While there are tons of great resources online, here are some of my favorite ‘technique’ books of the physical kind that you can curl up with and read before falling asleep. Sometimes, they’ll even help you fall asleep!

The New Manual of Photography
by John Hedgecoe
This book is a great way to learn a broad overview of photography, the terminology, techniques, and so forth. I found myself referring to it often in the early months.

The Essential Lighting Manual for Digital And Film Photographers
by Chris Weston
Another great book, this title focuses on the differences in natural and artificial lighting, the equipment, and how to make the most of it.

How To Photograph Your Baby
by Nick Kelsh
Even though this book was written in the ‘film days’, it’s still an excellent resource and idea book for baby/children photography. You’ll find plenty of picture ideas, and it highlights the differences between amateur shots and pro shots.

These are a few of my favorite books, and there are plenty of other high-quality resources out there! Photography as an art requires continual study, so pick up a book and discover some new tricks!

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He just relaunched his new site which includes tons of images and several behind-the-scenes videos. He also runs BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters – including some unique sports birth announcements.You can reach him at doggett (-at-) doggettstudios.com.

There are only 4 things that you can do when you are trying to get a good exposure in low light: adjusting aperture/shutter speed/ISO, or adding in additional light. To get good low light pictures, you can make use of one or all of them. Sometimes, you will the first three and still not get a great picture. It simply depends on how much light is in a scene, or how much light you add to the scene (via flash, etc).

Let’s take a common scenario – shooting in a dimly lit room. Here’s a thought process to go through to improve your chances at a good shot:

• Use a very large aperture. This means that the lens is opened up to let as much light in as possible. The measurement of this is called an f-stop, and is listed with numbers like f/2.8 and f/5.6. The lower the number is, the more light gets in the camera (yea, it seems backwards at first). So, set your camera to the widest aperture, which will most likely be f/2.8 or f/5.6 depending on your lens.
• Raise the ISO. Here, you are making the camera more sensitive to light. The downside is that as you raise the ISO, visible noise starts to creep in the picture. It’s a trade-off. You can use noise reduction software later to fix that to some extent, but it will never be as good as a lower ISO setting. Start with 400, and go up from there to 1600.
• Lower the shutter speed. With a slower speed, you allow light to hit the sensor for a longer period of time. Longer time=brighter picture. The flipside to this, however, is that as the shutter gets slower, motion becomes more evident. Start around 1/60th of a second, and go down from there (perhaps to 1/20th or 1/15th). As you get into those slower speeds, you will need put your camera on a tripod, or something like a gorilla pod (which is an excellent ‘wraparound’ tripod).
• Add light. Your other option is to add light to the scene yourself. Raise blinds. Turn on the lights or lamps. Use a flash. Once you add light, you can either raise your shutter speed (to get rid of motion), or lower your ISO (to get rid of noise).

That’s it. Those are the four options at your disposal. You can try any and all combination of them, and I recommend that you do so that you can understand the effect they have on the image. Shooting in low light is an issue for all photographers, and the good news is that every year new cameras emerge that provide better low light performance (e.g., the new offerings from Canon and Nikon in particular). 

I hope all of you had a very happy holiday season and New Year celebration! On my blog I’ve posted a ‘New Camera Tips‘ article for those of you that were lucky enough to receive a new camera for Christmas!

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He just relaunched his new site which includes tons of images and several behind-the-scenes videos. He also runs BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters – including some unique tech birth announcements.You can reach him at doggett (-at-) doggettstudios.com.

Hello, my name is Eric and I am a Christmas Photo Abuser (CPA). Hiiiii Eric.

My tendency every Christmas was to break out the camera and snap as many shots as I could of the ensuing chaos. Presents opening. Children happy. Children playing. Presents breaking. Children sad. Glares from wife. However, recently I have backed down on that requirement and focused on particular shots for the day. This helps me keep my mind where it needs to be – centered on family and friends during this special occasion.

Think ahead of time of the most important shots, and make sure you get them. But don’t sit the whole morning with a camera in your lap. Get down and play. Do funny dances with a Santa hat on. Heck, go 1980’s vcr-camera-retro and set one up in the corner of the room, hit record, and leave it. Those tapes are always good for a laugh in 20 years.

Eric Doggett is an Austin, Texas photographer. He just relaunched his new site which includes tons of images and several behind-the-scenes videos. He also runs BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters – including some unique tech birth announcements. You can reach him at doggett (-at-) doggettstudios.com.

Christmas is almost here, and with it comes some excellent opportunities for taking pictures. If you are like me and spend a fair amount of time setting up a tree, lights, and decorations, take some time to capture that before Christmas morning. Here are some tips to get the most out of your decoration pictures:

1. Turn Off All The Room Lights: This will allow the whole room to be lit only by your decorations. If the lighting is still dark, you can always add lights back in one by one (starting with a table lamp or two, vs. ceiling lights).

2. Use Long Shutter Speeds: To get the really great shots of your lights, use long exposures. Start by turning your camera mode to Shutter Priority (usually marked by Tv). Set your ISO to 100. Then try setting the shutter to 4 or 5 seconds or longer. This will allow the image to ’soak in’ your tree/decoration lights. The pictures in this series were exposed for 15 seconds at f/6.3, with an ISO of 100.

3. Use a Tripod: This will be critical for those long exposure shots, because you can’t hand-hold a camera during a several-second exposure. If you don’t have a tripod, try placing the camera on a table or several books. If you have a remote release (a device which attaches to the camera and allows you to take the picture without touching the actual camera), use that. If your camera supports a ‘mirror lockup’ feature, you can also try that. All of these techniques will help ensure the sharpest image possible.

4. Experiment With White Balance: If your camera allows you to change the white balance, try different settings like Tungsten, Shade, Cloudy, etc. These will help enhance the warm colors in your image, or give your image a cool blue tint which works great for certain situations.

5. Make Adjustments: If your images are coming out too dark, lower the shutter speed even more (over 10 seconds). If the images are too bright, raise the shutter speed. Some cameras will have blinking dots on the display when parts of the image are ‘blown out’ (i.e. too bright). Try to keep those areas to a minimum.

We haven’t actually set up a tree yet, so you’ll have to settle for these Christmas Village pieces. I hope you take advantage of the season to take some great shots! To close this out, here’s an image of our Christmas card for 2008. You can catch a larger version on the blog.

Eric Doggett is a Austin, Texas photographer. He just relaunched his new site which includes tons of images and several behind-the-scenes videos. He also runs BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters – including some unique tech birth announcements. You can reach him at doggett (-at-) doggettstudios.com.

Today I’d like to offer some insight into how I created one of my favorite portfolio shots this year, ‘Baby and the Tramp’! It’s a shot of my two boys, and it came about as I was starting to put together a trampoline in the backyard. Growing up, all the trampolines I saw looked like this one. Today, they have padding around the perimeter, plus a vertical net to keep the kids from flying off. I decided to do this shot right before I put the final netting up, and some fun Photoshop tricks made it all possible.

The first question I always here is ‘Is that baby really flying in the air?’. The answer of course is ‘no’, but I always like to let people think that what they are seeing is what actually happened. While I did use some lighting gear for this shot, you can do something similar at home as long as you have a tripod. You’ll need your camera on a tripod because you take multiple shots. Here’s how the shoot went:

1. Place camera on tripod at the scene.

2. The older child (child #1) jumps up and down, and I took several shots. There were people to the left and the right, outside of camera range, making sure he didn’t fall off.

3. Because there’s a lot of motion involved, I go through the shots and make sure there’s at least one that is somewhat sharp before wrapping up.

4. Separately, I brought in child #2 and held him in the spot where he would be if he were bounced around. I did this so that he would be lit with the same lighting setup that child #1 was. Here’s a shot of that set up.

5. In Photoshop, I placed the second shot on top of the first (in a new layer), and then painted out everything except child #2. I rotated him clockwise as well. I had to paint in some of his legs and clothes, because my hands were covering them up.

6. I added a little motion blur to their bodies using the Wind filter. I masked this effect so it was mostly around their arms and feet.

7. I also painted a trampoline shadow for child #2 that looked similar to the other shadow.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes video that shows the shoot in a little more detail.

So how can you apply this? Well, if you have Photoshop and a tripod for your camera, try taking multiple shots of subjects and then compositing them in Photoshop. For example, if your kids won’t smile at the same time ever, take multiple shots and use the best ones for a picture. Obviously this technique won’t work everywhere, and things can get crazy pretty quick. But it’s one photo trick to add to your bag that allows you to create what you see in your mind, even if your subjects aren’t cooperating!

If you have specific questions, feel free to write them in the comments area and I’ll address them. Or, if you’ve done something similar, post a link here for all to enjoy!

Eric Doggett is a Austin, Texas photographer. He just relaunched his new site which includes tons of images and several behind-the-scenes videos. He also runs BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters – including some unique tech birth announcements. You can reach him at doggett (-at-) doggettstudios.com.

For this installment of photography tips, let’s talk about getting down.

One clear sign of a new photographer is in how they angle their shots. It’s very easy to stand and take pictures, keeping the camera at the same height and (possibly) bending at the waist. This makes for a pretty boring photo, but with a little movement on your part (something which is probably doctor-prescribed anyways) you can get something much better.

Start by getting on the same level as your kids. Not mentally, of course, because you’ve already been there most of the day trying to get them to eat their meals by playing ‘choo-choo train’ with a fork. But rather, physically. Get on the ground and shoot up at them. This angle change will add a different quality to your images. By shooting up at them from the ground, you can make them look larger than life (which, up to this point, only their dirty diapers have indicated). Or, get on your knees and shoot their face at their level. This way, they aren’t looking up at you and contorting their neck, but instead you capture them the way they are naturally.

Another idea is to have your child roll in the grass for several feet, with you in front of them, rolling along with them, taking pictures the whole time. It’s fun to get different angles of them rolling around; you’ll get something unexpected when you roll with them!

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically for baby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters – including some unique tech birth announcements. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.

In the last several weeks, some significant announcements have been made that affect the future of DSLRs. Both Canon and Nikon have introduced DSLR cameras that record High Definition video in addition to still images. Recording video on your camera is nothing new, but for the most part it’s been relegated to pocket digital cameras that allow you to record snippets of video at low quality. These new cameras, however, will rival the quality of most any video camera you would purchase separately at a store. I’ll tackle the biggest feature in a bit, but let’s talk briefly about the two cameras.

Nikon introduced the D90 to much fanfare. It’s a 12.9 Megapixel DSLR which can record 720p video. For Canon, the big announcement was the 5D Mark 2. It features a 21 Megapixel sensor and can record 1080p video. You can purchase the D90 now on Amazon for around $1200. The 5D Mark 2 won’t be available until November, and will run around $2600.

The biggest feature of these cameras besides the video? You get to use all of your existing lenses! So for example, if you’ve invested in a wide angle lens, or a lens with a very wide aperture (1.2 or 1.4), you can bring a look and quality to your home video productions which, until now, was very cost-prohibitive. For example, you can find plenty of HD video cameras online, but try finding 1.2 lenses for them. or a 400mm optical zoom lens. Forget about it.

Indeed, the prices of these two cameras are nothing to sneeze at. It’s a lot of money for an amateur photographer, and I would definitely have to buy some nice dinners for my wife and watch the kids more than usual to justify it for myself. But the point is that this is where photography is headed. This technology will eventually make its way down to both manufacturer’s entry-level cameras.

If you find it’s something you will be interested in, start learning about video production and lighting. Read up on lenses and how they affect the pictures you take. You can also read up dpreview.com’s excellent coverage of both the D90 and the 5D Mark 2.

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically forbaby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters – including some unique tech birth announcements. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.

I can’t stress enough the importance of backing up, and I am sure you have either heard it or thought it several times yourself. So much of our lives is recorded digitally now, and with the great power of digital images/videos comes the great responsibility of protecting it for future generations. All it takes is one incident where you lose images and you’ll be ‘converted’!

Today, some people would simply back up to CD or DVD and be done with it. However, I recommend a different approach. Hard drives are priced incredibly low, so in addition to your CD/DVD backups, I recommend picking up one of those external drives and backing up there as well. Get a new external drive every year, and store just that year’s pictures on it. Use it only as a backup drive.

Why the multiple backups? Because every media eventually fails. This includes CDs, DVDs and hard drives. By having multiple backups, you provide additional protection for yourself.

Here’s how my folders are set up on the computer (using 2008 as an example):

2007

2008

• Events
• - Spring Break Trip 2008
• - Trevor’s First Birthday 2008
• Pets
• Kids
• Eric
• Wife
• Nature

With this system I can find all of the events for a given year, as well as other shots I’ve taken. I try to separate out events from random pictures (which would be in the Kids folder).

Use the system that works for you, but make sure you use something! Otherwise, you’ll have a big folder with a ton of images that are unorganized, and difficult to backup (because you have so many in one place). 

I also recommend using automated backup software. Since I am on a Mac, I use Super Duper, which is great. Every night it makes complete backups to an external drive.

There’s no end to the rabbit hole of backups! Since I have a background in wedding and portrait photography, I have multiple backups of everything. For every shoot, I have a working copy on my computer, a backup in the desk drawer on DVD, and another DVD along with a copy on portable hard drive in a storage unit a couple of miles away.

Now, you don’t have to get that crazy, but I would suggest keeping backups outside of your house (perhaps with a relative or a safety deposit box) of your most important images. The one time you need that backup, you’ll be happy you took the time!

So, are you a regular backer-upper? Have you come across any tips to preserve your images?

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically forbaby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters – including some unique tech birth announcements. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.

Fortunately for all of us here at The Man Page, we have been treated to a steady diet of photography tips and tricks courtesy of our very own photographer and contributing writer, Eric Doggett.

Unfortunately, Eric is traveling this week and will not be sharing another one of his many lessons with all of us that are aspiring to be better photographers. In his absence, I thought that I would do my best to still provide you with a photography tip – although I certainly do not make any claims that I know what I am talking about.

Have you ever had to take an indoor picture of a small item?

• Maybe you have decided to try your hand at running an eBay business and you need to take pictures of small items that you are selling.

• Maybe you sell hand-crafted jewelry online and you need to regularly take pictures of your work.

• Maybe you are a blogger that is running a really cool contest giveaway and you need to take pictures of the prizes.

Regardless of the reasons behind why you need to take the picture, you will likely run into the same problems that I have faced, including poor lighting indoors (you cannot always count on sunlight) and a cluttered background of objects that detracts from the focal point.

So what do you do?

Depending on how much you have to budget, you can do something quick and dirty that will still provide good results or you can set up a portable studio area that is great for product photos.

On the lower end of the scale, you can visit a local fabric or craft store and pick up a few pieces of fabric in a variety of solid colors that will make a nice backdrop. Using a backdrop will eliminate the clutter that is often visible in the background of photos. You will need something to hold the fabric, although you might be just fine draping it over a chair or table.

This still leaves you with the question of what to do about lighting.

While it is nice to use sunlight to provide your lighting, that is not always an option. In most cases, you will not need any professional grade lighting equipment but it does help to pick up a couple of small lights that you can use to light your space.

With the problem of poor lighting and a cluttered background solved, one additional piece of equipment that will help provide crisp pictures is a tripod.

Since most of your pictures will likely be of tabletop items, you should be able to get by with a small tabletop tripod.

If you have visited any of your local photography stores, you will likely know that there is a wide range in prices for tripods – although they all seem to do just about the same thing.

So unless you consider yourself a professional photographer, you should be just fine with one of the more inexpensive models that are available.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could buy all of this as a package?

Funny you should ask that question, as you can most certainly buy the above items in a handy little package, sort of a “studio in a box”.

As a matter of fact, I just happened to buy one of these packages over the weekend and used it to take the picture of my contest prizes.

Here is a quick snapshot of what it looks like:

While my wife wasn’t too happy to see that her dining room had been converted into a makeshift photo studio, I found that this setup worked quite well for smaller items. It will require some practice and experimentation to get the lighting just right and obviously it will not work if you have large items to photograph, but it provides a nice area to photograph smaller items.

As much as I enjoy having this “studio in a box” to help produce higher quality indoor photos, I still prefer to get outside and capture my experiences with photos.

While we wait for Eric to return and share the tips of a professional, I’d be interested to hear what tips and tricks you have found to be helpful with taking photos at home.

When digital cameras first arrived, everyone was concerned with megapixels. This large, unruly number became a de facto ‘hot or not’ descriptor of your camera. Think of every pixel as a bucket that stores a little bit of your picture in it. The more buckets, the more detail of your image is captured. Photographers wanted the most megapixels they could get in a camera; no other camera feature measured up the way megapixels did. And that measurement used to be really important, back in the days when you were choosing between a 1 or 4 megapixel camera.

Well, our national nightmare is finally over. Today, any point-and-shoot camera comes in at 6 or 7 megapixels and up, so it’s time to forget this as a motivating factor completely. At 6 or 7 megapixels, you can easily print an 8×10 image with wonderful quality. I’ve printed large canvas images from a 7 megapixel camera (check out image 10, “The Arno River”, shot in Florence, Italy at my site www.TheItalyCollection.com. This was taken with a point and shoot camera, and then enhanced in Photoshop.)

Other factors like lighting conditions, shutter speed, etc., are going to affect your image far more now than megapixels will. In fact, one little hidden consequence of more megapixels is this: as you add megapixels to a sensor, you add noise. This is because each pixel is now smaller, and this results in more of that colored grainy look. Amazingly, you can actually get a better quality picture with less megapixels if each pixel is larger.

What should you look for in a camera then, if not the megapixel count? My big ones would be: support for RAW, ability to go completely manual, and high ISO support (1600 and higher).

So disregard the big-box electronics store’s marketing-hype mentality to shove a big “10 Megapixels here!” sign in front of you. It won’t matter for 95% of the photographers out there, and certainly not for any photographer that just wants better snapshots of their kids rolling in the mud. By the way, have you ever seen mud at 10 megapixels? Nasty.

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically for baby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters – a unique gift newborn children can keep forever. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.

For the most part, these tips apply to those of you that have a DSLR versus a pocket digital camera. The latter usually presets focus for you and doesn’t give much leeway for adjustments.

When you focus, the camera is looking at parts of the image that have a lot of contrast and is using that to determine the correct setting. Rather than evaluate the whole image to do this, the camera looks at one or several ‘focus points’. You see these points designated as little boxes when you look through the viewfinder:

Canon 5D focusing screen, upper left focus point selected

By default, most DSLRs look at all points to decide on focus. However, you can override this and tell the camera to only use one point. Why? Let’s say that you are taking a picture of your kid, and you framed the image such that he’s in the lower left. By switching the active focus point to the lower left, you can use that box for focusing, and keep the framing of your original image intact. This will almost always give you better results than using all focus points, or doing the focus-recompose-shoot method that’s very popular.

Start by learning how to change the active focus point, and then explore some of these other options to improve your focus accuracy:

1. Increase your shutter speed – a slow speed (1/100th of a second or slower) means that some of your image may be blurry if you have a moving subject. Increasing it may keep more of the shot in focus.
2. Stop down the aperture – by this, I mean selecting a higher f-stop. For example, instead of f1.4, go up to f5.6 or higher. Higher numbers means that more of the scene will be in focus.
3. Use a small flashlight – if you are shooting in a dark environment, use a small light to illuminate the subject so that the camera can focus. Otherwise, the lens may be hunting around for focus and never lock on.
4. Support the camera – practice holding the camera still with your left hand supporting the lens from underneath. This will minimize camera shake.
5. Use IS/VR – if your lens supports Image Stabilization/Vibration Reduction, make sure that it’s turned on. This feature provides extra support in the lens for minimizing camera shake.

If you can put just a few of these techniques into practice, I guarantee that your percentage of ‘keepers’ will go way up!

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically for baby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters – a unique gift newborn children can keep forever. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.

As part of my son’s PONY Little League season that recently concluded, all of the kids were given vouchers for free tickets to a Chicago White Sox game. While the tickets were in the upper deck, we still had a great view of the game and had an enjoyable day even though it reminded me of one reason minor league baseball is better – cost!

Without the expense of tickets to the game, I didn’t think the cost would be too bad. But $22.00 for parking and $30.00 for four drinks and three hot dogs does not make for a cheap afternoon. Then throw in some cotton candy, a super rope, and Edy’s Dibs just to make sure there isn’t any money left.

For the first time, I decided to bring my Nikon D40x along to the game to try and capture a few interesting pictures. Before I share a few of my pictures (btw, I was shooting in JPEG mode) with you, I have to say that I am a bit apprehensive given that there is now a professional photographer here at The Man Page.

Enjoy the photos and please let me know what you think.

To see more of the photos that were taken at the game, check out my White Sox picture set at flickr.

2005 World Series Banner – That’s right Cub fans, eat your heart out!

Jim Thome connects on a home run swing.

Ozzie Guillen speaks his mind after being ejected.

Carlos Quentin as he watches what became the game winning home run.

Fun (lower right corner) at the Sox game.

Nick Swisher in a mid-air victory leap.

Visit most photography forums today and you’re bound to find an intense discussion on the benefits of shooting one file format or another. Everyone has an opinion, and they might as well be arguing about political candidates.

Most DSLR’s (and some pocket cameras) today support shooting in JPEG and RAW modes. Put simply, RAW is the image directly as it comes off the sensor. It has no changes to it whatsoever. However, add some predetermined settings for color, white balance, file size, and more, and you end up with a JPEG file. The settings that each camera performs on the image are a mystery, but for the most part the images look good.

The majority of everyday shooters out there go with JPEG because it’s easy, the file sizes are smaller, and there’s no post-processing required. Pros, on the other hand, probably tend to shoot as least as much RAW as JPEG, if not more. This wasn’t true in the early days of digital cameras, but it’s becoming more prevalent as photographers learn the benefits of RAW.

What are the benefits of RAW?

RAW allows you to adjust the color temperature (known as the white balance), the exposure, and other settings without disturbing the actual pixel data. It’s simply the best quality image you will get out of your camera.

When should I use it?

As a general rule, try RAW when you:

• may ultimately make an 11×14 or larger print
• are shooting in weird lighting conditions and want the flexibility to change it later
• are unsure if the exposure is correct at the time the shot was taken
• want to tinker with the image

RAW images must be converted at some point to JPEG or some other format before you can do anything with them, and that’s the downside – they take extra time and require software to adjust. But the quality can be quite noticeable. Plus, you can always go back to the RAW file and start over, as the adjustments you make are not permanent! With that quality and flexibility comes a price in file size. RAW files can be several times larger than the corresponding JPEG file.

What about JPEG?

For everyday shooting, JPEG is great! The file sizes are much smaller, and the images are already adjusted to what the camera believes looks good. Because the sizes are smaller, you can get more pictures on your memory card than you can with RAW.

When should I use it?

Use JPEG when you:

• are shooting to record an event, and may not necessarily make prints later
• are shooting in even lighting and even white balance (i.e. outside, shade, or anywhere where the light color is consistent throughout the scene)
• have a limited amount of memory card or drive space
• are just starting out or are practicing techniques

JPEG files come out of the camera looking great! However, if you push them too hard in Photoshop or some other photo editing software, your image quality may start to degrade.

Eventually, you may find that RAW has the quality that you are looking for. Or, you may stick with JPEG for its considerable benefits. In either case, know that you have options and it’s worth exploring both of them!

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically for baby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement posters – a unique gift newborn children can keep forever. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.

What’s soft light? It’s light that’s like butter. Does that help? No? Ok, let’s explore this a little further.

Light is considered harsh when the resulting shadows and highlights are strong. That is, there’s a very defined separation between what’s lit and what’s in shadow. A great example of this is anything you see on TV shot in space – very strong light and dark areas, with not much in between. Another example is outside at high noon. The sun causes strong light, and strong shadows (under the nose, in the eyes, etc).

Soft light, by contrast (heh – good pun), has smooth transitions between shadow and light. It’s soft and even. It may have a slight direction to it, but not so much that it emphasizes bad qualities of the subject.

So what can you do with this information? Well, it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. To start out, finding and using the soft light is a great way to get great shots. You are looking for light that is even and not patchy (at least, not patchy on the face). A great place to find this is in open shade.

Here’s an outdoor shot taken in open shade:

If I had moved the subject directly into the sun, it would have been too much. But because the light is coming from many different directions, the light is smooth, and the shot is much more appealing. Also, when you shoot in open shade you avoid the subject squinting their eyes to look at the camera!

Another great source of soft light is window light! Get between the window and your subject, keep the flash turned off, and you can get something like this:

So the next time you are out and about with your camera, look for soft light! It is everywhere, and once you find it, your photography will improve because you will start looking for the light before you look for the background!

This tip comes directly from my downloadable photography e-book, “10 Tips To Shoot Your Baby Like A Movie Star”. You can use the code MANPAGE to save another 10% on it.

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically for baby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement posters - a unique gift newborn children can keep forever. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.

I wanted to dedicate this post to helping you get some great shots for this event. The techniques are really pretty simple! All you need is a camera that lets you set the shutter speed and ISO, and preferably a tripod if you can find one lying around.

The key to great fireworks shots (and we’re talking the controlled blasts happening in front of your house, not the big shows downtown) is setting a slow shutter speed. With that slower shutter, you give the camera a better ability to register all the light activity that’s going on in the scene.

Accordingly, you’ll need a tripod for those long exposures. You can still get some great light streaks going on without one, but you might not be able to see good definition in them.

Set the ISO to 100, because the fireworks are going to be so bright that you won’t need to go any higher than that. Set the camera mode to Shutter Priority (Tv). That’s it!

Here are a couple of example shots along with their shutter and aperture settings:

1/85th, f2.8

1 second, f8

1 second, f8

3 seconds, f8

The aperture really doesn’t matter for these shots – what the camera sets for you will probably be fine. You can see the difference between the first shot (handheld) and the subsequent images (on tripod). For autofocus, you might need to wait until the fireworks actually start before hitting the shutter button, because the camera won’t be able to focus if it’s too dark. Also, try to not end up downwind from the smoke coming from your fireworks – you don’t want that stuff messing up your camera!

So go forth and produce incredible fireworks images this 4th of July! And try not to blow your fingers off!

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically for baby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement posters – a unique gift newborn children can keep forever. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.

Sure, it’s great when you’re new to photography and just bought a camera. You might have even taken the camera out of the bag on the way home and taken pictures of traffic cameras taking pictures of you. Green box mode is great for that. But there are reasons you want to avoid it like the modern day gadget plague that it is. But first, some back-story.

Fully automatic mode, affectionately labeled here as “green box mode”, is designed to make your camera truly point and shoot. It takes all of the guesswork out of photography for you, and, in a snap-judgement decision, decides the best settings for each picture you take.

It does have real-world benefits. If you need a quick shot to remember how your brother looked when he was passed out at your wedding, it’s great for that. But this column is about improving your photography, so let’s look at the options.

The good news is that you can experiment with different modes and still have the camera on automatic for the remaining settings. This works on all DSLRs and most pocket digital cameras. To get started, start from green box mode, take a deep breath, and try these other modes.

Shutter Priority (also shown as Tv) – This tells the camera that you are most interested in the shutter speed, and it can set everything else. You would use this mode if you were interested in playing with motion (either stopping it, or emphasizing it). For example, if you wanted to stop water from a water fountain so that you could see individual droplets, flip the camera to Shutter Priority and set the shutter speed really high (1/500th of a second or higher). Alternately, if you want to see a nice, blurry smoothness of the water, set your shutter speed low (1/30th of a second or slower). You will probably need a tripod or a steady surface to set the camera on when you are taking pictures with slow shutter speeds.

Aperture Priority (also shown as Av) – This mode tells the camera that you are most interested in what parts of your image are in focus, besides what you actually focused on. Smaller numbers (like 2.8) mean that less of your image is in focus. Larger numbers, like 16, mean that more of the scene will be in focus.

The three ‘pillars’ of controlling your image are shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. Practicing with the two modes above will help you better understand how they work, and we’ll cover ISO in an upcoming article.

Of course, everything comes with a caveat, and here’s mine: your ability to experiment with the different modes will depend on the amount of light in your scene. For example, trying to set the shutter speed high as listed above will not work if the scene is too dark. Try that technique in the middle of the day outside. Additionally, trying to use a low aperture like 2.8 may not work outside, because it may be too bright, and your picture may be way overexposed.

There are big-time technical reasons why these things happen, but just experiment and you’ll start to understand why. Also, your camera/lens may not support an aperture as low as 2.8, or a shutter speed as high as 1/2000th of a second, etc. Be aware of what your gear can do.

Have you experimented with shutter speeds or apertures on your camera? What were your results? Tell us in the comments area below!

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically for baby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement posters – a unique gift newborn children can keep forever. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.

This is how it turns out, as taken by a wedding couple of mine from last year:

It’s actually very simple to do, but you’ll want to practice it a few times first. First off, you’ll need a camera that supports either Shutter Priority (sometimes labeled Tv – the ability to change the shutter speed) or full Manual mode. All DSLRs will support this, and most pocket cameras will. You’ll also need a flash, whether it’s a built-in or a hot shoe flash. I’ve done this technique with DLSRs and pocket digital cameras, and the results are great.

Got all of those? Good! Here’s how to do it:

1. Find a location that has lights behind you like sconces or hanging lamps.

2. Set your ISO high if you are taking the shot in the evening. For the shot above, I set it to 1250. It was taken under an outdoor tent at night. For pocket camera users, I’d start with an ISO a little bit lower (perhaps 800). Pocket cameras produce a lot more noise at high ISO levels, so you will get better picture quality at a lower ISO. You may want to bump it up, though, if the picture looks too dark.

3. Set your camera to Shutter Priority (Tv). This will let you control the shutter speed while it sets the aperture for you. Set your shutter speed to around 1/5th of a second to start (that’s what it was set to above).

4. Make sure the flash is set to On (not Auto), as you will need to make sure that it fires.

5. Hold the camera at arm’s length and eye level. While keeping the camera in this position, start to spin around slowly. While you are spinning, take a picture!

It’s important the keep your arms level and extended throughout the motion. You don’t have to spin around too fast, either. Usually, a full turn will be enough time. Keep spinning until you are sure that the camera has taken the shot, and then take a look! If the picture is too dark, either raise the ISO or lower the shutter speed. The biggest factor in this shot is getting the shutter speed to somewhere around 1/5th. Everything else can be set to auto if you are happy with the results.

Once you get good at it, you can teach other’s how to do it as I did above. Just be sure that you trust who you are handing over the DSLR too

I’ve created a video of this technique using a spinning chair and a barf bag at http://www.ShootTheBaby.com/episode-11-what-goes-around/ . Be sure to check it out, and I hope you enjoyed this tip!

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically for baby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement posters – a unique gift newborn children can keep forever. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.

For today’s tip, we are going to get back to basics and cover one of the most simple rule of composition: the rule of thirds. I actually like to think of it more as a suggestion, since there will be plenty of times you will take great pictures without following it.

Here are the basics. When you frame up an image, divide the frame like a tic-tac-toe board with 2 horizontal lines and 2 vertical lines. Here’s an example:

To improve your shots, all you have to do is place your subject at the intersection of any two lines.

That’s it. Instant ‘artist’s statement’ with your photos. To enhance this even more, have your subject looking or facing in the direction of the open area. This ‘visual space’ adds even more interest to your photo.

Some cameras (including my 2005-era point-and-shoot) will display the grid pattern for me, so I don’t even have to think about where the exact intersections are! Maybe your camera has this feature as well.

Start using this technique today, and then look at other photographs and see where it’s being used there. And don’t limit yourself to horizontal/vertical shots. Angle your camera for an interesting perspective, and use the rule of thirds on top of that. Your geometry teacher will be so proud (if she remembers your name).

After you’ve used this technique for a while, completely change it up it and try something new like having your subject look away from the open area, or cutting off the bottom of heads so that only eyes peek out from the edge of the frame. After all, it wouldn’t be a ‘rule of thirds’ unless you found creative ways to break it.

Have you found creative ways to use the rule of thirds in your photographs? Let us know in the comments below! Also, feel free to suggest ideas or techniques you would like me to cover for future articles!

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically for baby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement posters – it’s a very unique gift newborn children can keep forever. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.

The kind people here at Sparkplugging.com have asked me to help start a column on photography, and so I am very excited to give you some tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your camera!

We are going to give you some great advice, whether you have a top-of-the-line DSLR or a crappy hand-me-down pocket digital camera that you received as part of some introduction to timeshares.

We’ll include some example pictures where we can, and I welcome your input on these articles plus suggestions for future articles. You can reach me at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.

Let’s get going!

For this first article, let’s talk about when to turn off the flash. ‘What?’ you might say? ‘The camera knows when to use it, so why would I turn it off?’ A good question indeed. The fact is that your camera doesn’t always know when it’s best to turn off the flash. It has a set of rules to follow, and it’s going to stick to them no matter what. And sometimes, you end up with a bad picture. But you can take control and get better shots more consistently.

I can hear the moans now.

Your camera came with a manual that’s written in 32 languages and pops open like a diorama. There’s no way you have the time to figure out all the settings you need to make this work. Actually, it’s easier than you think! All I am suggesting is to turn off the flash and leave everything else on automatic. Usually, for pocket cameras, you can turn off the flash with one button that looks like this:

If your pocket camera is like mine, it probably rotates through a menu like Flash On, Flash Off, and Auto Flash (otherwise known as Sporadic/Inconsistent Mode). For DSLRs that have a built-in flash, you’ll need to look at the manual, but it will probably be something very similar.

What kind of results can you get from doing this? Let’s check out an example. Here’s a shot of my son, taken with a pocket camera. It’s the middle of the day, and there’s a big glass door behind me. However, with all the light coming in, my camera decided to use the flash and this is what I got:

Uggh. So ‘point and shoot’-ish. But, by turning off the flash and leaving everything else on automatic, I can get this:

Much better. The lighting is more even, and you can see the room much more clearly.

So, where should you try this?

Well, you’ll need a lot of light, so trying this while your kid is sleeping at night isn’t going to work. I recommend using window light! Window light is great – it’s soft, slightly directional, and can work wonders. Try having the window to your back so that you are between it and your subject. Have your subject face you, turn off the flash, and take a few shots. The camera will realize that you are putting the smack down on the flash, and it will compensate.

While you are practicing, take a note of the shutter speed that the camera is using. If you don’t have enough light in the room, the shutter speed will be too low, like 1/30th of a second, 1/15th, or slower. If that happens, you will get a blurry mess. I would try to get a shutter of 1/60th of a second or higher. You can shoot with a slower shutter, but you will need to practice being still, and also having your subject still. Good luck with that last one – the only time my oldest is still is when he realizes he’s in trouble. Sometimes he thinks he’s being punished when I take his picture anyways, so it all works out.

Here’s one more example of using window light, this time taken with a Canon 5D:

There are some extra retouching steps I’ve done in Photoshop on this image, and I hope to cover some of those tips in future articles.

There you have it – your first tip to making your images better! I look forward to passing on more tips in future articles!

Eric Doggett is a photographer based in Austin, Texas. He recently launched a site specifically for baby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com. This month he is also launching BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth announcement and birthday party movie posters. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.