Shooting scenery and landscapes

Hey everyone...! Taking a picture of a beautiful scenery or landscape may sound simple, just frame your shot and snap away. Nothing wrong with it, you still get your picture and that is it. However if you are fussy like me, you might want to consider my shooting process.

1) Horizon - Check the horizon of the scenery you are going to shoot, if the horizon consist of a lake or the sea you definitely will want to avoid taking a slanted horizon. This will make your picture look natural and not like water is going to spill out anytime.

2) Foreground and Background - Be conscious of your surrounding, your foreground could be a very nice terrain or land that could compliment the mountains or sky you intend to take! Try different angles if you have to!

3) Visual Weight - Balancing the amount of sky and land covering the picture may sound good, but it tends to lose focus because everything looks too even. Have a plan in mind and if the sky is the main focus of the scenery shot, create more visual weight for it and less for the foreground!

Shooting for sports

I rarely shoot for sports, however I am still going to cover some basic things we should take note if we are going to shoot for one in the future. In general we all know that sports tend to move very fast and very likely we will need to keep to that pace.

1) Shoot manual - Check your lighting situation before the shoot, dial in the shutter speed, aperture and the ISO so that your subject will be properly exposed. Remember to avoid camera shake or motion blur, you need to set your shutter to one second of the focal length you will be using. Work with smaller apertures like f/7.1 or more, this is to create a deeper depth of field to avoid blur images due to focal plane shift.

2) Auto Focus Point - Usually we will focus on our subjects eyes with the center AF point and then compose our shot, but for sports we won't have the time and its tiring to keep doing that. Set your AF point to the ends of your other available points, for example the shot above has its AF point preset to top of the portrait orientation so it will always focus the head area of my subject instead of the body.

3) AF mode and High-speed shooting - When shooting for sports very likely you will be panning and zooming a lot to keep your subject in the frame, which means you cannot be using one shot focus and shutter in this kind of situation. Set your focusing system to focus tracking mode (AI servo for Canon, Continuous focus for Nikon), the camera will automatically keep your focus in check so long as you are holding onto half shutter. Set your shutter mode to High-speed continuous shooting and depending on your camera's ability, by holding down full shutter your camera will continuously shoot for a certain amount of frame per second.

Always remember to check your lighting conditions once in a while, quickly make minor adjustments should it change!

Buying camera?

Hey what's up... Everyone buys a digital camera at some point in life and most of the time people do not know what exactly they want. I'm going to help you with that, this week I will talk about some of the things you should consider before buying that expensive piece of equipment! For your information I won't be talking about which brand or model is better, this is more of an insight for you on how to pick the right category of digital camera to buy with the budget you have.

1) Choosing the category

These are the 3 categories you need to consider, Compact, Super Zoom a.k.a prosumer and Digital SLR (DSLR). Each having their pros and cons, you need to weigh the consequences yourself and compromise if you have to.

• Compacts are good for carrying around and easy to use but less focal range and normal image quality.
• DSLR provides great flexibility and control as well as superb image quality, however the weight and size can really be a problem.
  
• Prosumer is something in the middle of compacts and DSLRs, good image quality, covers from wide to telephoto range, manual and automatic controls for personal preference and its not as bulky compared to a DSLR.
  

2) Budget range

Yeah this is a no-brainer obvious tip, however it determines what category of camera you will be buying! Lets say you have a budget of $600-$700, at this range you could possibly be buying the latest top of the line compact camera OR a slightly older model prosumer camera. Make every penny worth paying for, latest doesn't mean its greatest

3) Brand

This is really up to personal preference, however I do have some recommendations with regards to what to buy.

• For compacts and prosumer cameras, most brands are good but do scout around and have your hands on it if you can. Check out the controls and interface menus, make sure you are comfortable using it and suits your needs. You definitely will not want something that is difficult to use and complicating while navigating the interface.
• If you are going for DSLRs, I strongly suggest going for mainstream brands like Canon, Nikon or Sony. The reason is because its easier for you to go around shopping for accessories or other lenses since most camera shop tend to stock up stuff for these 3 brands. The quality of their camera and the images produced are equally great, you will not go wrong as long as you stick to those brands I mentioned.

4) Scout for prices

• Do not feel obliged or even challenged to buy when you visit a store, walk around a few times to check the price of the camera you are looking for. There are some stores I vow not to visit because they are simply out to cheat your money, giving sub standard service and not selling the actual item that you really want after you pay! So go around scouting for prices and if something that is too good to be true... it's most likely a scam.

5) Accessories

• People tend to buy accessories along with the camera, I won't recommend that. Usually after much bargaining and haggling the sales person will offer you to buy some accessories like batteries, filters or memory cards, and pretty much that is how they will earn back those bargains they gave you.
• Look out for stores that particularly sells camera accessories, they give better prices for little stuffs most of the time. You will be surprise how much money you can save buying from such stores.

If you have any questions or queries, feel free to drop me an email or private message on Facebook. I will be more than happy and willing to help you secure the right purchase!

2010 > 2011

Greatest achievement for 2010? Shaving off 13 kilograms of pure fat and ironing that tummy out of the way! So what's in for 2011? One thing for sure is to bring my photography business to another level, not that is doing great right now but with patience and perseverance certainly it will work!

Almost forgot that tomorrow is my birthday heh! Hm... I wish that the year 2012 will not be the end of the world because that is when my home will be ready lol.

Bought some new stuff from B&H for automotive photography, probably will take awhile to reach Singapore... Officially looking for hot cars for the shoot!

Happy New Year!

Shooting for wedding! Final!

The reception, the last portion of the whole wedding event for us to look at with regards to what pictures to take and not to take. The most torturing time since you have to be taking pictures while others feast away... (Kidding!) A general rule of thumb for the reception photography is not to take pictures of people eating, munching or drinking. Do you like to be photographed with your mouthful of chocolate cake? No right? Because you will look funny with those chocolate stains on your teeth, so give those shots a miss.

So here are the shots you should take care of...



1) Food - That's right, take pictures of the food. These shots are considered as detail shots too, it helps the couple to remember the wonderful food they had during their reception! So like any other food photography, go for a very tight shot and frame it in such a way that it cuts away edges of the plate.



2) Guest - Take pictures of them while they are not eating, probably in conversation or like this shot above where the lady is flipping through a photo album done up by the bride and groom. You can also have them to pose for you, all you have to do is ask!



3) Send off - Like any other wedding event, for sure there will be guests that have to leave early, so keep you eyes peeled for those people. Call out for the bride and groom for the send off and snap a picture of them hugging or shaking hands!

Well that's about it on how to photograph a wedding event. I wouldn't say that this is a complete guide on what to take or shoot, however we have covered some of the main things to take note of and hopefully it will be helpful to you!

Shooting for wedding! Continue!

Next will be the Ceremony, this portion among the whole wedding event is considered to be the shortest of all three sections. Majority of the ceremony should be between 20-30 minutes long, which means you have a very tight time frame to capture the whole process! Here are the few things to take note and capture,



1) March in - Communicate with the bride and groom before hand, let them know that they need to walk slower than their normal walking speed and to be smiling at all times. This is important because very likely you will be walking backwards and taking pictures of the bride and groom, so tell the couple to walk slowly if you don't want to trip and fall like the photographer in this video.



2) The table - One of the most challenging moments of the whole event since your subjects are seated, you need to be creative and go for the interesting angles to ensure you shots looks nice. You got to sharpen your senses too and be sure not to miss emotions, so watch out for facial expressions not only from the bride and groom but also from the guests. The next problem you could be facing would be guests walking up and snapping pictures too, you do not want them to be a source of distraction in your picture. What you can do is to fill up your frame, since by tightening your shot you reduce the chances of taking a picture with someone in the background.



3) Details - Yeap details, we are not over with that yet. Like I said before details helps to bring back memories, so this time you got to be looking out for body languages from the couple. Watch out for hand especially, it tells a lot about a person's feeling and thoughts! Don't let your mind tell you that it is foolish and silly to be taking detail shots when you got so little time to work with, feel free to be creative after you got the important shots done!

So if you planned ahead on how to do your shots, a time frame of 20-30 minutes should not be a problem at all. Next week we will conclude with the last portion of the whole wedding event which is the Reception!

Shooting for wedding!

Yo... what's up! This week's photo tips we will talk about a few things to look out for when shooting for a wedding reception. Mainly there are 3 portions to a wedding reception, the pre-ceremony, ceremony and reception. This week we shall look at the pre-ceremony portion and cover the ceremony portion next week.

What I am about to share here is my approach and experience on taking pictures for a wedding, I am sure that you can build on the things that I am going to share and develop a better set of ideas and work flow for yourself!

First of all the pre-ceremony is the time where the bride, the groom and the helpers are preparing for the actual event, pretty much they will be setting up the place and dressing up for the rest of the day. Here are the main things to look out for...



1) Details - This is the best time to capture details of the whole event, things like the reception area, solemnization table, guest books, flowers and many other stuff. Such details are important because it helps to bring back memories of the event when they look at the wedding album 20 or 30 years later! So capture whatever details you can!



2) Make up and dress up time - Most of the time the bride will be the first one to be putting on make up and dressing up for the event, usually it takes up more than an hour. It is time to get artistic since your subject is sitting still and pretty much cannot be moving around, set up some of your shots like placing the gown behind her and taking a picture of the reflection through the mirror or even taking close up shot of the bride with the make up artist working on her face. It is time to get creative! Once the bride is done, do the same thing for the groom!



3) Helpers - While your bride and groom are dressing up, most likely their helpers will be busy setting up the place. Most of the time you will not be staying with the bride and groom through out the dressing up time, you will have to run around getting pictures of the helpers. This is a great time to get shots of the helpers in action since they will not be engage in a lot of activities when the ceremony or reception is on going.

Those are the 3 main things to look out for when you are shooting for the pre-ceremony phase, in the midst of capturing those things do look out for special moments or people engaging in activity and showing happiness!