Written on Nov 5th, 2008 by Dave Adams

Posted In: Mastering Photography

Mastering Urban Photography

metropolitan, municipal, nonrural, public, town, Urban, village 0 comments

I like to think of urban photography as a photography discipline in its own right, similar in some ways to landscape photography but rather than rolling hills, placid lakes, tall mountains and winding rivers, it features everything from tall skyscrapers to rundown factories, classical architecture to bustling city-scapes.

While it is easy to associate the word urban with decay or disrepair, it can also mean metropolitan or public. Urban offers the photographer a huge amount of variety, quite often on the photographers own doorstep, that gets ignored due to its familiarity. We shouldn’t overlook the potential of the nonrural locations near us to provide interesting and beautiful photographs.

What to Photograph?

There is no single answer to this, because no two locations are the same. There are some basic compostion techniques to follow, but really, anything goes. If it looks good to you, nothing else matters.

Moore and Brock, Fire Damaged and Abandoned

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Written on Oct 31st, 2008 by Dave Adams

Posted In: Mastering Photography

Mastering Firework Photography

Firework Photography, Manual Focus, Shutter Release, Tripod 0 comments

Here in the UK its coming upto bonfire night (5th November) which means plenty of opportunity to take some photographs of the spectacular firework displays that go hand in hand with these events.

The problem is, photographing fireworks isn’t as straight forward and easy as you’d hope. There are a number of issue to contend with - its dark, the speed the fireworks go off, and the inability to focus on a dark sky all mean that without careful preparation and planning, you may end up with no photographs at all.

Fireworks by foxypar4

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This article about mastering firework photography will hopefully help and guide you through some of the best tips to making bonfire night a photographic night to remember.

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Written on Oct 30th, 2008 by Dave Adams

Posted In: Mastering Photography

Mastering Photography of Children

Babies, Children, Masterclass, Shutter-Priority, Teenagers, Teens, Tips 0 comments

I really didn’t know what to call this article, as its really falls into the portraiture category, but I didn’t want to tie it in with the more general topic of straight portrait photography as this will be a separate post later on.

So, for now, let just go with the fact that this is an article about photographing children, whether they are your own or a commissioned shoot of someones else little ones. I will talk about taking more candid shots, as it is these that really interest me. Formal posed photographs always leave me a little cold, I prefer to capture the moment, and these tend to reflect personality better than anything else.

The first point to note is that someone once said don’t work with children or animals and that person may well have been talking as a photographer. Children, from young babies through to the early teens, all have one thing in common - they don’t usually want to be photographed. And if they do want to be photographed, they’ll normally insist on overacting for the camera, which can be a hinderance if you are intending to get candid shots rather than the forced pose kind of photographs.

As a photographer, you need to be aware that your subject might not be the most willing participant, and that pointing a large DSLR at a child within minutes of meeting them for the first time will not win you friends.

Ideally you should take a little time to get to know your subjects before bringing the camera into play. If these are you own children you are photographing, I’m going to assume you at least know their names!

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