Beyond the obvious

How do you turn a picture of sea water into drinking water? Help make the world a better place. Upload up to three photos every day . As Mike Corso at Cool Site of the Day says: "Our aim is to generate 30,000 photo uploads before the end of the year. If we can achieve that, the total impact will be: 4.8 million gallons of fresh, clean drinking water through the building of fresh water wells. 1,700,000 hours of solar light for families in need. 45,000 kw hours of wind turbine powered electricity. When your readers arrive at the photo upload site, they will be able to upload 1 of 3 types of photos relating to either Wind, Water, or Light. We’ll turn those photos into real donations." So get uploading and spreading the word. Till soon, Paul www.indigo2photography.co.uk

Here’s a concise list of 14 tips for using flash to enhance your images. I jotted down a few notes based on my experience and the result is the ‘idea storm’ below. Seems obvious but it has to be said: the first thing to do is to establish your point-of-view, where are you going to put your camera; then look at the available light. If the natural light is good, don’t mess with it. If you do decide to use flash then be careful not to ‘over light’ your subjects and make them look unreal and garish (unless unreal is what you’re trying to communicate of course). Always remember flash light is balanced to be the same as bright daylight. You can alter the colour of the light when using your flash by applying different coloured gels over the flash head. Gels come in two basic varieties. Those used to correct colour balance (matching flash to tungsten lighting, TL lighting etc) and those used for special effects. I’ll try to keep this as concise as possible. If you have any questions just...

No-entry sign shot in Seahouses, UK. Shiny and new is not necessarily beautiful or interesting. Taken with a Canon 5D and 17-40mm L lens. The Christmas period is coming up and there’s lots of new equipment to put on your wish-list. New cameras, new lenses and lots and lots of new gadgets are going to be thrust at you by the marketers. For those people on a budget for Christmas, not able to afford all the amazing stuff that is being raved about in magazines and on the internet, I hope the rest of this article will help you side step the marketing juggernaut. The message underlying all of this marketing is that because the new Brand X camera has this or that feature it is far better than what you’ve got at the moment and if you really want to reach your potential as a photographer then you just have to buy it. By implication, all the photos you took with your current equipment are not as good as they could have been. So maybe you should delete them and start again. Of course I’m...