Bird Paintography. Birds have feathers as you know and feathers can look good when paintografied, is that even a word? Well it is now. But remember you must start with a very clear and sharp picture for it to come out looking good.

Paintography of Great White Egrets at Dawn.

 Paintography is about using a piece of software called Pixel Bender by Adobe. But I believe it only works with CS4/5. You can download it from the Adobe website and there is a small Paintography Tutorial and some videos here on my True Portraits website.

 The photos above and below were shot in the Florida Everglades near a place called Sweetwater Strand it is off the Loop road which is off the Tamiami Trail or US41 between Naples and Miami. The Loop road is a 32 mile scenic drive through the Florida Everglades. Best at dawn for the softest light if you are into photography. Be sure to go slow and keep your eyes open, not all wildlife is obvious.

Paintography of an Egret and Black Water Reflection.

Of course there are lots of other things that make good paintography subjects, just look around my blog here or pop over to my website at True Portraits all of my photos are paintography. But I love photographing the swamp birds, like Egrets and Herons.

Also remember when shooting white birds to get your exposure correct use spot metering and expose for the birds white feathers if you don’t you will get a washed out picture where the white has no details. Spot focus and spot meter all your shots.

Great Blue Heron with a Crayfish for lunch.

 When shooting the birds like the Great Blue Heron above, you must be as patient as he is. Don’t just pop off a shot and then go on somewhere else, wait for him to make a strike and catch him eating lunch, or maybe wait for for him to take off and catch him in flight.

Great Blue Heron taking off

 Be sure to watch out for the smaller birds like the Little Blue Herons and Snowy Egrets and try to get into a real good position to take the shot as composition is the key to a good photo. Sometimes you just have to grab a shot and hope for the best like the Herons above and below. It is usually the back end you get as it fly’s away from you, but they do not usually fly very far, just follow and try again.

Paintography of a Great Blue Heron coming into land

If you can try to catch the birds reflection in the water, one of the reasons why dawn is a good time to shoot there is usually less wind to ripple the water. And the Everglades has black water so reflections are usually pretty neat like the Little Blue Heron below

Paintography of a Little Blue Heron and Reflection

Lots more birds on my website here. Paintography of Everglades Birds

And join in with my #WadingBirdWednesday photo theme on Google Plus.

Shooting into the sun for newbies. This can and does produce some beautiful photographic results but it can also created photographic disasters. So here are a few simple tips to help you get started and get the best from your into the sun shots. Simple tips for shooting and seeing the ‘magic of light’.

Shooting into the sun by diffusing the light.

The first thing to remember is the sun is very bright in the middle of the day and should be avoided if at all possible. Shooting at dawn is by far the best time to shoot the light. The picture above is taken just after sunup and I have diffused the already soft light by shooting through the grass and using a 10x20mm lens at f7.1 ISO 100 at 1/60sec. And as you can see the sun flare is still white, white means bright. But the foreground is relatively dark.

If I compensated for the bright light, by that I mean exposed for the light, the foreground would be very dark indeed. So I expose for the middle ground and I get dramatic light differences. It also helps to have interesting details in the shot, like the little spider webs.

Shooting the morning light. Keep the camera in shadow.

Another tip for shooting into the light is to try and keep the camera in shadow and avoid pointing it directly at the sun. In the shot above I am in the shadow of the palm tree on the left and the idea of the shot was to get the awesome dawns red light beams hitting the grass and bringing out the fall colors and textures, again very strong lights and darks make a powerful image.

An accidental lens flare works out well in this composition

Keeping the camera in the dark so to speak will help stop very bad lens flares from ruining your shots. But sometimes a lens flare can be a wonderful thing but it is hard to control and if it turns out good it is an accident. As in the sunset shot above taken on the beach. The lens flare here is accidental but it compliments the shape of the driftwood and helps fill in the empty space on the left.

In the shot of the Naples Pier below I have diffused the sun by waiting for it to be partly obscured by the cloud you can do the same with a building, a tree or even a person. There is also a way for you to get a better exposure and that is to take separate shots of the light and dark areas by using the Bracketing mode of your DSLR camera this will take 3/5 or even 7 frames then use software like Adobe to combine them into one HDR photo.

Diffuse the suns light by partly obscuring it with a cloud

Exposure is the top and bottom of all good photographs and getting the exposure right takes practice. In your DSLR camera you have an exposure control that can be seen in the view finder it has a ’0′ in the center and goes + or – on either side. getting the indicator in the center, the ’0′ indicates a correct exposure but the practice come in when a correct exposure is not what you want.

Being creative with exposure leads to a better understanding of the light and creates more dramatic photos. As a general rule of thumb shooting at -1 exposure compensation will increase the strength of colors in your photos and is a good rule to follow. Practice with exposure compensation so you can see what it does to the photos. I like to shoot at -2 because I like dramatic light differences.

Using exposure to create silhouettes of trees

When you expose for the brightest part of the picture the darker areas will go very dark to black and create silhouettes as in the shot above had I exposed for the darker trees the sky would be a lot brighter and would of had a washed out look to it. Shooting the light in sunrise and sunset shots is always better if you have some clouds in the sky, clouds can add a lot of drama to a photograph.

Use close up focus and a shallow depth of field and a wide angle lens

In the photo above I have used a wide angle lens a 10x20mm to get a close up of the flower and grass but to also get the rising sun in the same picture. By getting down onto the ground and with the camera pointed slightly downwards I was able to get the suns flare with out it burning out the shot.

By using a shallow depth of field at f4.5 ISO 200 at 1/125 focus was kept to the flower and everything else gets blurred out. A similar action for the shot below at f4 ISO 800 at 1/60 but this time shooting straight into the sun that was diffused in the distance by some grass this kept the distance and the colors very soft.

Shoot into the sun with a shallow depth of field

Sometime it is difficult to focus your camera when shooting into the sun so by putting your hand over the top of the lens to cut out the glare can help you get the focus, if you are still not sure then use a higher f stop to give you some leeway in depth of field. Or try to gauge the distance to your subject and then move your camera to focus on something at about the same distance but away from the sun, then you can lock the focus and come back to your shot.

Close up of a flower at dawn with diffused sunlight

 You can even diffuse the sunlight through the flower you are shooting as in the shot above, by getting further away from the flower and zooming in close with my 70×300 set at 70mm f4 at ISO 100 at 1/125sec the rising sun is obscured by the flower it self and the light glows through the petals.

So there you have some simple tips for shooting the light. If you want lore detailed info on this the web is full of it, so experiment as practice makes perfect.

More photos can be seen on my website. “Dawn Photos” and “Spider Web Grass Photos”

Should I be shooting in the Raw? 

if you are a newbie this does not have anything to do with taking your cloths off. Your shiny new DSLR can probably shoot in jpeg and in Raw mode. And so you will have Googled this and found it is a personal choice. Some photographers will say it is the only way to shoot and others like myself will tell you, do not waste your time, your storage space or your money.

The biggest mistake I see in photos is bad composition and Raw will not help this at all. The second biggest mistake I see is bad exposure and shooting Raw can help to repair this. BUT. It is better to learn to shoot correct exposure in the first place than try to repair the photo afterwards.

What is a Raw file and what is a jpeg file? 

When your camera takes a photo in Raw mode it keeps all of the information captured in the shot. Raw files are a lot bigger in size and are not technically an image file at all, you can not view them on your PC like a jpeg which is a true image file. You need a Raw file viewer and the Raw image will look real bad to you anyway, so you have to spend a lot of time processing every image just to find out if it is worth keeping or not. And no one shoots all keepers, in fact 95% or more of a photographers images get deleted.

Raw is not a true image file. Raw is a data file as it contains all of the data your camera captured and you will need to buy special software to get it out again and turn it into an image file just like a jpeg!!! If that seems rather dumb to you it does to me also.

JPEG is a true image file. When you shoot in jpeg mode the camera chooses what information it needs to keep to make a very good image and then discards the rest, so the image file is smaller.

Is there any difference in image quality? If both Raw and jpeg shots were taken of the same subject with correct exposure and sharp focus there will be no discernible difference between them except for the huge difference in file size. This is a fact.

Raw files take up more space on your memory card and I prefer to use the space to take more pictures.

Raw files take more storage space on your hard-drive. I prefer to spend less money on storage hard drives.

Raw files take a lot longer to process, I prefer to use the time to go shoot more photos.

When would I shoot Raw files.  If someone is paying you to take photos and getting paid will depend on the quality of the photos, hedge your bets and shoot in Raw+jpeg. If the jpeg image is lacking in some areas the Raw file might just get you out of the hole.

If you are not getting paid to take the photos them then just save your self the space, time, and money and shoot in fine quality jpeg.

I have tried shooting in Raw quite a few times especially right after a known pro photographer tells me I should and I have NEVER, EVER found it to be better, in fact I find it to be a complete waste of time, effort and money.

I have a lot of images on the web in lots of places and NOT ONE of them was shot in Raw.

Photography is best in the early morning light.

Dawn is without any doubt the best time for photography for a number of reasons but mainly because this is the time of day when the light is at it’s softest. Light is the nemesis of the photographer, too harsh in the daytime, but at dawn it is a wonderful light and always a little different each morning.

Sometimes nature photography can be a pleasure and a surprise and you maybe get a light morning mist to soften a golden sunrise as shown in the photo below, this is taken at Lake Harmon in the Everglades.

Sometimes the light is a soft gold and sometimes it is a soft violet these beautiful mornings are rare indeed, but in order to get the good ones you have to be out there for them all, unless you are very lucky. But dawn is a beautiful time to be out in the country side everything is fresh and clean and ever so quiet.

But at dawn photography is not just about shooting the sun rising, look around you for other things like the grass and the leaves, these are my favorite subjects and at dawn they are at there best, often covered in dew drops. Shoot the sunrise through the grass or use the grass as the foreground. Remember the 123? Foreground. Middle ground and Background. Look for leading lines to draw your eyes into the picture like the rocks in the shot above, pulling you irresistibly into the dawn.

Use the grass or reeds like a curtain to look through, this again will draw the eyes of the viewer into the picture, everyone wants to see through to the other side. Look for spider webs glistening in the the early rays of the sun. This is the time of day when you see them a little later and they become invisible as the bright sun drowns them out.

Spider webs are intriguing and beautiful things but they can be difficult to shoot, move around them and look for the best angles to make them the most interesting and look for the best way the light shines on them. In the Everglades dawn light they can be seen everywhere but by 10am they have all vanished, they are still there but the harsh sunlight makes them invisible. This is why the dawn is such a magical time for photography.

I love shooting the dawn through things like webs, grass and flowers. By using a wide angle lens I can shoot close ups of the webs and still get some of the distant sunrise to show through. I diffuse this distant light by shooting at f5.6 to narrow the depth of field.

Remember that if you are shooting in low light you will need a tripod and you should always use one when shooting macro. Shooting flowers at dawn can produce some startling and beautiful pictures, get down low on a  level with the flower and shoot into the rising sun, look at the way the soft light shines through the leaves and petals, keep to f5.6 or less to soften the background but still getting the early morning glow.

Look at the way the light beams shine along the ground highlighting the grass as it goes, look for the light picking out certain flowers or leaves or even single blades of grass. remember it is not what you see, but how you see it that counts. Dawn is the magical time of day and I know it is hard to get up before the sun, sometimes long before the sun if you have to drive somewhere to shoot. I do it every day because I know that if I miss just once, that will probably be the best dawn ever. And like the song by Aerosmith says “I don’t want to miss a thing”.

If you want to get those magical nature photos of the grass and the leaves and the flowers you have to be out shooting when the light is at it’s best. Sunset is good but the dawn is a lot better if you get the dewdrops and moisture in the air. An early morning mist in the country side is enchanting and a challenge to photograph but it is a lot of fun.

Maybe I am just lucky that I live in the Everglades and the weather is never too cold, although it does get too hot in the summer months and high humidity, but it is alway just a little cooler at dawn. So there you have it.

Join me on Google Plus for the #DawnOnSunday photo theme.

OK. You just made the shift from a simple point and shoot camera to a very complicated Digital Single Lens Reflex Camera. Well do not be alarmed. The DSLR is a simple camera also. So you ask! “How do I get the shots the Pro’s get”? And this is the question I am going to answer for you. And yes you should use a tripod for all shots if it is allowed in the places you shoot in.

Auto Mode. Just like your simple point and shoot camera the DSLR also has an Auto Mode and this is your starting point, this is where your learning curve begins. When your new DSLR is in Auto Mode it will set all of the complicated things itself, like Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO. Needless to say all of these things work together to create the image.

So when your camera takes the shot in Auto it will by default in the View Finder or on the Live View screen show you what settings it chose. Now you must study these figures and notice how they will change as the conditions change like when you are shooting in bright sun light and then move into the shade, or it gets cloudy the camera will adjust the settings to suit the lighting conditions.

You learn whilst taking these shots. Your new camera will take a reasonably good photo in Auto and I use it myself when I want to be sure to get the shot, then after I have the shot and my subject is still there I can get creative with the camera settings, like changing what is in focus and what is not.

And as you learn how these changes effect the picture you can start to make some changes your self by getting into the fully “Manual Mode”. There are lots of good educational tutorials about these various camera settings and how to use them to be found on the internet.

View Finder v Live View Screen. This is really your personal choice I used a View Finder for a very long time but as you get older you may find a Live View Screen is better on the eyes. And if you are like me and wear glasses to see the little things like spiders and bugs and other tiny things.

The Digital Live View capability allows you to see the shot you are about to take on the screen and in the view finder and you will be able to see in real time how the picture changes as you change the settings. As you change say the Shutter Speed the picture will get darker or lighter.

What Camera Should I Buy.  This is personal choice, but I shoot with the Sony system, namely my new Sony Alpha SLT-a77. I chose this camera because of the ‘Live View Screen’ and ‘Focus Check’ capability and it is the all new technology camera,  it is not a DSLR it is an TLT this stands for Transclucent Light Technology. A full review of this camera can be found by the link at the bottom of this page.

Why I Chose This Camera. Before getting this a77 I was shooting with the Sony full fame Alpha a850 I used this for 4 years and what a great camera. But it did not have Live View capability which I now love a lot, also the new ‘Focus Check’ ability is outstanding for anyone who may not have 20/20 vision. ‘Focus Check’ allows you to see your subject magnified on the screen and to see what areas are in focus. You can even choose to have the ‘In Focus’ areas light up with a color of your choice, awesome stuff indeed.

Photos Magnified. The in camera “Focus Check” allowed me to zoom right in on this tiny spider and I chose to have the face in focus this was shot at f4.5 with a 100mm macro prime lens. This spider by the way is almost to small to see with the naked eye it is less than 1/4 inch across. I could of chosen to have the very front leg in focus that you see is blurry here.

I also recommend a browser plugin called “Hover Zoom” it will magnify on screen images like my spider on mouse over. The link is for Chrome but it comes for other browsers also. Once you use it you will wonder how you ever managed without it.

Summary. Using technology to take better pictures is in no way cheating and it makes photography simpler and more enjoyable as you learn about the things your camera can do, the a77 also has full HD video capability, but as of writing this I have not used it, but it is there if I ever need it.

Remember to study your camera manual, lots of people do not do this, don’t be one of them, carry it with you and use it in the field until you learn about your camera. Go to your camera manufacturer’s website and download the manual so it is big enough to read on screen.

Sony Alpha a77 Review. (TLT) Translucent Light Technology.

How to Photograph Leaves. As you probably already know doing photography in the mid-day sun is a bad idea as the bright sunlight washes out colors and leaves harsh highlights/glares on leaves, especially if they are wet. But going into the shade of a forest or woodland and shooting at mid day can be OK.

I like to shoot leaves in the middle of the day because the light coming through the leaves is dappled and certain leaves will stand out as they are lit by the sun whilst the other leaves are in the shade, this can give you black backgrounds. And you do not want to be rushing home because the dawn is over.

Isolating the leaves lit by the sun leaving a dark background

What Lens To Use? My preferred lens for shooting the leaves is a mid range zoom I use a 18x250mm or my 28x300mm so I can zoom in on the leaves that are maybe higher up the tree. Don’t stand head back looking up this can cause neck problems….

OK. let me digress a little here and set the scene for shooting leaves on a summers day. It is about 1pm and you are in a woodland sitting on the grassy bank of a soft babbling stream with your socks and shoes off and your little pinkies dipped in the cool water.

Sea Grape lit by the early morning sun.

Are you comfortable? Because this is how it is done, you need to be patient as the sun moves across the heavens. So you have a cooler with drinks handy and maybe a couple of your favorite sandwiches. Lie back and look up into the tree and look for likely leafy subjects.

I strongly advise against closing your eyes at this time as that can lead to falling asleep and missing everything. But if you do sleep for a couple of hours have no fear, the light will be even better when you wake up as you will be into the golden hours. Leaf photography can be stressful so you need to relax a bit.

Maybe shoot the leaves higher up the tree.

What Exposure to use? Exposure is the most common fault I see in photographs next to composition. Exposure is how much light you let into your camera. Notice I say you, as you are in charge of this unless you are shooting on auto. Do not ever shoot leaves on auto or the camera cops will come and confiscate your camera and arrest you for being a dumb photographer.

Camera Mode. Set your camera to “A” Aperture. You need a  narrow [dof] depth of field so use the little f#’s. I think f5.6 as a good place to start. All descent lenses can get down to f5.6. But go smaller if your lens allows it. I like using f2.8 or f3.5 on my leafy subjects. Set your ISO to 100 and (Important) at this point check the shutter speed your camera has chosen.

Look for color and shapes to add interest to your leaf photos

Selecting Shutter Speed and ISO. If you are shooting hand held with a 300mm lens you need a shutter speed of at least 1/300sec. If you are shooting a 200mm you need a shutter speed of at least 1/200sec. Get the picture? If you are not at the wanted shutter speed increase your ISO until you are. If you are using a tripod stay at ISO-100. If hand held, increase your ISO until you get a suitable shutter speed but try not to go past ISO-800 as you will start to have digital noise creeping into your photos.

Select the correct aperture, shutter speed and ISO.

Exposure Compensation. Setting your camera to under expose by -2 will absolutely improve your photos this I guarantee. It will boost the colors and make your leaves really pop. If you are not sure how to do this read your manual, as that is what it is for.

Camera Manual. If you have discarded your camera manual the photography cops are on there way to confiscate your camera for being a dumb photographer. The camera manual has all kinds of interesting things in it, things you may not use all of the time as well as things you should use all of the time. So read it for setting the exposure compensation.

Leaves come in all colors, shapes and sizes

Different Kinds of Leaves. Leaves come in all different colors, shapes and sizes. Fall colors are beautiful, but not just because you can photograph a tree covered landscape, picking out individual leaves that are changing colors or starting to wrinkle up ready to fall off are your star subjects. Look for leaves like the one below. “Is this just a leaf or is it a work of art?”

This leaf is the only leaf in all of the world that looks like this. And do you know what the most amazing thing of all is? I was the only person in the whole world to see it. And now it is gone for all time, I am so glad I took it’s photograph. Now you can enjoy it also.

Is this just a leaf or is it a work of art?

Try to photograph your reddish subject leaf next to leaves that are still green to show the transition phases, this tell a story about time and changes happening in the forest. And remember there are lots of different kinds of leaves to be photographed to see some of the photos of leaves that I have taken visit my website.

Grass is Natures Greatest Creation.

Grass is everywhere we look it is even found in the desert. Grass comes in all shapes and sizes and it also comes in all colors. So how do we photogrpah this boring subject and make it interesting? Well we can start by isolating parts of the grass.

Grass comes in all different colors.

So what color is your green grass? The colors of the grass in the photo above is the real color of the grass when I took the photo Using a narrow depth of field [DOF] that is an fstop of f4.5 of less helps to isolate the grass and blur the background. If you are using a point and shoot camera setting it on “Portrait Mode’ will have a similar effect background blurring effect.

Use the grass as the focal point of the picture.

Using Grass as the Focal Point. Now just the opposite to a “narrow depth of field we want to use a bigger fstop number to get the grass as the focal point and also get the rest of the scene to be sharp also. So we can select an fstop of f16 or higher. But it is not always necessarily so. [DOF] will depend on the focal length of the lens you are using and the subject you are shooting.

This picture above was shot with a Sigma 10x20mm lens at only f7.1 so how is it so sharp right through the picture? Because with this lens everything from the focal point of 2 feet to 100ft is in focus at f7.1 and that is about how far it was the the sea. And because I am shooting at such a low angle, down near the ground the sea is flattened out and only appears to be sharp.

And a little Paintography helps also but that is another story if you want to know more about Paintography follow the link or look in this blog. With most lenses using f16 everything from the lens focal point to infinity is in focus.

Using grass as the backdrop to an image.

Grass comes in all sizes. On a golf course the grass near the hole is very short but if you hold your camera very low to the ground it can still be photographed as a focal point. In the photo above of the Snowy Egret the grass is the backdrop and it is very dramatic grass in size and color. In fact if the bird was any color other than white it would be a terrible picture. This shot breaks another rule the subject is in the center of the frame but it works, so rules are meant to be broken.

The Egret picture above is shot with a 500mm lens at f6.7 but because of the foreshortening effect of this lens the bird seems to be right up against the grass, but the bird and grass are about 10 feet apart.

Using grass as the main subject pointing to the sky.

Using grass as the main subject. In this picture above we have a beach scene with wild sea oats and storm clouds. The grass here is pointing out to the clouds so the eye will follow and the edge of the sea oats disappears off to the left to give some distance to the image.

This was taken with my Sigma 10x20mm lens so as to give lots of openness to the image set at f8 for medium depth of field. This is a great lens for landscape and grass photography but it does tend to distort a bit at the edges. Remember when shooting grass to experiment with lots of different angles, also look real close for macro shots as in the sea oats picture below.

Wild Sea Oats up close, just growing on the beach.

Sometimes grass is good to shoot up close. Wild Sea Oats are one of my favorite grasses to shoot if you live near a farm that grows oats in a field they make awesome places to shoot at dawn and sunset as the crop ripens the golden hour light will show off the colors. This was shot with my 300mm at 135 mm at f4.5 to blur the background and make the oats stand out, I am at the minimum focusing distance for this lens which is about 3 feet away from the oats.

If you are on G+ join in on out #Grass Tuesday and post your shots. If your not on G+ well your should be, you really are missing out.

Here is a link to a DOF Calculator. Use this to find the ideal focal point of your lens and camera.

Here is a link to a camera simulator. Use this to see the effects of changing camera settings.

G+ Photographers. This post has moved permanently to New Page G+ Daily Themes List.

Please bookmark the new page for future reference and share with your ‘extended circles’ or share ‘publicly’ so all will know.

Camera Modes.

Portrait Mode.  Blurring the backgrounds.

When in ‘portrait mode’ your camera will automatically select a large aperture [small number] like f5.6 or smaller. Which helps to keep your background out of focus. [blurry] In other words it sets a shallow depth of field. Portrait mode works best when you’re photographing a single subject so get in close enough to fill the frame.

Also if you’re shooting into the sun you might want to trigger your flash to add a little light onto their face, this is called ‘back lighting’ and it open up the shadows. Portrait mode is not for just shooting people, use it for any subject where you want the background to be blurry [out of focus].

Macro Mode. The world of the little things.

Macro mode lets you move closer to your subject. It’s great for mode for shooting flowers, insects or other small objects. When you use macro mode you’ll notice that focussing is more difficult as at short distances the depth of field is very narrow. Keep your camera and the object you’re photographing parallel if possible or you’ll find a lot of it will be out of focus.

You’ll probably also find that you won’t want to use your camera’s built in flash when photographing close up objects or they’ll be burnt out. Lastly use a tripod! In macro shots the depth of field is so small that even moving slightly towards or away from your subject slightly can make it go out of focus. Also Tripods are recommended for all shots.

Landscape Mode. For getting the big picture.

The landscape mode is almost the exact opposite of portrait mode in that it sets the camera up with a small aperture (large number) f16 or higher, to make sure as much of the scene you’re photographing will be in focus as possible. It is the ideal mode for capturing wider scenes, particularly those with focal points of interest at different distances from the camera.

Also your camera will also select a slower shutter speed so you might want to use a tripod or other method of ensuring your camera stays still. Remember composition for landscapes like the 123 rule. Foreground. Middle ground and Background.

Sports Mode. When the world is moving fast.

Photographing moving objects is what sports mode is designed for. It is ideal for taking photos of any moving objects including people playing sports, kids, pets, cars, wildlife etc. Sports mode attempts to freeze the action by increasing the shutter speed.

When photographing fast moving subjects you can also increase your chances of getting the shot by panning your camera, that is moving it along at the same pace as the subject.

Other Modes.

There are other camera modes that are fun to use but these are the main ones that we use. If you are not sure of the camera settings for a specific shot use theses modes to take the picture, they are never far wrong.

When to use “Auto Mode’.

All cameras come with an ‘Auto’ mode and this can be very useful for the beginner and the professional. If you have your camera on another setting for a previous shot, switching it to ‘Auto’ will instantly change the camera to it’s default settings so you can quickly get the shot. Once you have the ‘Auto’ shot and your subject is still there, you can go ahead and try out the other modes and settings.

As a beginner using the cameras ‘Auto Mode’ is a good way to learn about Aperture and Shutter Speeds as the camera will display what settings it chooses, the beginner can read these and use the settings to explore further, the camera is never far wrong.

For more women – portraits and nature photos go to my site – www.trueportraits.com

Sunsets and how to shoot them.

We all love to see a beautiful red sky sunset but getting that ambiance into our camera is not always easy, but it should be. Here are some simple rules or guidelines for you to follow. If you do I promise your sunsets will be the best you ever took.

Here is the most important tip I can give you for shooting the sunset. Under Expose your shots maybe by 1 or 2 or 3 stops. And remember the faster your shutter speed the darker your photo will be. Aperture value of f8 is a good place to start.

Plain Sky Sunset

When shooting sunsets with a plain cloudless sky try to keep most of it out of the picture and concentrate on the foreground as in this photo of an old washed up tree and the beach. This is keeping the eye interested in the foreground and the curve of the log takes the eye out to the sunset. As you can see leading lines to guide the eyes are important for your composition.

Lines leading the eye into the picture

Keep a look out for leading lines like the pilings in the shot above, also the sunlight itself shining through the gaps lead the eye out to the sunset and also create interesting shadows and variations in color and light distribution. F8 will give enough depth of field to get the foreground, don’t worry about the sunset as it is at infinity.

With a cloudless sky keep the interest to the foreground

Sunset is a time for lovers all over the world to walk hand in hand and make silent wishes for the future, it is my wish that one day all of their wishes will come true. Sunset is the magical time of the day for most people, a time when work is over and relaxing can begin.

Sunset in the Florida Everglades

Sunset photography comes alive when you have some dramatic clouds about, they may look pretty humdrum during the day but back lit by the sun they change to something else entirely. Trees and clouds will make a sunset picture jump right out at you. Exposure here has been set to -2 to darken the foreground and give a silhouette to the trees.

Click for more sunsets on my site at True Portraits