You remember those holidays with Mom and Dad, right? When they brought their little point and shoot along to the beach and took some snaps of the seagulls flying by (just before they got sand in the camera)? Like many tourists, they were probably excited to see those shots in print – and then disappointed [...]

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In the days before point and shoot cameras – back when SLR cameras didn’t have any automatic features at all, everyone who wanted to take photographs had to understand the basic principles of exposure. Film was expensive and you just couldn’t afford to waste a shot on a guess, so you had to really understand [...]

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This week I received a letter from a reader who asks a very poignant question. Olivia Polerowicz wants to know: “I was wondering how to take good pictures in not so interesting places. The thing is, I live in a not particularly interesting place and so my photos kinda show it. I have a problem [...]

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Funnel cakes, ferris wheels and fun houses – what could be better than a county fair? With all those sights and lights, carnival photos should almost take themselves. Except that they usually don’t. So why is it so easy to capture blurry, chaotic and generally uninteresting shots at a carnival, and so hard to bring [...]

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A lot of people ask me how I get such great-looking pictures of waterfalls. What makes the water look so smooth? The answer is always the same. It’s in the shutter speed. You can make water look like anything you want if you know which shutter speeds to use. Fast-moving, slow-moving, it doesn’t matter. Here’s [...]

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In my Ask David column, I answer common questions from my readers. By answering them here, I hope to help everyone else who might have this problem, and not just the person who asked the question. Today, we cover White Balance, RAW images, slow shutter speeds and a few questions on lenses.

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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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You’ve seen them. Mystical photographs of streams make waterfalls look like they aren’t even from the planet Earth. When I first saw these kinds of photos, I wondered how it was even possible to create them with a simple digital SLR camera. There is a way to make waterfalls and streams as silky smooth as [...]

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Summer is one of the best times to sharpen your skills as a photographer. Not only is there more light for longer, you don’t feel uncomfortably cold or restrained while operating your camera. You can go out for as long as you want, day or night, and take great photos when the opportunity is the [...]

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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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Becoming a great wildlife photographer is a lifetime pursuit. You will spend hours upon hours scouting locations, traveling to them, and waiting for the best opportunity to take a single shot. Wildlife photography is an art that requires much more patience that any other kind of photography. You could end up spending an entire day [...]

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There has been a lot of recent talk about digital SLR cameras, lens modifications, and whether you need to go out and get a digital SLR right away. Sometimes the best arguments for getting the most out of your point-and-shoot system come from seeing what can be done with them. Usually, this is enough to [...]

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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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You are probably familiar with ISO on film used in a film camera. It’s the ‘speed’ of the film – higher ISO values mean you can take photos in lower light. But what about in the digital world?

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I have some rather active nephews and when I try to take a snap of them indoors I usually end up with some blurry body parts in my photos. But why does this happen and how can it be fixed?

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