Candid photos are usually simple photos without a lot of technical equipment or any time taken ’setting up the shot’. Thus they capture some wonderful ’slices of life’!

Here are some tips for taking candid photos:

• Take your camera everywhere you go! Keep alert for candid situations – they can be found everywhere.



• Some examples of candid shots: A daydreaming store owner; an elderly man sitting beside you; commuters waiting for a train; two lovers on a park bench about to kiss; a child’s delight when feeding ducks; elation of a football supporter when a goal is scored; a city tramp surrounded by clutter; a woman lost in thought staring at the beach.
• It’s rare to get a second chance with candid photography. When you see an opportunity, grab it!
• Don’t use complicated lighting techniques for taking your candid shots. Concentrate on the simple and use your camera’s automatic features. Technical problems don’t matter so much if you have a great candid photo. Most technical problems (like if the image is too dark or too light) can be fixed on your computer.
• Set your camera to “ISO 400″ so it uses a fast shutter speed. This will help you ‘grab’ the shot even if you are moving.
• The best candid photographers blend into the background so don’t be too obvious. Do what everyone else is doing so you fit in with the situation. Then when you see a good candid moment, bring your camera up to your eye.



• You don’t always need to take the shot with your camera at eye level. Support your camera on your waist when taking the photo. Some luck or experience is needed here to get the framing right.
• Use your zoom lens to it’s fullest extent so you can keep away from the action while taking your shot. A Telephoto lens is essential if you’re going to be a fair way away.
• Never take photos of people’s backs. Nothing is more boring than a group of people with all backs turned to the camera. It just doesn’t work.
• Try converting the image to Black and White to get that extra punch and emotion.
• People ‘doing things’ make the best candid photos. Sports players, trades people, farmers and accountants are all excellent examples of subjects with ‘things to do’. Try to capture the essence of the person’s task. For example, you might capture a plumber concentrating on fixing a leaky pipe.
• If you’re in a public place, it’s usually okay to photograph people. If they object however, you need to stop. If you’re not sure, it never hurts to ask permission before hand. Your subject may want to pose, so explain what you saw them doing and ask them to continue as if you weren’t there.
• Experiment! Sometimes the artistic expression of a candid photo can be limited by you; the photographer. Try different angles, places and scenes. Look at candid photos created by others (they can be found in lots of magazines) for inspiration.

Candid photography is a great way to add some artistic flare to your photos without spending a lot of time with the technical aspects of photography.

Start to train your eye to see macro opportunities. You’ll be surprised at the objects you’ll want to capture : Stamps, Paper Clips, Coins, Pins etc. Some of the best subjects are provided by Nature – Flowers, Plants, Bugs and Leaves.

• Try getting in really close to everyday objects such as the wood grain of a table, the veins of leaves, the texture of gravel or the worn look of a slippery slide.
• Use a flash if there isn’t much light – but be careful because at this close range the flash could over expose the subject and image. A ‘Ring Flash’ unit can help. This clips onto the front of the lens and can give a softer effect.
• If your camera has trouble focussing at close range, try moving away a little and use the optical zoom to incease your magnification.



• Try purchasing a ‘close up lens’ that attaches to the end of your camera’s filter thread. This is a great alternative if your camera doesn’t have an inbuilt macro, but does have a thread to attach filters.
• Use a small white card to fill any shadows in the image. Shadows can be a problem if you are shooting in bright sunlight, or using an overhead lamp. Any single light source will cause shadows.



• Increase your ISO setting so you can use faster shutter speeds. This will ensure your images will be as sharp and clear as possible. Don’t increase your ISO too far as you’ll get a very ‘noisy’ image.
• Use a tripod as much as possible to eliminate camera shake and to be sure your camera’s focus is right.
• Don’t use the optical viewfinder. Because of ‘parallax’, the image you see in the optical viewfinder will not be the same as what the camera sees… Particularly for macro shots.

There are a few very good reasons to print your photos:

• We are a tactile species and enjoy looking at prints in our hands. The family album is definitely not a thing of the past.
• Image longevity: Hard drives fail; CDs with images may become corrupted, or the technology may change and you may no longer be able to read them. Computers are not the best way to store data for a long time.

So making prints is a good idea.

Digital Printing Options

There are a number of options available for printing your digital images. Including:

• Inkjet or Color Laser Printers
• Photo Kiosks
• Photo Store
• Online Printing Services
• Prolabs

General Tips for printing

• Ensure you don’t reduce the size or resolution of your images before printing unless you know your image is too large. Because your computer’s screen resolution is relatively small, an image that looks fine on a computer screen after a resolution change may look blurry in print.
• If you’re not sure if an image is good enough quality to print, look at the file size for a guide. A size of 100 kilobytes is on the small size. 400 kilobytes is better and will normally allow a photo at 8″x10″ dimensions.
• Before you start each print job, check the printer settings (or preferences) and make sure you have selected the proper print size and type of paper (eg glossy, matte, plain).
• To save money, print a few different images on each sheet. The print wizard should give you a chance to select a particular page layout (eg two 5×7’s, four 3.5×5’s etc).
• Keep photo paper stored in a dark and cool place. Don’t leave it sitting in the printer tray. Exposure to sunlight and humidity will degrade this paper (as well as the prints you produce with it).
• Ink cartridges are expensive, so conserve ink wherever possible. If the image you are printing is, 400K in file size (or has a picture resolution of 300 dpi), and your print size is a small size (5×7 or smaller), select “normal” or “standard” print quality. If you select “high” or “best” or “maximum dpi” the printer will pump out more ink than is necessary without any real improvement in print quality. On the other hand, if you are printing large 8×10s, or if you have zoomed in, choose the top-quality print setting.

• The best outdoors light to be found is at dawn and dusk. Here the light is not as bright as midday, and the sun produces some wonderful reds. Both these help to make a normally ordinary shot look magic by creating a warm glow.
• When you are shooting outdoors, the best way to shoot is away from the sun. Don’t have the sun in your photographs because it will overpower the colors and ensure the side of your subject facing the camera is in shadow. Ensure the sun is behind your back.
• Another thing to watch out for is that your subject doesn’t squint. We all love to see bright wide eyes, so ensure the sun isn’t too bright. This is another reason to shoot at dawn or dusk – you can have the subject facing the sun but not squinting… and you get much better colors in your image at the same time!
• If shooting in sunlight, watch for shadows. Look at the shadow cast by your subject and ensure it doesn’t block anything, or look unsightly. Additionally, ensure your own shadow doesn’t fall into the picture!
• The best night shots are taken just after sunset. This is where scenes are lit up as if it were night, but there is still a tiny bit of sunlight around to help light the scene and bring out the detail.
• When indoors, try moving your lighting sources around. Lights at lower angles are usually more dramatic than plain overhead lighting.
• Similar to using your flash during the day, it’s also possible on most digital cameras to take night shots without a flash. Try setting your ISO speed to 800 or above to ensure the camera is sensitive to very low light.
• Need to use the flash, but it’s a bit harsh? Try taping some wax paper over the flash to diffuse the light.
• Want to light a very small object? If you’re using your macro setting to take a shot, cut up a plastic milk container and place it around the object. It will diffuse the surrounding light.

The reason that reflections add an extra dimension is the reflective surface changes the object slightly (by a texture, color and/or distortion) so you get two slightly different versions of your subject.

You might even sometimes take a shot of the reflection only!

Water is a fantastic element to include in your photos, as the reflections it generates can make your image stand out. However, water can present an additional challenge as the ripples or waves can change the reflection from second to second.

Keep a look out for water around your environment when you shoot. Reflections from lights, or splashes of color can really help with the ambiance of an image.

Rainy days are particularly good as puddles abound!

Extra Secret: Photographing just the reflection and leaving the subject out is a great way to produce abstract images.

Note that not all digital cameras come with the ability to attach different lenses and filters. Check the manual for your camera.

Some lens types include :

• Wide Angle – Fills more of the scene in your photo. Use for indoor shots or a landscape vista.
• Telephoto – Useful for getting close. A Telephoto lens is basically a better optical zoom
• Fish Eye – This lens gets even more of the scene into your photo, but adds distortion to the photo. Straight lined objects at the edge of the image will tend to look curved.

Filters include :

• Polarizing
• Soft Focus
• Cooling/Warming
• Graduated

A polarizing filter can be the most useful filter to own. A Polarizing filter can deepen the color and contrast in the sky, eliminate glare from water or reflective surfaces, or cut through fog like haze. Soft Focus filters generate more diffused looks for romantic, moody, atmospheric, foggy or glowing effects in your shots.

Cooling filters add more blue to an image giving a psychological effect of calming or serenity in the final image. Warming filters cut out excess blue in an overcast sky to add more reddish tones to the image and make your photos look less harsh.

Finally, graduated lenses help for scenes that have a huge difference in light level – eg late in the day when the sky is still bright, but the foreground is in shadow.

The light from the setting sun can produce wonderful lighting for a subject, as does sunlight through leaves. Maybe you see a shaft of light between two large objects such as buildings that can be a perfect backdrop for your subject.

Lighting is one of the most important elements of digital photography, so keep a watchful eye out everywhere you go. Look for different colors, or different effects (like the blue-lit trees here). Also watch for too much or too little light. Your camera can’t handle the same range of light that your human eye can, so an image that looks great to you may not be captured the way you see it. If in doubt, check the image in the LCD screen after you have taken it.

Another common problem is too bright and too dark areas in the same photo resulting in only some of the image being correctly exposed and the rest of the photo being over exposed (too bright) or under exposed (too dark). The best way to counter this issue is to change the angle of your shot to remove the extreme brightness range.

Light Tip: Neon lights make great night time subjects. You can silhouette your subjects in front of them, or use them as a subject themselves.

For example, on a vacation choose a different color every day and ensure all your shots for that day have that color in that image. Or shoot only shots with triangles in them.

Other examples of themes are:

• Fences
• Bright Colors
• Time
• Cliche
• Unfinished
• Repeating Patterns
• Desperation
• Bliss

Fence Theme

Make sure your theme is simple otherwise you’ll be more pre-occupied with getting a shot in line with your theme than the image itself.

Another option for a theme when on vacation is to choose a selection of themes that captures the essence of the destination. Every area has themes relating to its landscapes, climate, cities, culture etc. Do some research by looking at local postcards or talking to taxi drivers to get an idea of the good picture taking locations.

When taking shots, there is often a short delay between when you press your finger on the button, and when the picture is actually taken. This delay may mean your subject has finished their action (eg blowing out candles on a cake) and you have missed the magic moment.

With Continuous Shooting you can take a sequence of shots and keep just the right one. Continuous Shooting also increases you chances of capturing a candid moment.

Where else can this be useful? Any shots of children or group shots will benefit from continuous mode.