Four Tips for Landscape Photography

These simple tips allow you to dramatically enhance your landscape photos.

1. First of all you definitely need a good tripod to eliminate any camera shaking.


2. Then it is important to lock up the mirror in your camera body. When it flips off it causes movement of the body. So you set in the menu Mirror Lock and then you press the shutter twice. The first time it lifts the mirror up and the next press actually makes the shot.


3. Using lens filters outdoors cannot be underestimated. The sky is usually too bright and your digital camera's dynamic range covers only five stops. So you would either get a blown out sky or underexposed grass. That is why using a graduated neutral density filter comes to help. It is very dark in the upper half and very light in the lower part. It does a good job with darkening the sky and leaving the grass at the same luminosity level. Also if you shoot waterfalls and want to achieve real water falling effect you need to use longer shutter speed, about 1-3 sec. You cannot do that outdoors when there is a great deal of light. That is why you should use a neutral density filter (not graduated) which darkens the whole frame area evenly for 3 stops.


4. And lastly it is advisable to get a remote trigger for your shutter release. It takes off any camera shake when you press the button. However you can set your camera to time delay mode (2 sec.)

How to Make Good Photos at Night

This video tutorial explains how you can get good results from photographing at night. City's best images are made at night but it is a real challenge when there is not enough light. If you have a DSLR camera, you can change a few settings and achieve nice looking photo images even at night. First of all if you leave your camera in the Auto mode, the results will probably be disappointing. There two main rules to avoid too dark photos:

1. increase the exposure (open the lens by setting the smallest f number and use longer shutter speed)


2. have your camera steady on a tripod.

Change your mode to manual (M). Open the lens to the maximum at the given focal length. Increase the shutter speed to 1 sec and if your image is too bright, use half a second. There are situations when you need to set your shutter speed to 15 or even 20 sec. At such slow shutter speed, your camera will shake regardless of how strongly you can hold it in your hands and even if there is a built in camera or lens stabilization. You definitely need to use a tripod. When you mount your camera on a tripod, do not forget to turn off any camera or lens stabilization because it may add shake by itself. Use a self timer or an optional remote control to release.

When photographing the city at very slow shutter speed, you can achieve nice trails of car lights.

When done, switch back to AUTO or P mode.

Business Portrait Setup on Location

This video shows how you can do a business portrait on location. If you have two flash kit, one flash can be equipped with a softbox, positioned quite close to the subject. The other flash is simply a bare bulb, lighting from behind. A reflector is directed to that bulb to send some light back to the model. All setup needs to be fixed before actual clients arrive so that you save their your your time.