Creating beautiful photo on your own

I have been recently asked to post some basic tips for new photographers

So welcome to your first issue of Photography Tips & Tricks. Inside each issue of Photography Tips & Tricks you will learn valuable tip's, tricks and information on how you can take great photos that you will be proud to show off.

In today's issue, we are going to go through some quick tips that you can use to create beautiful photography of your own. Photography is much more than just taking pictures of things. It is an art form and can help us remember some of our most treasured memories. However, few people actually take the time to wait for that gorgeous shot and may doubt their ability to do it effectively. This article contains some great tips for improving your photography skills and capturing beautiful photographs that will be appreciated by many.

One of the most common photography mistakes is people not taking the time to truly understand their camera. If you have a decent digital camera, it comes armed with many features that can be used to enhance the quality of your photographs such as different light settings or flash speeds.

You've probably often heard that using your flash outdoors is unnecessary to take great pictures. Wrong! Unless there is very bright sunlight outside, you should still be regularly using your flash. Even on cloudy days, picture quality can become compromised by not using a good outdoor flash setting.

Many people are quick to jump at photo opportunities and just take any old picture. However, the secret to great photography lies in taking the time and having the patience to wait for the perfect shot to come along. If you are photographing still items, set them up exactly how you want them before taking your first shots. If your subject is on the move, take multiple shots with a rapid-picture camera to ensure you get the best picture possible.

Our first inclination is to snap pictures of objects that are centred in the camera's lens, but taking off-centre pictures can be a great way to spice up your photographs. Taking a picture of a subject that is off- centered in the photo adds an interesting element people may not expect to usually see and can get your photographs noticed.

When photographing people, always make sure to avoid direct sunlight in the background of the photo. This will make odd shadows and add an undesirable element to the picture. Position the people so the sun is to the side, but not shining directly in their face either. This will cause the subjects of your photograph to be squinting uncontrollably. Pictures that have multiple subjects or a busy foreground can highly benefit from a simple background to keep attention directed toward your subjects. However, if a simple background isn't available, many cameras can be focused to the foreground. This will cause the background to become more subtle and blurry, thus eliminating a busy background setting.

If your camera has a macro -photography feature, use it! The macro feature has the ability to focus in on very tiny subjects close up and is a great way to portray a lot of detail on a very small area. Things like small insects will immediately come to life with the use of this feature and will help you get great shots of the smaller things in life.

As you can see, photography takes patience and skill, but with a little practice, you will be able to get great shots every time. By utilizing the ideas presented in this article, you will be able to spice up your photography, add detail and variety to your shots, and create lasting memories through the art of photography.

Make sure you look for your next issue soon. We will be going over the basics of photography - a little refresher!

Landscape photography – depth of field

Depth of field is the limitation of perceived sharpness within a photographic image. The greater the depth of field, the more of the image from front to back that appears sharp. An image that is said to have a shallow depth of filed has a short and more specific depth of sharpness.

In photography, careful use of depth of field can be a very powerful tool indeed. It can force viewers to focus only upon that which is sharp, by utilizing a shallow depth of field. As our eyes are not comfortable in viewing unclear images, we then tend to look at the parts of an image that is sharp, and our gaze will then focus upon that part of the image, rendering the other unsharp parts of the image as blurry and not worthy of our attention. This use of a shallow depth of field is particularly well suited to portraiture. As long as the eyes are sharp, most other things can be forgiven if they arent pin sharp. People and animals tend to look at the eyes first, and so the eyes really need to be sharp in nearly all portraiture photography.

Landscape photography is generally at the opposite end of the scale of depth of field, where the vast majority of landscape images require a very long depth of field. This is due to the fact that landscapes generally are trying emmulate an actual scene as we see it, and viewers are usually drawn into the image by its great depth of field.

Depth of field is controlled in two ways. The most commonly used is by aperture control. The smaller the aperture (the larger the number ie. F22), the greater the depth of field. The larger the aperture, (the smaller the number like F2.8), the shallower the depth of field. The apertures inbetween have a depth of field is that is directly proportionate to the aperture selected along the scale. The second means of controlling depth of field is by using a camera or lens that enables the lens to be tilted forward or back. This enables the focusing plane of the lens to be more inclined to the plane of focus of the subject matter, and hence providing a much better depth of field without a change of aperture. It is one of the major reasons for using bellows type cameras, or tilt lenses. With such a camera or lens, one can have a huge level of control over depth of field at any aperture.

Depth of field is also dictated by the focal length of the lens, and the camera format for which the lens is used. For instance, a wide angle lens always has a much greater depth of field than a telephoto lens. A very wide angled lens such as a 14mm lens has a depth of field so great that it almost doesnt require focussing, wheras a 600mm telephoto lens has an extremely shallow depth of field, and unless focussed upon long distance subject matter, the depth of field will always be very limited indeed. On the other end of the scale are macro lenses, which are made to be able to focus very closely to objects. Once you start moving in and start focussing very closely, the depth of field again becomes extremely shallow indeed. The closer you get to the subject, the less the depth of field becomes, and in extreme close-ups just the slightest movement will cause the image to go out of focus entirely.