40 Great Photography Quick Tips for Amateurs and Pro Photographers

• Tip 40
  Soften and add interest to composition with out of focus foreground objects; branches, people, lampshades, whatever!
• Tip 39
  Get familiar with the flare on your lenses, shoot with different levels of direct and part shaded sun.. see what works
• Tip 38
  Learn and experiment with composition and framing to limit the amount of cropping in post production
• Tip 37
  Don’t be scared of cropping tighter with head shots, cropping into hair helps hold the frame for a strong composition
• Tip 36
  Want to take every lens out with you hiking? try taking just 1 or 2, it will help you focus… and save your back!
• Tip 35
  Use adjustment layers in Photoshop as much as possible and flatten right at the end to preserve file quality
• Tip 34
  fire your flashes/strobes with a wireless trigger like a pocket wizard for total freedom when shooting
• Tip 33
  we are mostly perfectionists but clients would rather see great images on time than perfect ones that are late!
• Tip 32
  calculating your tax, keep a record for all miles you do for jobs, work out running costs vs per mile, pick the best
• Tip 31
  iStockphoto.com are pixel peepers, be prepared to spend time on processing files to perfection to pass the moderators
• Tip 30
  We want to be out shooting, right? Nail your digital workflow processes then stick to it to save you heaps of time!
• Tip 29
  Sunlit portraits – use ND filters to give you a wider aperture at max flash sync speed for shallower depth of field
• Tip 28
  Control the balance between flash and ambient light by changing the shutter speed (called dragging the shutter)
• Tip 27
  For sharp shallow DOF portraits, eg f2, don’t focus & recompose, move the autofocus position to match the composition
• Tip 26
  When shooting groups, start with the largest first then reduce until just the important people left (e.g main family)
• Tip 25
  use hand/finger gestures, 1. point the nose too and 2. follow with eyes. Inform your model then you have control
• Tip 24
  Look out for regular patterns and lines on skin detail and clone/heal out for a flawless but natural look.
• Tip 23
  Avoid editing jpeg files as every time you edit and save they degrade because of the compression. Use TIFF or edit RAW
• Tip 23
  The standard camera on the iPhone fires when you RELEASE your finger off the button, so keep it steady boys n’ girls
• Tip 22
  When composing a shot, look out for distracting elements in a shot, clean simple backgrounds are your friend
• Tip 21
  What’s all this HDR then? High Dynamic Range. multiple different exposures combined into one for a much wider range
• Tip 20
  Learn to read light yourself like a light-meter so you’re always ready. get iphone pocket light meter and practice
• Tip 19
  Outdoor portraits & no flash, see what’s around you, light walls, dark door ways etc to help get the right lighting
• Tip 18
  If you’re serious about landscapes, get a geared head like the manfrotto 410, you will never take anything else
• Tip 17
  A scratched filter is less of an issue on a telephoto lens so swap the best to your widest angle lens
• Tip 16
  Professional photographers calibrate their monitors regularly, there is no work around, if you want accurate colour!
• Tip 15
  Polarizers are expensive, buy in a larger diameter and use super cheap step-up rings for other lenses
• Tip 14
  for a great natural portrait, place your subject just behind the threshold of an open door way facing out of course!
• Tip 13
  Use CTO correction gels on your flash to balance the colour temperature. Easily attach them with sticky velcro pads.
• Tip 12
  hyperfocal distance is the nearest focus distance at which the Depth of Field (DOF) extends to infinity
• Tip 11
  if you have an iphone, download iDOF app to calculate hyperfocal distance when you’re out in the field.
• Tip 10
  When shooting interiors, over expose the window light + 2 so they blow out before you light and expose inside
• Tip 9
  Soften your light by increasing the size of the source or moving it closer to the subject, or both!
• Tip 8
  ignore the myth.. shoot with your subjects’ back to the sun then use flash or reflector fill the light back.
• Tip 7
  Take control of your images, use RAW instead of JPG and you will have much more control and dynamic range
• Tip 6
  add pop to outdoor flash portraits, underexpose ambient reading by 1-2 stops, then take correct reading for flash
• Tip 5
  improve skin tones in female portraits, in natural light, spot meter from the face and increase by one stop exposure.
• Tip 4
  Only apply sharpening just before the final output, i.e screen, print etc. they will require different settings
• Tip 3
  98% of the time, my camera stays in manual mode, essential for flash work. turn the dial and stay with it guys!
• Tip 2
  Tight Group Shots, position heads so they are nearer to one plane of focus and shoot longer focal lengths, e.g 85mm
• Tip 1
  Play with shallow depth of field to increase perceived sharpness in a close portrait and focus on the eyes. f2-f4

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