I taught a private lesson today and it made me re-visit the photography basics. Fundamentals are needed in every regime. Sports teams athletes drill the fundamentals almost on a daily basis. So, why shouldn’t photographers?

Let’s take a look at composition.

In the first image I’ve carved the canvas into thirds(give or take)both vertically and horizontally. Unfortunately, most photographers place their subjects dead center and composition takes a back seat. But, remember that a viewers eyes are drawn to the areas where the lines converge. So, look at the composition of the next two images. The subject’s head is placed in the upper left area of convergence in the 2nd image. The viewer’s eyes naturally are led to the subject’s face. The slight tilting also creates a diagonal that leads the eye from the bottom right area back up to the face, too.

The third image places the subject’s right eye in the upper right area of convergence. It’s a much more interesting composition than the dead on composition of most photographers.

Don’t forget to capture moments along with great composition and lighting(future blogs).

In the fourth image I composed with the subject’s head in the upper left area of convergence with the subject’s body in the left vertical third. It’s my oldest son and I threatened to reveal a horribly embarrassing story. The threat worked and he gave a reaction that I was looking for. I have pretty good lighting, good strong composition and a nice moment. Voila, a strong photo!

Finally, I have a simple photo of the full moon. I just placed the moon in the upper right area of convergence and the result is a strong composition rather than a center-weighted image that isn’t quite there. Enjoy!

Family beach portraits have always been popular, but let’s try a few tricks to make them unique and memorable.

We are used to seeing a family all dressed in white sitting on the rocks with the waves in the background. Capturing a moment in a portrait can make a break your image. Would the Mona Lisa be so memorable without that tiny little smile? That’s a moment.

So how can we capture a real moment with a family on a beach?

Let them do whatever comes naturally!

The first image was the mom and dad  of the family just hanging out. Their body language tells the story of their love!

Same thing in the second image. A pretty basic pose, but I just let the couple get relaxed and show their real feelings during the session. In the group images we let the group pose and then had them run towards the camera.

So, instead of a stiff posed family, you have an image that shows the personalities of the family and a unique image.

Try to make your subjects more at ease with various techniques. To review, running, talking with them or even having them show their feelings for each other. Finally, you can even let your more athletic subjects go wild. Enjoy!

Hello from the soggy O.C., where it is pouring! But fear not, I was able to make a very nice portrait while staying dry and comfortable inside my house. Today I’d like to show you a segment about portrait photography and lighting.

Manipulating the available light is something that every photographer from beginning to advanced needs to have in their bag of tricks.

In the first image above is a portrait of my daughter, Tara.

I placed her in next to a bank of three windows in our living room that faces north. Very soft even lighting exists here, since the light is not directly striking my subject and due to the sheer curtains, the light is very diffused and soft.

Unfortunately, there is too much shadow on her left side of her face or camera right. A quick a simple way to fix this is with a reflector. Now you can run down to your nearest camera store where they will be happy to sell you a fancy-schmansy reflector for a bunch of money. But wait!

I have a quick and inexpensive solution that is almost always available.

Anything white will do. I grabbed an old poster out of the garage and placed it on top of the piano bench that my daughter is resting her arms on. Look carefully at the reflection in her eyes and you will see it in the lower half of her iris.

Since we didn’t have another assistant available and my labs aren’t very good at standing still, I just had my daughter use her left arm to bend the poster board up towards her face which nicely redirected some of the light from the window back into her face.Loo

See the huge difference it makes? You need to practice how close you need to bring your reflector in to work effectively, but in no time at all you should get the hang of this. Almost anything will work. Try a piece of paper, a napkin anything that will reflect the light from one direction back into your subject will work.

Practice makes perfect and is a lot less expensive than a store-bought reflector. Enjoy!

The Rainy Day

It’s raining in southern Cal today, storm watch 2010! Wait that’s the old days!

Now I can talk a walk and look around for the small things that I might have overlooked in the past. Art Nature Photography is the listing for today’s post and I just wanted to take a look at the world that we normally cruise by at 45 mph while talking on the cell phone.

The first image uses traditional composition with the leaf in the upper right area of convergence and something called negative space which is essentially everything else that is in the frame (nothing) or the reflection of a gray sky. It’s there in the composition to balance out the leaf. Does that make sense?

Sometimes you can isolate your subject (like the leaf) to make a statement with your image. The lifeless leaf, isolated in a sea that reflects the lonely gray sky on a rainy day. See how that works?

The second image is similar. The rain drops in the upper part of the image are in the upper right area of convergence and the yucca leaves/spears are in the horizontal thirds. The background is simple but not as sparse as the first image. Still it isolates the water drops and let’s the viewer focus on them in the simplicity of the composition.

Finally, , the last image is from my garden. I love when it looks wild and inviting and I really like angels. If you look carefully, you will see a second one out of focus to the left side of the main subject.  I placed the white angel’s face in the upper right area of convergence (must be my day for that!) but I used another technique in this image.

The angel is placed “looking” out of the canvas of the photograph. Normally you would want to leave room in the composition for your subject to “look or move into” but in this instance I want to create tension in the image by having my subject look off into space.

Enjoy this rainy day we need the water here in the desert!

A lot of cameras were given and received as Christmas presents. Here’s an entry about children’s photography. Too many times in my earlier days, I tried to make the perfect portrait of my children. It usually ended with me being frustrated and my kids crying and a lot of bad photos.

Forget about the perfect smile and the kids looking directly at the camera. What works and is the best way to make photos is to just have fun during the portrait session.

Whatever the kids do is cute.  That’s the key. If they cry or run away or smile it will be fine.

In a nutshell that is the key or secret. Too many sessions are ruined by overzealous parents trying to make children do what they want.

You cannot reason with a tired or hungry three-year-old! However long they give you, consider it a gift.

The gallery photos that I have included are from a recent session for a 16 month old and his mom. I made sure that the timing of the session was after his nap and that he had eaten. Then we went to a local park and let him run around.

I utilized a lot of compositional techniques as he ran around and waited for various lighting situations to maximize my opportunities for the most good photos. Practice photographing a small child with your main subject in the areas of convergence. Don’t expect great results on your first session, but practice to achieve greater and greater results.

Enjoy and success!

I was photographing a couple at one of my favorite spots, Huntington Beach at sunset. I had to post a couple of the sunsets, just to let all my friends on the east coast see how our weather is. Landscape composition varies depending on what part of the ’scape you want to emphasize.

Our first frame shows a classic 1/3rd land and a 2/3rds sky of a beautiful sunset.

Our other images show a version where we have about 4/5ths sky and 1/5th water, while we also have a 2/3rds water and a 1/3rd sky.

My last frame is actually a bit of a rulebreaker. Why? I’ve placed the surfer walking in the lower right area of convergence, but he is walking out of the frame. Normally, you want to leave space for our subject to walk or run or even look into. Why? Because it helps our viewers eyes to remain engaged and not stop viewing our image. It also emphasizes the ocean over the sky.

Lastly, we can’t forget our friends on the east coast who encountered one of the largest snow storms to hit in a number of years.  Looks like a white Christmas for them and we will just have to suffer through another wonderful sunset. BTW, that’s Catalina Island in the background.

Here it is! To kick off my new ebook, “Take Better Photos Now,” I’m having a Christmas special. “Take Better Photos Now” For only $19.95 and includes the ebook in PDF form & the CD-ROM which includes “How to Choose a Digital Camera,” “Digital Photography Basics,” A 50 minute video and the “Take Better Photos Now,” a 110 page ebook. All the books are in PDF form and are readable on your computer.

This special will be available only until December 23rd and is a great way to get the ebook download for yourself and the CD-ROM for someone that loves photography as your gift for Christmas.

FYI, for clarity the ebooks are in PDF format and viewable on both MAC and PC.

On the CD-ROM, you will receive 3 PDF’s (which are seen above) and an almost hour long video that allows me to go in-depth into about 35 of the images in the ebook.

Thank You for looking and Merry Christmas to all!

The Christmas Special Offer can be found here:
http://www.takebetterphotosnow.com/ChristmasSpecial/

A little bit ago @Sylvia asked if I could post a photo of the infamous snoot that I have been using lately on some of my freelance jobs.

The first image shows a piece of black foam paper that I bought at Wal-Mart for I believe 69 cents(maybe 99). I added velcro strips, both the loops and the hooks and stretched it to fit my Canon 580 EXII. I made this one to be about 7 inches long. Just smush it down into the shape you want it and modify your light!

With the snoot, I can add light into a scene without overlighting the entire photo. This photo needed just a bit of light on the subject’s face, but not anywhere else. So as not to overexpose the light from the snoot, I dialed it to about 1 1/2 stops over the existing ambient exposure. I believe the ambient exposure was around f5.6 at 1/200 at ISO 200, thus the snooted light was set to f 8.5 to achieve just a bit of additional lighting on our subject’s face. There is some spill onto the paddle, jacket and the piling behind our subject, but it still works for me.

I hope that helps and thanks for your patience. Enjoy!

Today I would like to share more about photographic composition and how it affects our viewers.

Our subject is Victor Pang a Pacific Islander who speaks out about cancer to his fellow islanders. Support groups and helping those who are currently battling cancer or those who might be survivors is one of his many passions. I was asked to photograph Mr. Pang for CURE magazine. I decided a portrait near the water would make sense and put him in an environment that he loves.

He brought his paddle, authentic hat and a flowered shirt and the rest was up to me. Let’s talk about the composition of this photo.

I wanted to show Victor near the water, so we walked right under the pier as close to water without getting wet. The pier acted like a giant screen blocking out the light, but not the ambient light that was nicely diffused due to the clouds.

I decided to place my subject’s head in the upper right area of convergence of the top horizontal and the right vertical thirds of the image. The paddle, I carefully made sure that it didn’t blend into the darkeness of the underside of the pier. So, I had it surrounded by the clouds, that way it was sure to stand out in the frame. The horizon is on a standard 1/3rd sky and 2/3rds land ration. I wanted to emphasize the water and the land, thus, the 2/3rds devoted to that.

Finally, I wanted to show the vanishing point of the pier, I placed that in the convergence of the upper left corner. The lighting was achieved with one off-camera Canon 580EXII at 1/2 power which gave me a ratio of about 1 1/2 stops over the ambient, or so. That’s another post in the future. All in all, I was very pleased that a simple portrait could be so visually effective.

You can see some of my other poses that were part of my creative process, but in the end, the first frame is the one that I like the best.

Simple composition can lead your viewer’s eyes exactly to the places that you desire to highlight. Thanks for looking and enjoy!

The past few days I’ve had the pleasure to take a few senior portraits. Senior portrait photography is a special genre that requires a flair for fashion and an ability to push the envelope. Here’s a couple of examples from two recent shoots. One is for a high school senior and the other if for a college senior.

Good composition and lighting are a must. Each image was carefully crafted to lead the viewer’s eye to the main subject. But, I also tried to make the subject’s feel like supermodels on their very own fashion shoot.

Even Heidi Klum, one of the most beautiful women in the world and one of the highest paid supermodels, complains about her “trouble” spots. So, I always work to highlight every subject’s best features and to minimize any “flaws” or less favorite attributes.

It’s a fine line but every photographer should try to make their subjects feel like your care and are doing your best to show them in the best possible way.