Wedding photography has changed so much over the past ten or so years. When I photographed my first wedding I used a medium-format camera. Most weddings were typically the same. I would be at the church to meet the bride as she got out of the car. There followed a few pictures in the church. Following on I would do a few formal, standard group shots outside of the church, and a final goodbye shot as the bride and groom were  ferried off to the reception. I was at the church for only a couple of hours and had very little contact with the happy couple before and after the ceremony. I would take at most 100 pictures and after the couple were shown the proofs an album was produced and that was the end of it. There was no creativity. There was a set routine with few variables.

Compare that with wedding photography in the 21st century. now a wedding photographer has to have people skills,be an expert at fashion, reportage, still life, inside and outside lighting, beauty as well as being a creative business person. As before the day cannot be repeated, but now there is so much more expected off a wedding photographer that there is much more that can go wrong. The upside of this is that if the wedding photographer can be different and more creative there is a very good living to be made from the wedding business.

Most young couples don’t want their wedding albums to look like their parents albums. This doesn’t mean that there is no place for the traditional wedding coverage. I always press the idea to the couple that although a more creative approach to the proceedings is the way to go they will be disappointed in later years if they don’t have some traditional types of photographs.

The most popular wedding photography today is a reportage kind of coverage that concludes with a storybook. The wedding photographer covers the whole day, capturing every detail from the bride preparing  before the wedding, through the ceremony and then the speeches and the later dancing. Although this approach is reportage in that the day is recorded as it happens, a number of the photographs are posed. If these photographs are done well most of the coverage will look as though they are candid. This kind of photography still needs the photographer to be an expert in using flash, natural lighting, posing etc. In fact all of the skills that the traditional wedding photographer has built up over the years.

Your own personality will determine the kind of wedding photographer that you will become. Trying to be something that you are not will be disastrous, both for the couple and for your career. The wedding photographer, more than almost any other specialist photographer, relies on word of mouth to build up his reputation. So don’t stress yourself out and damage your reputation by taking on the type of wedding that your personality isn’t suited to.

Find your own style, stick to it and develop your own creativity.

If you’re as old as I you will remember the visits of the school photographer with his huge camera. We, the children would stand in neat lines and he, the photographer would vanish under his dark cloth. He would spin his camera around to capture the full line of smiling childrens faces.

Theses photos were taken every year. I remember one lad was caught running around the back of the group in order to have his photo taken at both ends of the group. I wonder if that lad was me.

Although there are some great panorama cameras on the market the price puts them out of the reach of most of us. But don’t worry Photoshop has a great tool for creating panoramas from your digital shots. The actual tool is dead easy to use. What is difficult is the actual photography – getting the exposures of the original photos right. When I first started taking panoramas every one of my shots had a different contrast, and wouldn’t stitch up properly in Photoshop.

The first thing to do is to over ride your camera’s auto white balance. Set it to a manual preset such as cloudy or sunny. The odds are that you are not carrying a manual light meter with you so let’s improvise. Take a shot of the most important part of the scene, check it out in the cameras LCD panel to see that you are happy with it, and note exposure settings used.

The next step is to switch your camera to full manual mode and set up the same zoom, speed, aperture and ISO settings that you recorded from your test run. Once set do not change until you complete the panoramic sequence. If you have a tripod that’s wonderful, use it. But if your like the rest of us you probably left it at home with your light meter. It is possible (more difficult) to sequence without a tripod. I like to work from left to right. Take your first shot and turn slightly to take your second shot and then the third until you have completed the scene. Overlap each shot by about a third of the frame. This gives Photoshop more edge to play with and match up. As you turn try not to move from the waist. Move your body around trying to keep the lens stationary. Come on – nobody said it was easy, but if you persevere you should eventually “crack it” and have the sequences.

If you would like a complimentary copy of the photograph featured at the top of this page click here   WASTWATER PANORAMA This will take you to my general art and photography blog where you can pick up your free print.

I once heard a quote from Henry David Thoreau that “The question is not about what you look at, but what you see.” All photographers depend on a number of variables to play a part in their own creative vision. Shutter speeds, f.stops, choice of lens, where you choose to be to take your photograph, the light, sometimes combined with the time of day and many more components. All of these components are important, but you as an artist will concentrate on only the aspects that are important to you. Having said that, it is important to be aware of the other variables because they all come into play at some time.

How interesting to the viewer your images are depends on how you treat and react to these components. Two photographers at the same scene will respond differently to what they see. They will not have the same emphasis on aspects of the scene. You’re the one who chooses the correct lens for this particular job. You’re the one who chooses the exposure and the depth of field. You’re the one who determines what parts of the scene need emphasis. And finally it is you that presses the shutter at your optimum moment.

Some of these choices occur spontaneously. We don’t think about them because we have done it so many times before. To create pictures that are a little bit more than just competent snaps we need to look and analyse more. Look at the subject and think about all of the variables.

It doesn’t matter where you are there will be the potential for a good image. You have to look for it, and relating the variable aspects that we have discussed to the subject will help you to come up with something different. If you start seeing in a more creative manner you will come up with the goods more often than not. Remember –

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

If you are looking for Photoshop training to help you with your teaching or your own photography it will pay you to look at Adobe’s own training programmes and software by logging into the Adobe web site. By looking at Adobe training before you look for other photoshop training you may save yourself some money. Other than information about all of the Adobe products you will find also find help topics. The help topics are updated at regular intervals and can be downloaded. Some of the information available includes support pages, user forums, tips and tutorials and training.

In the learning resource section you will find a whole range of resources to help you to learn and understand all of the Adobe range. There are tutorials that help by giving short step – by – step lessons on a range of topics. There are also Adobe training video workshop CDs. These are professional training videos produced by experts in the photoshop training field.

The Help system also includes a number of step – by – step tutorials on important features of photoshop. These tutorials can be downloaded and printed for use at a later date. I have used some of the resources from the Adobe site myself as the basis for teaching a photoshop lesson, and can recommend them.

One of the resources that you may find helpful is the Adobe user forum. Here users share tips; share how they have solved problems, ask questions of each other and find out in general how others are coping with the photoshop software and getting the most out of it. The Adobe forums can be found on the main support page of the Adobe web site and are available in a number of languages.

My advice is to look at the Adobe website before you spend money on Photoshop training. There is a wealth of tips and techniques that you can learn before you start spending your money, and the site is quite often updated.

When I first became interested in photography in the 1960’s anyone that said that they had a zoom lens was either a millionaire or a liar. Now every digital camera comes with a lens with both optical zoom and digital zoom capabilities. What is the difference and should I use one as opposed to the other? Simply, optical zoom uses the optics of the lens to bring the subject closer. Digital zoom uses internal software to digitally enlarge a chosen portion of the image. In other words it simulates the action of the zoom lens.

Which is better? Optical or digital.

In short digital zoom is not really a zoom lens. All digital zoom does is take a part of the image and enlarge it back to full size. The consequence of this is loss of quality because of the enlarging process. The same results are much better obtained using photoshop or whichever imaging software you are using. This way you can crop and enlarge much more selectively and not lose as much quality.

The answer is to use optical zoom only! If you do need to get closer use your optical zoom to its full capacity and then enlarge when you get home using Photoshop.

Your camera will always use the optical zoom first and then turn to digital zoom. Most digital cameras will notify you when you are starting to use the digital zoom. My advice is to look up in your camera manual how to turn off your digital zoom altogether.

If you are going to use your camera for more than just recording snapshots you will have to start looking at the creative possibilities of your images. There are loads of creative and visionary ideas that you will pick up on your photographic road. Most of these are beyond this article.

Having said that, here are a few things to look out for.

This idea is called the rule of thirds and has been used by artists and photographers for almost ever. Most people look at their subject and then place the most important aspect slap bang in the middle. BOOOOOOOOORING.

Next time that you take a photograph try to imagine your frame broken up into nine rectangles. Think of two lines horizontally, and two lines vertically breaking up the frame into nine. Think tic-tac-toe. Some cameras have a programme that you can turn on which shows the tic-tac-toe lines on the view finder. Instead of placing your subject dead centre try placing it along the lines or even better where the lines meet.This should give you a much more pleasing and aesthetic picture.

Another tip which speaks for itself so I won’t go into any more detail than to say,“Get in as close as you can to the subject”

All rules are made to be broken. Often breaking the rules turns a half decent picture into a work of art. Use the rules as a guide line. You can get marvellous pictures without using these rules at all. Be creative in your thinking and you will take pictures that people will know were taken by you.

After I have composed my shot, I made sure that I don’t have lamp posts or trees coming out of peoples heads, that my subject isn’t the same colour, or if using monochrome the same tone as the background, before I press the button I quickly skirt around the edges of the view finder looking for litter or any other body that I do not want in my picture. To do this takes only a second – a lot less time than it does to edit it out.

The photograph that accompanies this article I took with a zoom lens from about a mile and a half away. The mountain is Scafell, England’s second highest.I was balanced on a small ridge and took the picture hand held.

One of the most misunderstood concepts that digital photographers have to deal with is the concept of resolution. The question that I am most asked, not just by folk’s new to digital photography, but by those that have been snapping digitally for some time is “How do I understand resolution?” Although resolution is a word that is used in a number of aspects of digital photography the one that most of us are concerned with relates to the size of an image in pixels. Pixels, as we know, are the little squares that we see when we enlarge our images using our image editing software. They are the building blocks of your images in a similar way that grain makes up your images in conventional photography.

The size of the image can be stated using either a blanket term such as 6 million pixels, or you may see it as 6 mega pixels. The other way given is as the dimensions of an image e.g. 1280 pixels x 960 pixels. Still confused? The important thing to remember is that pixels and resolution determine what size and quality you can display and print your images.

When you bought your digital camera you would be told that it would capture images at a certain resolution i.e. with a certain number of pixels. The importance of how many pixels your camera needs depends upon what you are going to use it for. If the camera is to be used for taking photographs that will solely be shown on line a very low resolution can be used. If you wish to print your pictures, as most of us do, then in general the higher the pixel count the better.

The traditional display for the web is 72 ppi (pixels per inch), whilst for printed images 300 ppi is the standard used for maximum quality. What this means is that in each linear inch of your printed picture there will be 300 pixels. The size of your printed photograph will be the pixel dimensions divided by 300. So if your camera is capable of 8 million overall pixels that would give dimensions of 3264 x 2448. Divide by 300 will give a photograph of approximately 11 x 8 inches.

To help determine the size of your photographs printed at 300ppi the following should help.

OVERALL PIXELS DIMENTIONS IN PIXELS PRINT SIZE AT 300 PPI

8 million 3264 x 2448 11 x 8

5 million 2592 x 1944 8 x 6

3 million 2048 x 1536 7 x 5

1 million 1280 x 960 4 x 3

If you were asked what was the most underrated accessory in the photographer’s camera bag what would you think of? Would it be filters? Would it be extra lenses? I don’t think so. There is one accessory that all of us use and if we didn’t have it we wouldn’t be able to use our digital cameras. Well what is it?

It is the humble digital camera battery. Humble possibly, but most definitely the digital camera battery is the most essential camera accessory. Of course traditional cameras have also used batteries for years, but there always were a few top of the range professional models that were completely mechanical.
Some digital cameras use power at an incredibly quick rate, whilst others use power at a much slower rate. To my mind a camera that uses power too quickly is not a lot of good to me.

The two types of battery that are in common use are the standard AA size battery and a rechargeable battery made especially for the make of camera that you are using. Although the AA batteries are more convenient in that they are available almost anywhere that you are likely to be photographing they become quite expensive because of their short life. There are Nickel Metal Hydride AA size digital camera batteries that are useful as they are rechargeable and last longer.
The batteries made by the camera manufacturer are more expensive than AA batteries, but hold their power a lot longer. It is recommended that you purchase more than the battery that came with the camera. Shop around for bargains. You will find battery makers selling a lot cheaper than the camera manufacturer.

What can you do to conserve your battery power? I rarely use the LCD screens on my digital cameras. The screen consumes so much power that you should try to use it only when necessary. A useful tip that I can pass on is, if you find that you are running out of battery and you haven’t a spare, turn the auto focus off on your lens. Use the manual focus setting. If you are on holiday or on a big shoot make sure that you have a spare backup set of batteries with you. If you are photographing an important event such as a wedding make sure that you have a backup set, and make sure that your batteries are fully charged.