Shoot on Rainy Days
Its interesting how often photographers I know will avoid going out to shoot in the rain, preferring to wait for nicer weather… There are 3 interesting things that can happen with rainy weather: 1) Natural Diffusion With rain comes clouds….
Shoot from the hip
Sometimes a great way to experiment is to try getting seemingly random shooting techniques to work – particularly if you’re doing street photography/social documentary types of images. The classic issue street photographers have always had is that as soon as…
See shapes
In yesterday’s post about the Rule of Thirds, we looked at the classic work of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Bresson’s style is very rooted in a classical compositional tradition balanced by a sense of time, place and wonder which makes his work…
Divide by 3
Instinctively as humans, its natural to think in symmetry when composing a photograph. The most obvious thing for us to do is to try and divide things evenly. The temptation is to put your subjects face in the middle of…
Shoot in the dark
A good idea for the summer if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere – the weather is nice, the day is long – get out and shoot after dark. Shooting at night is one of my favorite things of all. The…
Get down on their level
An obvious, but often forgotten photo tip is getting the camera level even with the height of your subject. I’m thinking of shooting children in particular. Most snapshots you see are shot down from an adults viewpoint, and as most…
Learn to use metaphor
A “metaphor” in the writers world is a way of describing something by using something similar in order to have a more emotional impact. For example if you say “she was pretty,” it doesn’t have the ring as “there she…
Tell a story
It probably goes without saying that we all aspire to tell a story on some level every time we take a picture. This is one thing that leads to a successful image – one that a viewer can find understanding,…
Know the difference between influence and copying
One thing you’ll find me preaching quite often is that, as a photographer, its important to have other photographers and artists that you look up to and try and emulate. This is how we learn – by standing on the…