Have you ever found yourself looking through your photos on your camera’s LCD, only to find certain parts flashing white? A lot of people wonder what’s going on and whether there is something wrong with their camera. Well, don’t worry. Everything is fine. What you’re looking at is known as “highlight mode,” and it can [...]

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Your camera is so full of settings that it often takes years for most amateur photographers to figure them all out. One of those is bulb mode. It’s hidden deep within the recesses of your camera’s shutter speed settings, and it can help you take some amazing pictures of the stars at night. In this [...]

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Your camera has a bunch of different modes, probably many more than you would ever care to learn. Each of them is designed to help you out with one or more shooting situations. In this article, we’re going to take a look at aperture priority mode. It’s one of the main shooting modes on most [...]

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Very few things are as beautiful as the sunset. The pinks, the oranges, and the yellows burn an image in our minds that is unlike anything else. It’s easy to appreciate the beauty of a good sunset when it’s happening right in front of your eyes, but it’s much more difficult to capture it with [...]

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Light. It’s everywhere. It’s what we use to create images on the camera. If there were no such thing as light, photography simply wouldn’t be possible. But there are times when there is so much available light that it can destroy the color in your photos. If you don’t take steps to limit the amount [...]

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Ever since writing the article on your camera’s histogram, I’ve been getting all kinds of questions about them. It seems that I haven’t explained enough, and that’s understandable. Quite a lot goes into a histogram, and I wanted to give you a quick and simple explanation of what they do. Now it’s time to go [...]

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There are a lot of myths and rumors spreading around the photography community, and none is more popular than the myth that you should expose for the sky on a bright sunny day. Doing so can lead to some pretty disastrous consequences. In this short article, I’ll show you why.

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Have you ever had a look at the histogram on your camera’s LCD and wondered what it all means? It often seems like your camera is speaking a different language altogether. Luckily, you don’t need a degree in computer science to figure it out. Here are some basic things you need to know to get [...]

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Sharpness, clarity, even a certain kind of grittiness, seem to be the distinguishing mark of professional photography. Detail isn’t just the result of owning a good camera (although it does help), it comes from a fundamental understanding of the way your camera works. When you learn how to bring out the most important details in [...]

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Nothing could be more fundamental to photography than shutter speed. It determines so much of every picture we take. We can use it to freeze fast motion or to make rushing water blend together and create a beautiful backdrop for a waterfall. Shutter speed controls how bright or dark our photos appear, allowing us to [...]

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On a bright day, the sun is both your best friend and worst enemy. It can provide a lot of light if you’re facing the right side, but it can also make many of your photos look unevenly lit or sometimes completely dark. Believe it or not, there are several things to consider when taking [...]

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Sequence photos provide a truly amazing perspective for action shots. They allow the viewer to see the progression of something as it is happening. Unlike video, all of the important parts are frozen, so we can see every step. There a lot of sports where action sequences bring out the true character of the athletes. [...]

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A motion blur effect works really well in sports photography, giving your viewer a sense of speed and action. It is also a great standalone photographic technique for dramatizing certain kinds of scenes. You can capture the speed of a running cheetah or the streaks of light coming from speeding cars moving through the city [...]

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Another email I received this week was from Mark Jones. Mark writes: I would like some advice on the attached picture. I tried to photograph my band playing a gig in a pub and the light was shining through the window meaning the drummer/guitarist was in almost complete dark, how?why? What should i have had [...]

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What is Opportunity Photography? It’s when you take images of a subject you didn’t expect to take images of when you picked up your camera. One of my subscribers, Jeffrey Balliett, sent me some wonderful images of a fox that he saw in his back yard. Jeff was taking his camera to photograph a nesting [...]

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