Over at TechMilieu.com , they’ve shown some excellent examples of underwater photography. I’m actually a qualified PADI Rescue Diver, and find diving very relaxing, but have never taken the step to actually document my dives. The photography kit required for these shots depends greatly on what you want to do.

Basic underwater cameras that are good down to 3m are not really what you’re looking for since all of these photos are taken far deeper. The limit for recreational diver is 39m and you can buy decent waterproof housings for many compact cameras that will be good down to 30m.

When I bought a new digital compact for day to day use I choose a Canon s90, and made sure there was a waterproof housing available should I ever want to use it for diving. If you’ve never seen what one of these looks like, here’s a link to to the housing for the S90 on Amazon – Canon WP-DC35 Waterproof Camera Case for PowerShot S90 Digital Camera

Have you even done any underwater photography, or even thought about it?

Beautiful Underwater Photography

There are many scuba diving sites around the world. Under the water you will find coral reefs, in touch with many fish, beautiful plants, etc. Underwater photography is usually done while doing the scuba diving activities. Here are some of the beautiful examples …

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This is a talk by David Griffin, photo editor at National Geographic on the power of photography to connect us to our world. As well as some superb images, he talks about how we all use photos to tell our stories.

What are photos to you, just something to look at, or do you want to tell a story with every shot? Please leave a comment.

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How secure are your photo backups?

Ok, so maybe the question should be “WHY do I backup my photos?”. As a (digital) photographer, I generate quite a bit of raw data at every shoot. Once it’s moved off onto my workstation to process, I need to make sure that there’s a backup copy. There are many reason for this, but these are the main two:

• If it’s a commercial shoot, then the data I have is worth real money since I’m being paid for it. If I loose it, then I potentially won’t get paid.
• If it’s a private shoot of someone, they may order copies going back over a few months/years, so I need to have the data available.

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Over at Chase Guttman’s blog, he’s gone through how to compose your images for the best photographic composition. It’s a excellent resource for taking your photography to the next level. Although there are 10 rules here, from my personal point of view, the rule of thirds is the most powerful, an easiest to implement.I’ve marked this post as a “Medium” level, because some of the terms may be beyond novice photographers – if that’s the case, please post a reply, and I’ll expand on an sections that may be a problem.

Composition- Composition is the process of visually organizing the essential elements of your image through the unique framing of your camera. Composition serves as an anchor for the eyes of your viewer as they scan an image, and therefore it is probably the most crucial tool a photographer can use to tell a story. A well composed image is measured by its ability to convey the photographer’s message. Even though many professional photographers utilize the basic rules outlined below, the following are simply guidelines. For amateurs, these guidelines are important, until that is they understand when to break them. Read more

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Photos to Sell?

So you had a shiny new camera for Christmas, you’ve taken lots of great images, and now you have a load of photoso to sell, so where can you go, and what’s available to help?

Over at DesignBeep, they’ve listed quite a few Sites to Sell you photos on-line together with a few selling tips for them. Make sure when you join any agency that you’re NOT signing exclusive rights for that agency to sell these images. if you have great shots, you may want to spread them over a few resources to maximise your chances of a sale. Of course, there may be agencies that will give a high percentage return for exclusive images, so read the find print carefully before committing.

Here are the 16 sites to sell your photos. Please contact me with any other sites which aren’t on this list.

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I was reading an article by Elizabeth Halford where she talks about wardrobe choices for child photography (Link Here), and that started me thinking about clothing choices in general for photographic situations. Again, there are a few simple rules that cam make life a lot easier for the photographer.

• Avoid clothes with harsh patterns – vertical/horizontal stripes, herringbone etc. because it distracts the eye from the subject
• Avoid outfits with too much contrast. A black top top and white bottom will mean you either underexpose the top, or overexpose the bottom – either way, too much contrast for the camera to handle
• “Fun” ties or t-shirts with garish patterns? No. Further explanation not required I hope?

In a studio environment, while you can control light, you still have the same problems. I’ve noticed a few things as well.

In Hi-Key environments when you have a very light background, dark coloured clothes will over expose and you’re left getting a dark mass, with no details, so stick to light coloured options. For low key, it doesn’t matter as much, but darker colours come out better as far as I’m concerned.

Ever had major problems with what your subject was wearing, or don’t you even think about it?

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OK, so usually I like to break down any photography on here to it’s component parts to make it easy for everyone to reproduce if they wanted, but this is something I’m going to let speak for itself.

You can view them directly HERE on the Acris Design website.

They take a lot of patience, and a bit of luck to get these fantastic shots.

Have you ever taken anything like this?

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There are very few “rules” to follow for better photography composition, and once you know these, your photography will improve no end.

By learning about how to frame a particular shot, you can turn a good “picture”, into a great “photo”.  I’ve been doing photography for so long, that these have become second nature, and you can apply these whether you have a camera phone or a pro digital SLR.

What did you think of the video?

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Ok, so it”s the time of the year, and your tree is all decorated and presents are piled up underneath. So how do you take good pictures of your Christmas tree?

Here are a few tips:

1. DON’T use flash – although this may seem counter-intuitive, if you use a flash, it’ll evenly light the tree, BUT, it’ll also overpower any lighting you’ve put up. So Keep the room lit by whatever light you usually use, and keep the lights on the tree switched on.
2. Use a tripod. Since you’re going to be using the ambient light in the room, you’ll be using a slow shutter speed.
3. Since you have a tripod, there’s no hurry to use a fast shutter speed, so you can also keep the ISO low, say (100-200). This will keep pixel noise to a minimum. Read more

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There’s an excellent article on Digital Photography School on photographing firework displays. It’s US based, and meant for the 4th of July celebrations, but a firework is a firework regardless of the time of year.

I’ve taken a few in my time, and have developed my own style for these (photos to follow when I’m not travelling about).

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