5 Photo Tips that I wish I would have know when I first got my DSLR

1. How to control my focus. It’s such an easy fix in your camera but I didn’t know I could even fix it.  I used to just continually hit the shutter button halfway until my camera picked what I wanted it to pick.  If my subject was off to the side, forget about it! (When shooting portraits, I’m always aiming my focus point on the eyes.  If the eyes aren’t in focus, the photo looks out of focus even if part of it is in focus.  Our eyes are always drawn to the eyes.) 2. How much fun it is to shoot slow shutter speeds. I hated the hassle of a tripod so I just ignored that capability in my camera.  Once I figured out all the cool [...]

How to get that shot! – Giant Bubbles – Photography Tips

A question often asked in my classes is how to get shots of busy kids. "They're always blurry or turn their heads as soon as I pull out my camera!" Super common! One of my favorite photography tips to combat this is to give the kids something to do or engage with. Then while they play, you can play! Here are some resent shots I took of my cousin's boys while they were making giant bubbles.         In all these shots I'm using fast shutter speeds from 1/6400 to 1/1250.  I was able to achieve these high shutter speeds because I had plenty of light and I picked bigger apertures of f/2.8 to f/3.5.  I did have a low ISO of 200 so if I [...]

The Diopter

Have you ever been in a situation where you look through your view finder and it is a little cloudy or blurry, but your images are all turning out in focus? Well what could be happening is that your "Diopter" got bumped and caused your view finder to go out of focus. The Diopter is next to the view finder and is used to adjust the view finder to your eyesight. For Canon it is a little dial and for Nikon it is a Slider next to the view finder. Check out Christiana's tip on adjusting the Diopter in the video below.

Learning Photography through Photo Collecting

If you don’t know where to start or what to start shooting, here’s my advice – just do it!  I know, not super helpful.  Once again, practice is key to learning digital photography! This learning photography through photo collecting is a great exercise that can help you get started. One thing that helps me in this area and has stretched my creativity is to have a photo collection.  I love bicycles!  When I started photographing them I suddenly saw them everywhere and started adding to my collection.  I hardly realized that I was practicing! :) During this time we were fortunate enough to be living in Dublin and were able to easily travel to Paris! I loved walking down the side streets and seeing all of the old [...]

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