Beyond the obvious

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...

Watching the Winter Olympics I was constantly amazed by how small the difference was between the top athletes. Less than three seconds separated the top three in the men's Olympic 30-km Cross Country skiing where Marcus Hellner of Sweden finished first, with a time of 1:15:11.4; Tobias Angerer from Germany placed second, at 2.1 seconds behind, and Swede Johan Olsson took the bronze, just 2.8 seconds after the winner. That’s over a 30km race lasting one and quarter hours! In most of the Olympic sports only 1/100’s of a second separated the winning contestants. Take a typical shutter speed of 1/60 second. It could mean the difference between winning or losing a race in the Olympics, or the difference between getting a great shot and an average one. If you think about it most photography is about picking that perfect moment, when light, subject and all elements fall perfectly into place. It takes a lot of work (and a bit of luck) to either make those moments happen or allow them to ...

Here's some high level advice which will strengthen your photography and boost your creativity. There are so many things to keep in mind when you take photographs. To help you I've tried to distill the essential elements. If you keep four things in mind all the rest should fall into place. And these four elements come from just two things: creativity and execution. Before discussing creativity, let's take a look at execution; visualizing your image and then making it happen. The three things you need to keep in mind are: light, composition and colour (LCC). I include grey values under colour here although black and white are not scientifically speaking colours. In most circumstances photographers are reacting to what they see in front of them. You can't run through a mental checklist of hundreds of items before taking an image. So just keep LCC in mind. Simple right? How you execute the image - shutter speed, aperture, point of view, use of flash etc will all be determi...

Spurn Point sea defences. Click on the image to see the larger version. Sometimes you see a great shot on the net. You know instantly the moment you see the thumbnail. In anticipation you click on the thumbnail and as the larger version displays you get hit by a feeling of intense disappointment. The picture is not sharp in the right places, there are dust bunnies or some areas have been badly cloned or manipulated. And you think, damn it! What a waste. This has got potential. If only the photographer loved their image as much as I like it. If only they had put a bit more care into the way they worked on it and paid attention to every detail. We've all come across people doing their jobs who have that, "I can't be bothered, I don't really care, it's not worth the effort" attitude. I don't understand it. My motto is, "If it is worth doing then it is worth doing properly." In my experience one of the biggest differentiators between an average and a...