In last weeks blog I talked about breaking the rules.  In this weeks article, let’s talk about sticking to them. Most images are required to have some sort of focal point. This not only allows the viewer’s eye to be drawn to it, but it also helps give the picture a sense of scale. Where this object or objects are placed, is equally important, as this will determine if the picture appears to be visually balanced. Frankly based on the…

You have to know and understand the so called ‘rules of photography ’ before you can break them, but once you have mastered them, you can commit them to your subconscious and start to follow your own inner creativity. By following your instincts, you will often achieve a better image by breaking the rules, because you will make images that are more challenging and interesting to look at. Bulls eye Shots & central Horizons One of the first rules a…

Artist David Hockney once said that art, science and craft from outside your immediate world can bring infinite possibilities to your work. At the Moulin Rouge” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec I’ve always said that a photographer should study work not only by other photographers, but also by artists working in other media, and especially in painting. And the reason for this is to think about composition. If we compare photography and painting, then clearly the way in which an image…

Photographing patterns in nature can be an excellent way of improving your photography, because it makes you think about composition, form, light, and colour. It also challenges you to look for a picture when one isn’t immediately obvious, and so trains up your photographic eye. And it has an extra bonus – unlike many other types of photography, such as wildlife, landscape, travel, and so on – you don’t need to go anywhere special to do it! Patterns can be…

Subject placement: Where to put your focal point. In many different genres of photography you will have a subject in your photograph with space around it. The subject may for instance be a person, an animal or bird, a flower, a tree or a building. Unless the photographer has cropped in so tightly on the subject that it completely fills the frame, there will be space around it. And the rule of space looks at how this space should be…

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Deciding how to compose your photograph can be one of the most fun, but also one of the most challenging, aspects of photography. A good composition is certainly absolutely crucial to the success of any image. A successful composition could be defined as one where there is balance between the different elements in the frame. The use and placement of colour, light and shape all work together to create visual harmony. But how is this achieved? Well, there are some…

Your choice of lens is vital when composing your image. We explain how to find the best lens for the right job. Buying a lens often takes second place to buying a camera but the lens is the part of the camera that actually records our image so therefore should in theory be more important than the camera body. A good lens should last a lifetime or at least 2-3 camera bodies so it’s worth investing in the best you…

One of the simplest ways to improve an image is to change the camera angle. By cropping out unwanted distractions from your backgrounds you can create more dynamic, contemporary images with more punch and drama. Changing your camera angle can also add variety to a set of images based on a similar theme for example, when shooting travel portraiture or a documentary theme. All it takes is small shifts in your viewpoint up or down, left or right to make…

Cropping; both in-camera and during post processing can dramatically change your image.  Follow our advice and take your photography to the next level 10 years ago when I bought my first DSLR camera 6MP was consider large. Today with 20 mill + pixel cameras on the market, cropping has opened up a wealth of photographic possibilities. Cropping; possibly more than anything else, can have the greatest impact on your image.  It is the first phase of post processing and with…