This week’s theme is rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is probably the most well-known composition rule in photography.
The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to break an image down into thirds horizontally and vertically, like the diagram below.
Placing the most important elements of your frame on one of the lines or at one of the intersections helps create an aesthetically pleasing and interesting image. See below for some examples.
I typically use this rule horizontally, but it can also be used vertically. It even works in an otherwise centered image, like the last example above. Playing with the rule of thirds is a good way to break out of a tendency to center everything all the time.
Rule of Thirds Tips
How to apply the rule using guidelines: you can imagine these lines while composing, but some cameras have the ability to turn on a grid in the viewfinder/LCD. Many editing programs also show this grid when cropping, which is a feature I use a lot when the in-camera crop doesn’t look quite right.
Try placing something on multiple points or lines across the frame creating balance in your composition. See the trampoline image and the one with the two women running above.
With landscape photos, try placing the horizon line on one of the horizontal lines on the grid.
As with any rules or guidelines in photography, feel free to break it if you want. It’s good to learn the rules first and then you can break them intentionally and know why you’re doing it. This also isn’t something you have to think about for every photo. There are many composition techniques out there that can result in interesting photos. We’ll get to some more of them later in this challenge.
If you have any questions, join us in the Facebook group. I’ll be checking in there daily to see your work and help you achieve the best results.
This week’s theme is silhouette. A silhouette is an outline that appears dark and without much detail against a lighter background.
Below are some examples of silhouette photos of people, though you can certainly make a silhouette of other things like trees, buildings, etc. Some of these have a little detail showing with light leaking in at the edges, which can help you see what’s going on a bit better than the traditional totally black silhouette. Find some tips on getting a great silhouette photo below the examples.
Silhouettes rely on backlighting, which means the light is coming from behind the subject. The light from behind puts the subject in the shadow of itself, so it appears dark.
You might have achieved this look accidentally when using automatic mode on your camera. That’s because your camera is exposing for an average brightness in your frame and if the background is larger in area than the subject(s), your camera will think the scene is very bright and expose for the bright areas, making the subjects dark.
How to Expose for a Silhouette
If your camera doesn’t automatically give you a silhouette (and with default settings and the subject not taking up the majority of the frame, you usually will get one), here’s how to get one intentionally. If you’re using a cell phone or similar touch screen device, tap on the light background instead of the subject and it will expose for the background, making the subject dark.
With a DSLR or other more advanced camera, there are two options that can work:
1) Point your camera at an area that’s mostly/only bright background and press the auto-exposure lock button (AE-L or * or check your manual) to lock in your exposure. Then move your camera back to your desired composition, press the shutter button halfway to focus, and you should be able to take a silhouette. This method is the simplest way to expose for the background and get your subject in focus.
2) If the above method doesn’t work or your camera doesn’t have auto-exposure lock, you can try this more complicated method. Set your exposure mode to program/P (manual/aperture-priority/shutter-priority if you know how to use them) and set your metering mode to spot (or center weighted if you don’t have spot). The exposure mode is usually a dial on top of the camera. If you don’t know how to set your metering mode, try searching for “how to change metering mode” and your camera model. Then move your focal point onto the background to expose for the background’s brightness (or for most Canon DSLRs, make sure the center of your frame is over the background because it determines exposure by the center point, not focal point).
Focus. For the cell phone method and second DSLR method above, you may have an issue with your subject being blurry or somewhat out of focus. If you want your subject to be sharp and background blurrier, look up how to separate exposing and focusing for your camera model (or your phone app – I use ProCamera, which lets you tap on different areas for focus and exposure). Alternatively, you can use manual focusing to change the focus after you get your exposure (or before if you switch the lens to M, otherwise pressing the shutter halfway will refocus). Another option is to use a higher aperture to get more of the frame in focus (in aperture-priority, just set the aperture to a higher number).
Other Silhouette Tips
You want your background to be brighter, preferably much brighter, than your subjects. The sky, with the sun behind your subjects, is usually a great background for silhouettes. Sunset or sunrise can make the sky look more interesting.
To get an interesting and clear silhouette of a person or people, try to get them posed in a way where their shapes are distinct and multiple subjects have some space between them. It’s helpful if they’re doing something you can recognize in silhouette so they don’t look like a big blob. Objects with interesting edges make good subjects as well.
Make sure there aren’t other shaded objects intersecting your subject or they won’t stand out. You may be able to get a slight outline of light around two subjects a distance away from each other, which is a little trickier to achieve.
Make sure your flash is turned off if it fires automatically. You want your subjects to be darker than the background, so try to not have any added light on them, including flash or indoor lights.
If you have any questions, join us in the Facebook group. I’ll be checking in there daily to see your work and help you achieve the best results.
Comments Off on Week 1 – Photograph Someone You Love
I’ve been a professional photographer for over a decade and over the years, I’ve learned how important it is to document the people in our lives. People change so quickly, even if it’s not apparent when you see them every day.
This week’s challenge is to photograph someone you love. If you don’t have anyone handy, you could choose a pet or do a self portrait instead. This image can be posed or candid, your choice.
Below is the photo I took for this theme in 2020. I was visiting my parents across the country and just had my cell phone, so it’s not up to my usual technical standards, but I still think it’s a great photo of him.
Below are some examples of candid photos of individuals. If you regularly photograph people, try taking a different type of portrait/candid than usual.
If you have any questions, join us in the Facebook group. I’ll be checking in there daily to see your work and help you achieve the best results.
Practice is the best way to get better at anything. This really applies to photography. There are so many technical things to learn, you need to practice them often to make the technical part second nature. Once you’ve got the technical parts down, you can focus solely on the creative. But of course, practicing the creative parts is important too (and fun).
I put together 52 weeks of photography assignments for 2020 so you can practice your photography skills, no matter what level you’re at. There aren’t any hard rules for this. If you don’t get a chance to do the challenge one week, you can always catch up the next, or just skip that week. The main point of this is to get you using your camera at least once a week, if not daily.
I’ve alternated the themes over four week sets of the following categories: subject/moment, lighting, composition, and technical. The technical prompts might be a little more challenging if you’re just using a cell phone camera, but I’ll offer some workarounds for that each week.
The full list is below, but I’ll be making a blog post every week to further explain and give some examples. You’ll find this especially handy with the more technical assignments.
Below are the blog posts for the weeks that have been posted so far:
You can follow me on Instagram at @documentyourdaytoday and use the hashtag #documentyour2020. I’ll feature some of your work on my Instagram (with permission), but check out the hashtag to see everyone’s work.
Week 1: Photograph Someone You Love
January 1-7, 2020
I’ve been a professional photographer for over a decade and over the years, I’ve learned how important it is to document the people in our lives. People change so quickly, even if it’s not apparent when you see them every day.
This week’s challenge is to photograph someone you love. If you don’t have anyone handy, you could choose a pet or do a self portrait instead. This image can be posed or candid, your choice.
Below are some examples of candid photos of individuals. I’m going to try to take a portrait this week, because I very rarely take individual portraits. If you regularly photograph people, try taking a different type of portrait/candid than usual.
I remember when I was just starting out and I posted a session with the photos below. Someone, who was attending photography school, e-mailed me and asked how I got that blurry background. I was a bit shocked that someone studying photography would ask me, since I felt like a total newbie at the time. But I can understand why someone would ask this question, because the blurred background isn’t something you can easily achieve with a point-and-shoot or phone camera. It seems like it requires either expensive equipment or special knowledge. It doesn’t. Ok, maybe a little bit of knowledge, which is what this post is for. And a DSLR or camera with manual controls is helpful too.
Canon 5D, 50mm f1.8, at f/1.8, 1/200 sec, ISO 100
Canon 5D, 50mm f1.8, at f/1.8, 1/320 sec, ISO 100
The above photos were taken with the Canon 50mm f1.8 lens, which is currently $134 on Amazon.ca (updated April 2020). I highly recommend that new photographers get a basic 50mm f1.8 lens if they’re interested in shooting portraits. The Nikon equivalent is the AF-S version, which is $249 on Amazon. There’s a cheaper version for $159, but it only works in manual focus with most inexpensive Nikon DSLRs. So, for $250 or less, you can take the photos above. I did use the Canon 5D body, which is a pro body, but it’s also really old (circa 2005). You can probably pick a used one up for less than $500.
There are two main things that affect the blurriness of the background. These are depth of field and lens compression.
Depth of Field
Usually when people talk about how blurry or sharp the background is, they’re talking about the depth of field. The above images have a shallow depth of field. A deep depth of field would have the trees/grass in the background in focus, or at least more in focus.
What affects depth of field?
1. Aperture
This is the thing that most people focus on when trying to achieve shallow depth of field, and it’s probably the easiest to implement and understand. I think I shot the entire above session on f1.8, because I knew that a low aperture would give me that cool blurry background effect.
With all other factors remaining the same, a wider/lower aperture will give you less depth of field (i.e. more blur) and a higher aperture will give you more depth of field. That’s why the 50mm 1.8 is great, because its lowest aperture is f1.8. For most kit lenses (that come with the camera), the lowest aperture is f3.5 (and f5.6 when zoomed in).
Hint: if you look at your lens, it will have the focal length and lowest aperture marked on it (ex: 50mm 1:1.8 or 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 – the latter meaning the lowest aperture is 3.5 at 18mm zoom and 5.6 at 55mm zoom).
Below is an animated GIF that shows the same camera/lens in the same position, with only the aperture changing (and shutter speed/ISO to keep the exposure the same). I kept my focus point on the front figure for all of the photos. See the difference between f1.8 and f4? And f4 and f8? You can even see the depth of field changing in the grain of the table. It’s a distinct line on the 1.8 image and spreads to include the entire table.
Therefore, to make your background blurrier, use a lower aperture.
2. Distance between Camera & Subject and Subject & Background
In the below example, the aperture is fairly low (f2.8) on a 50mm lens. The couple is in the same position and their distance to the background is always the same, but I moved closer to them in the second photo. Notice how much more blurry the background looks?
50mm f1.8, at f/2.8, 1/200 sec, ISO 5000 (only my distance from the subjects changed)
The closer you are to your subject, the smaller the depth of field. This means that you should be careful when shooting portraits very close to your subject with a wide aperture. Focus on the eye that’s closest to the camera, because one of the eyes may go out of focus. If you just try to get your focal point anywhere on their face, you may end up with just their nose in focus.
Below is an example of a photo taken very close to my subject. I focused on the flower hanging from the shoulder of her dress. Notice how the focus starts to drop off right away behind the focal point? If I’d been standing five feet away instead of right next to her, her entire body would be more or less in focus, like in the above examples
35mm 1.4, at f/2.0, 1/320 sec, ISO 1000
In the below example, the aperture is again f2.8 on a 50mm lens. The couple is in the same position, but I rotated my position slightly, causing the background to be closer to them, and moved myself farther from the subjects. The closer the subjects are to the background, the sharper the background will be (if all other settings are the same). The depth of field stays the same, but the background moves into the sharp area.
50mm f1.8, at f/2.8, 1/500 sec, ISO 1000 (my distance from the subjects and their distance from the background changed)
Therefore, if you want the background to be blurry, move the camera closer to the subjects and/or the subjects farther from the background.
3. Sensor Type
If you’re just learning photography with a DSLR, chances are you have a crop-sensor camera. Pro-level cameras are usually full-frame. A crop-sensor effectively multiplies focal length by the crop factor (usually 1.4 or 1.6), so a 50mm lens becomes 70mm or 80mm instead. It doesn’t behave exactly like a 70-80mm lens though. It’s a bit too complicated for me to go into here, but generally the same lens on a full frame camera will have shallower depth-of-field than on a crop-sensor, therefore a blurrier background.
Lens compression is similar to depth of field in effect, but it’s caused by different things. It’s seen when you use a different focal length.
We’ve discussed focal length a bit. On a 50mm lens, the focal length is 50mm. On the typical 18-55mm kit lens, the focal length zooms from 18mm to 55mm. With distance to subject and settings remaining the same, the background will be blurrier with a longer focal length. This is primarily due to lens compression.
Here’s an example where I tried to kept the camera the same distance from the subject and the aperture at f2.8, but changed from a 35mm to 50mm lens. I cropped the below image down to show about the same area (of course, the 35mm originally captured a larger area). You can see that the background is blurrier with the 50mm lens and the lens also compresses the background towards the subject (makes it seem closer) while the 35mm lens brings more of the edges in. There’s more to be said about compression, but for this lesson, we’ll just say that longer lenses will cause your background to be blurrier if all other settings remain the same.
Summary
In summary, to get a blurrier background, you can try the following:
Use a lower aperture (smaller f-stop number, like 1.4 vs. 5.6)
Move the camera closer to the subjects
Move the subjects farther from the background
Use a full frame camera vs. a crop sensor camera
Use a longer lens or focal length (i.e. 85mm vs 35mm) – zoom in
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I teach beginner’s photography workshops in Victoria, BC and I wanted to make a list of resources for my students and other photography enthusiasts at various levels. I’ll add to this list as I discover new resources. Let me know your favourites in the comments.
Picture Perfect Practice is an excellent book for learning composition techniques and getting into the habit of breaking them down and practicing them. It also has some sections on posing, though I hear his book Picture Perfect Posing is even better for that. I’ve only read part of it so far, but have heard great things about it from other pro photographers. This book is great for both beginners, seasoned pros, and anyone in between.
I haven’t tried it, but a lot of people recommend Lynda.com for tutorials on photo editing. Many libraries include free access to this site. You can also find a lot of great photography and editing tutorials on YouTube. Here’s a list of some great YouTube photography tutorial channels.
Blogs
Photography Concentrate has a ton of great articles for photographers of various levels, but is especially helpful to newer photographers. They have some excellent ebooks for purchase, but the blog is a source of a lot of helpful and free information.
Digital Photography School has a ton of useful articles on various types of photography. There’s so much information here, I suggest using the search function.
You can also follow my blog for photography tips. I’ll be posting more in the coming months. Let me know if there are any topics you’d like me to cover.
Note: some of the links above are affiliate links, but I have personally used all of the above resources unless otherwise noted.
Why should you take a photography course, read an instructional book, or figure out how to use your camera beyond pointing and shooting? Cameras are so smart these days. You can get great photos with a basic DSLR in auto mode, right? You don’t even have to know anything about photography.
My beginners’ classes are full of people who want to learn more about their cameras, who want to improve their photos, and who are frustrated with the results from shooting in auto. It doesn’t take much time to learn how to dramatically improve your photos by taking back control from the camera’s automatic settings. Beyond that, it’s all about practice.
Have you ever experienced any of the following situations?
The Accidental Silhouette
What’s the problem? When your subjects are in front of a bright background, like the sky or ocean, the camera tends to underexpose the image (i.e. make it too dark) and your subjects become silhouettes. The camera tries to make the entire frame average out to a medium gray. You need to expose for your subjects and not the entire scene.
You can fix this with: manual exposure or exposure compensation; spot metering
Weird Colour Casts (aka incorrect white balance)
What’s the problem? The camera, using auto white balance settings, is misreading the colours in the scene and chose an incorrect colour temperature. White balance is used to remove colour casts from your images and try to present them as the eye sees them.
You can fix this with: learning how to change your white balance in camera and/or shooting in RAW and correcting later
Too Much or Too Little Motion Blur
What’s the problem? You wanted to show motion, as above, but the camera froze the subject. Or more commonly, you wanted to freeze the motion, but the subject was blurry instead. This is a problem with shutter speed. The image on the left has a shutter speed of 1/640 and the one on the right is 1/100.
You can fix this with: learning how shutter speed works (basically, a slower shutter speed shows more motion blur)
Focus on the Wrong Subject
What’s the problem? You want to focus on a subject other than what the camera wants to focus on. Cameras with face detection might focus on the wrong person and cameras without might focus on something else entirely.
You can fix thiswith: using a single focal point and moving it onto your subject
Too Much is in Focus
What’s the problem? You wanted the background to be blurry, but your camera got everything in focus instead. For the above images, I used a 35mm lens at f4 for the image on the left and f1.6 for the image on the right.
I learned photography very slowly. I hope this post will contain some lessons to help you learn faster, and also some inspiration (and laughter) when you see how far I’ve come over the years. These are personal photos ranging from 1993 to 2016. I’ll be making a separate post about portraits/weddings later on.
I was always into art, taking as many classes as I could through grade school and high school, including some private lessons/camps. On family vacations, I would take rolls and rolls of film photos. Below are just a few of hundreds of photos I took during a trip to Disney World when I was 12. Some of them aren’t so bad for a film point and shoot.
I took my camera everywhere when I was 12-13 and I still have several photos of friends looking annoyed at me for taking so many photos. Here are a few shots that I still like.
And in high school, I got a bit lazier, still dragging my camera around, but taking shots with no regard to composition or whether my hair/finger was in front of the lens. There are a lot of photos that other people took with my camera during these years too. I was more interested in the memories than the art at this point.
In first year university, I lived in the dorm and took lots of photos of my floormates. At least, I’m pretty sure I took these. It makes me feel old to say that I was shooting film in first year university.
There was a bit of a gap from 2000 to 2002 where I didn’t take many photos while things transitioned from film to digital. Once I got a decent digital point and shoot, the photo taking resumed. Below are some shots from 2002.
And like many college girls, I started getting into selfies. Below-left is one taken with my webcam, of all things, though the lighting is kind of cool. Below-right was taken with a point and shoot and edited by a friend.
In 2003, the selfie-making continued. Inspired by online friends and photographers, I played around with dressing up and tried a couple of months of taking one photo a day. This is a bit embarrassing now, but it’s better than phone selfies, right?
I also took a lot of photos in 2003 on road trips and while wandering about, and got a bit crazy with the editing.
In 2004, I mostly took photos of friends at outings and events. Good practice for documentary photography and weddings.
And I tried to get a bit arty from time to time.
In 2005 and 2006, I didn’t take as many photos and mostly took photos on road trips, like my move from Ontario to Victoria.
At the end of 2006, once I’d settled into Victoria for a bit, I finally broke out the Minolta X-570 film camera that once belonged to my godmother. Below are some photos from the first time I ever used it, on a solo trip to Botanical Beach. Actually, I think the top middle one is digital point-and-shoot. I still love how the bottom left looks like an alien landscape.
In 2007, I took the Introduction to Photography course at Camosun College. I was one of two people with a film camera. I think digital is easier for learning, but it was a good experience and taught me to be careful with my exposures.
And I kept taking photos with my point and shoot, because I loved those instant results.
In 2008, I started developing my own black and white film. I took a bunch of photos at a company party at a horse ranch, which was fitting with the grainy film look.
At the end of 2008, I finally caved and bought a DSLR. I had wanted to wait until I could afford a really good DSLR, but a friend convinced me that the best camera is the one you will use, so I picked up a Canon Rebel XSi. Once I got this camera, I started shooting a lot more and experimenting with different techniques. I spent a lot of time on photo outings with people from the Victoria Photography Meetup group.
And I started a 52 weeks self-portrait project. Some weeks, I was super lazy and just took a snapshot, while some weeks I shot some film or experimented with shooting or editing techniques. Most of these photos were taken with my trusty point and shoot.
In 2009, the frequent shooting continued and I learned a lot about using my DSLR. I also played around with a bunch of older film cameras, but didn’t end up developing a lot of the film.
I went on more outings with my photography group friends. Going out shooting with people who are also obsessed with photography is the best way to learn. We even played around with a friend’s off camera flashes.
In early 2009, I took Camosun’s portrait and wedding photography class taught by the amazing Eunice Montenegro, who has since moved far away. I took this class with my DSLR and learned that I had no idea how to focus my camera, since my film camera was manual focus only. Eunice quickly set me straight.
In April 2009, I took a solo month-long trip to Ireland. I didn’t take as many photos as I should have, because I was shy about being a single girl with a camera in a strange place. On this trip, I started up a website for my photography and started offering portrait sessions. I had no idea what I was getting into.
In 2010, I started shooting weddings while also working a day job. My personal photography became much more infrequent and I only ended up with photos from the film festival (as a volunteer) and a few outings with friends.
In 2011, I started shooting more client work and more personal work too. I went to a photography conference and workshop and they inspired me to learn more and work harder.
2012 was a really busy year for my business and I barely took any personal photos. I managed to get out for an outing with a former client and photography enthusiast to the butterfly gardens and tried getting back into self portraits (and failed).
2013 to 2015 were focused totally on my business, after quitting my day job, and I mostly took iPhone photos those years. I’m still not very good at them, but getting better.
This year, I’m trying to get out more to take photos for the fun of it. I’m working through the book “Picture Perfect Practice” and teaching a lot of beginners’ workshops. The below photos are from about a month ago, when I met up with some past students for a fun shoot at Beacon Hill Park.
I hope you can see a progression in my personal photos over the years. I can definitely see an improvement and it’s been a long journey.
Here are some tips for improving your photography and hopefully learning faster than I did:
Practice practice practice. Yes, the old standard advice about learning any skill. The more you shoot, the better you’ll get. The more you look at photos, the better your eye will get. I wish I’d done more personal work over the years, because it always takes my professional work to another level.
Think about what you’re shooting and looking at. Critique your own work. Critique others’ work. Think about the technical aspects (focus, exposure, white balance), but also the composition and how your eye travels around the image.
Find some photography friends. Taking photos of unwilling friends gets tiring. Find someone who can help foster your love of photography. I have a Facebook group for people who’ve taken my workshop and try to get them out for shoots once in a while, but there are lots of other groups on Facebook and meetup.com.
Take some courses and read some books. I’ve taken a couple of in person professional photography workshops over the years, attended a couple of conventions, constantly watch workshops online on CreativeLive, and read books/blogs about photography as much as I can stand to. You can sign up to get my free ebook “How to Take Better Photos of Your Family” and get notified when my online course is ready.
Be playful and curious. Experiment with lighting and different techniques. Try to duplicate cool photos you find. Take photos with all different shutter speeds and apertures to see how they affect the photo.
Get the crazy editing out of your system. When learning Lightroom and Photoshop, you’ll probably be tempted to make your photos look funky like Instagram filters. Go for it. Over the years, my editing has gotten more and more natural and I obsess over making things look as realistic as possible these days.
