary so that when summing them up, the scene will be lighted as planned. Light from each photo will add to that of the other photos. Adding an appropriate number of such pictures, the photographer can get a final image properly exposed and satisfactory looking. When you want to take a look at a more in-depth description of this method and an example, you can contact us.

Let's look at two macro examples. Now, in the first one, we use the already present natural ambient lighting. With the second example, we provide the main lighting source. With the first case, the proposed method offers several advantages, but, in the second case, the benefits are even more extensive.

Due to thermal noise in CCDs, still digital cameras simply cannot offer arbitrarily long exposure time - the“B” setting does not exist in digital cameras at all. The proposed method overcomes the problem of very long exposure, impossible with digital cameras, even professional versions.

Yet another advantage in using the proposed method is noise reduction effects. At least a part of noise is stochastic, which means that it can add to or subtract from the signal noise. When we sum many noisy images, we make a sort of average, so reducing the noise effect.

Another advantage is we can dismiss faulty images as we want. Some may be blurred by micro-movement of the camera (eg due to the wind) or imperfect in other aspects. To give an example, an airplane or a car passing by may leave an unwanted path of light in the image. Now, there could be millions of reasons why an exposure could be faulty or incorrect. However, if we take just one long exposure, we will end up with a useless image. But if we take a lot of them, keeping all of them short, we can dismiss some of the shots when we edit. If the exposure requires some photographer’s actions, like firing sequences of flashes then this is all the more important.

The powerful capabilities of image editing software offer another benefit. For example, we can mask unwanted parts in some of the images. We could avoid saturation of the brightest parts of the image, for example. In this way, the lighting will be more uniform and spread out. We could alternatively do this creatively by dimming some portions of the final image on purpose. In this way, control over the brightness of the single parts of the image is much greater.