- Using window light : You don't need an expensive home studio lighting kit to take amazing portraits - a window and a reflector can help you achieve stunning natural light portraits without spending too much.Position your model at an angle to the window and use a white or silver reflector to open up any shadows across their face. A silver reflector will give a crisper quality of light than a white one, although the effect won't be as subtle.
- High-key portraits : Deliberately choosing to over-expose a photo to create a 'high-key' effect results in a light and delicate look that can enhance feminine portraits and pictures of children.The trick is not to blow the highlights in-camera, but rather brighten up the shot later in software such as Photoshop.
- Baby portraits : When it comes to lighting baby portraits, natural light is the best choice. Flash will just end up spooking them. Try and position them near to a window and use a reflector to bounce light into any shadows.The more light you can get onto your subject, the lower ISO sensitivity you can use for the best quality photos.
- Photographing children : Taking photos of children is fun but challenging. Keep a kids' portrait session short and entertaining. Play games with them: ask them of they can see their reflection in the front element of the lens is a good way to get some eye contact.Fit a wide-angle lens and shoot without looking, poking the camera into their face.
- Family photo posing ideas : Think about how your arrangement of people in a group family portrait can tell a story about the relationship between the different members.A simple idea is to place the emphasis on the patriarch or matriarch of the family, or the newest arrival. By grouping the rest of the family around them, you'll be able to create a clear focal point.
- Taking photos of garden birds : Practice makes perfect, and it's easy to do that with portraits and landscape photography - less so with wildlife photography. A good way to get to grips with the basics is to photograph garden birds.The trick here is to set up your own garden bird studio. Clamp a branch in place in front of an uncluttered natural background, hang a feeder close by and, over time, birds should start using your branch prop as a landing post before heading to the feeder.
- Take eye-to-eye animal portraits : Make the effort to get down to an animal's eye level as this will result in a more intimate portrait. Manually choose an autofocus point that corresponds with the animal's eye, too.If you leave it to the camera to select an AF point it's likely to focus on the part of the creature that's closest to the camera - and that's likely to be a snout, a beak or claws (depending on how close you're getting
- Better composition : With wildlife photography, very often it's a case of nothing happening for ages and then everything kicking off all at once. Composing pictures quickly can be a challenge, but there are a few tricks you can use.Off-center compositions are often recommended for more balanced images, and that's particularly true if the animal is looking to the left or right. Compose the shot so that the creature is off to one side and with more room in front of it to 'look into' than behind it.
- Sharper photos with a monopod : A big, heavy telephoto lens requires a big, heavy tripod and specialist tripod head if you're going to get shake-free shots.However, lugging this kit around can slow you down - a good thing for considered compositions, but another thing entirely when it comes to following an active subject.
- Safe shutter speed for handheld photography : On a full-frame camera, you can just use the actual focal length of the lens as a guide - if you've got a 300mm lens fitted, then the minimum recommended shutter speed for blur-free pictures is 1/300sec.An APS-C has a crop factor of 1.5 or 1.6, so the lens's focal length needs to be multiplied by this amount for the 'safe' handheld shooting speed.The same 300mm lens fitted on an APS-C body would need a shutter speed of around 1/500sec for sharp handheld shots.