Another great article from Digital Photography School (I assure you, I do read other sites, but they have so many good articles).   This article is  about different stances and camera holding techniques that you can use to reduce camera shake.  This isn’t about special lenses or anything - this is purely a techniques article that everyone can use.

Read the Article:  How to Reduce Camera Shake - 6 Techniques

PS - I took a little license with the name of my post for clarity reasons.

Photography 101, a series of articles at Digital Photography School, is back with it’s fourth installment: Exposure & Stops. As always, Neil Creek shares with us his expertise and wisdom about photography skills and technique. From the article:

In this series, we cover all the basics of camera design and use. We talk about the ‘exposure triangle’: shutter speed, aperture and ISO. We talk about focus, depth of field and sharpness, as well as how lenses work, what focal lengths mean and how they put light on the sensor. We also look at the camera itself, how it works, what all the options mean and how they affect your photos.

It’s a great series that speaks in simple terms and serves as a great starting point, or a refresher, for any photographer, regardless of their skill level. It’s a series I would recommend to anyone.

Read the full article: Photography 101: Exposure & Stops

For those of you who aren’t regular readers of Shutter Photo, this column, Educational Failures, is dedicated to revealing my failed attempts. In my own experiences, I have found that there is far more to learn from the mistakes that I have made than from my best work. As I analyze my own failed attempts, I share them with you so that you may also learn.

The subject in this out-of-focus photograph is my son. It was not a particularly great day for candid photography. But that day was a rare case where he and his cousins were able to be at the lake together. I wouldn’t pass up an opportunity like that. The cloudy weather causes light problems for candid photography, especially with fast moving children. Ideally, I needed a much faster shutter speed for this shot. But trying to freeze a moving child in motion is no easy task. Normally, if light were an issue and I had no preference for my depth of field, I would open up the aperture. The problem with this, however, is that you have a very narrow focus window. So when you’re dealing with erratically moving subjects (such as children), most of your shots will end up out of focus. To correct for this, you need a deeper depth of field for a better error buffer, so you need a smaller aperture. Therein lies the problem. As you know, a smaller aperture means less light getting to the image sensor. On a cloudy day, this solution doesn’t work well, especially with candid photography such as this where tripods are a hindrance. I tried to pick an aperture that was small enough to ease my focusing problems, but wide enough to let in enough light. In this particular case, I didn’t quite reach that point.

There are a few possible solutions that I could’ve applied for this photograph. A gut reaction would be to use a tripod. As I mentioned earlier, tripods aren’t ideal for this type of candid photography. A monopod or a collapsed tripod would help to provide some stability for this shot, but it would have limited my vertical movement. Another alternative would be to use a faster film or increase the ISO (this was shot with a ISO of 200). The drawback is that you will introduce grain or noise to your photograph. But what’s a little grain if you have a shot like this in focus?

So today, I had a bit of a humbling experience. I recently applied to become a submitter for a high quality Stock Photo website. Part of their submission process is that I need to submit 10 photos, 7 of which must be accepted. They can reject for almost any reason, but they explain very briefly why a given photo is rejected. I was expecting to have a few rejected. And, to be honest, I was expecting that I wouldn’t get accepted this time around.

None of my photos were accepted.

I never considered myself an excellent photographer. I’m learning as much as anyone else. I never had very mcuh formal training, and rarely do I receive any formal critique. Why they didn’t spend much time criticizing my photos, I got enough to know what I need to work on. I know that I have to work on focusing at the appropriate area (Depth of Field probably has a major impact on this). I also know that I have to work with color correction and keeping my photos free of artifacts (dust, etc). I also, apparently, need to avoid over-sharpening my images and properly exposing my shots.

Now considering the amount of time I’ve spent developing my craft, this is somewhat disheartening to find that I have so much to improve upon. Having 10 out of 10 photos rejected, I could very easily be bitter about all this. It would be very easy for me to criticize their review process. I could say they didn’t spend enough time evaluating my photos, I could blame it all on my equipment, and so on. But I would be hurting myself and my own work if I weren’t at least honest with myself.

Lets face the facts. As I mentioned, I have very little formal training and very few formal critiques. So it’s safe to assume that improvement is necessary on my part. I also need to accept that this company has a very lucrative business based on the quality of their submissions - they’ve got this process down to a science. They know what they want, and they know what is considered quality vs. what isn’t. I cannot even pretend to believe they don’t know what they’re doing.

That said, I have a few things I can work on improving, and I will. I owe it to myself to heed those comments and see what I can do to improve. I have another month before I can submit again. I’m thinking it will take a few more months for me to improve the way I need to. So the mature version of me will be spending a lot of time improving my works.

The refinement of an art form requires a bit of humility on the part of the artist. Mistakes will be made and errors will arise. The average artist will be quick to erase any trace of a bad photograph, or at least not give it a second glance. But a great artist is one who will analyze and scrutinize these works, sometimes more than a great photograph. A great artist is one who realizes there is more to be learned from one’s mistakes than from their greatest works. I hope to help you analyze your own failed attempts.

[Read more →]