Ezi Pix Blog

By Wayne G Turner

Each one of us wants to become more effective in our photography. That could be winning a competition, selling your images or just taking great photos to put on your wall. So, what is effective for one might not mean effective for another. And, the person who determines how effective is...? You! How do you increase the effectiveness of your photography? Here are a few keys that have helped my students become more effective.

1. Plan

This is just so simple to do. The old adage, "those whole fail to plan, plan to fail" is so true with photography. Happy snappers just don't get the images that are stunning and fit in the context of effective photography. Before you decide to go out and shoot make sure that you sit down, even if for just five minutes, and plan what you are going to do. What type of image are you going to shoot, where do you want to go and for how long. A simple plan will increase your effectiveness quite dramatically.

2. Make a specific time

If you are serious about your photography, whether it be for pleasure or to make a career out of it, set a specific time to go out and shoot. Tagging a shoot at the end of a busy day or rushing off a few shots before going off to work is not an effective use of your photography time. It deserves your full and undivided attention. In addition to this specify how long, an hour, two hours or even just thirty minutes. Then give it your full and undivided attention.

3. Implement something new

Effective photography means learning a new technique or method so why not try to implement something you have just learnt and see how it turns out. Treat it as a project or assignment. Better still enroll in a free online course or buy a book with assignments at the end of each chapter. Use these assignments as the basis of your photo shoot.and put into practise your new knowledge. If you are more experienced then use it to brush up on your rusty techniques.

4. Get some advice

If you have a friend who is more experienced than you or you are part of a photography club, then seek out their advice. Find out where you are lacking in skill or technique and ask them to show you how they do it. I always look to those more experienced than me for help despite being a photography teacher. Never stop learning and always be teachable.

5. Evaluate

This to me is one the most important things you can do as you learn digital photography. Look at what you are doing and then evaluate it. If you aren't too sure then get others to help. Be careful who you ask as some people will say anything so as not to offend or hurt your feelings. Positive criticism is essential to uplift your level of competence. When you are trying out new techniques, print out the image and compare it to your textbooks or course material. Whatever you do keep on learning.

Effective photography begins in the mind as you actively pursue a course of action to increase your ability and skills. Be prepared to plan, set a time and then evaluate your progress. Happy shooting!

Learn digital photography by subscribing to my FREE 10 PART PHOTOGRAPHY E-COURSE, delivered daily via e-mail - just click here:  - To learn how you can take your photography from ordinary to outstanding click here for my ebook 21 STEPS TO PERFECT PHOTOS - 

Wayne Turner studied with the New York Institute of Photography, has been teaching photography for 25 years and has written three books on photography.

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By Leo Pierson

Photography is painting with light! It's been said that photography is the one art where you don't need to go to school, nothing separates the pro from the amateur other skill a keen eye or the right moment. Give a camera to a child and they've cracked it, give the same child a keyboard and they'll get back to you in due time.

Most photographs are created using a camera , which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of what the human eye would see. The process of creating photographs is called photography .

The great thing about photography is its outward focus (puns and semi-puns are so hard to avoid) on the world around us, not the art itself. Moving from hobby photography to professional photography is a big jump. It's a jump not just because your ability to pay your mortgage and feed your family will now depend entirely on your talent with a camera and your skills at marketing those talents.

For me photography is about "collecting" experiences and allowing myself to be more than a fly on the wall in my subjects' lives. I don't think photography is dead, I think photography is an extremely young art form. I also look at the history of photography and see that many of its milestones have been based on the technology of the time.

Photography is going through an exciting transition period as many film photographers are beginning to explore the new capabilities made possible with digital cameras. Traditional aspects such as the fundamental techniques and lens equipment have remained the same, however others are markedly different. Photography is acquired when weather conditions, sun angle, and, when applicable, water levels are optimal to ensure that photographs will be suitable for a variety of purposes using standard photogrammetric techniques.

Natural light in photography is crucial if you want to take great portraits. Many assume this means the time of day in which she can shoot her portraits is limited. Photography is used to preserve memories of favorite times, to capture special moments, to tell stories, to send messages, and as a source of entertainment. Photography is an art of particularity, but this doesn't mean that photography must be from "outside in. If photography has too much natural accident, it will hardly carry visual dynamic. But if it has too much photographer intervention and manipulation of the subject, it will paralyze the expression of the subject's essence.

Once you've gotten your head around this and started shooting a few pictures, you might find that photography is quite fun and interesting. At first glance it would seem that unless you are a full-time adventure athlete, adventure photography is something that you will have little opportunity to apply yourself to? However, nothing could be further from the truth. When learning how to shoot action photos, there are many ways you can begin practicing and honing your skills when you are far from the mountains or wild rivers.

Some are able to select a wonderful location to shoot along with having the "artistic eye" to use the natural backdrop to obtain the best photographs possible. Pinhole photography is great fun and it can be the most serious kind of photography. There is the freedom from vying for the latest and the greatest the industry has to offer, and the freedom from the delusion that technically ever more perfect equipment is required for great photography.

Remote photography is used to learn more about things like bears' use of naturally-occurring bear rubs and how they respond to baited hair traps. Information from this work will be used to improve sampling methods and understand bear behavior. Photography is all about selection, first through the viewfinder and second when you look at the results. As long as there's selection involved, there's room for art - if the artist can pull it off. Good photography is all about seeing.

Input relating 'classical' portraiture to photography is not so easy to find. Though we may not want to take this kind of photograph, it still seems that we could learn a lot from the kind of discussion given here. Photography is also increasingly asserting itself on the auction block as an important investment. And its prices in the galleries and at the major fairs reflect its serious status. Photography is finally escaping any dependence on what is in front of a lens, but it comes at the price of its special claim on a viewer's attention as "evidence" rooted in reality. As gallery material, photographs are now essentially no different from paintings concocted entirely from an artist's imagination, except that they lack painting's manual touch and surface variation.

Underwater photography is becoming an exciting field of unexplored areas. Other photographers specialize in areas such as portrait, commercial and industrial, scientific, news, or fine arts photography. Photography is a customer service business. Whether you need family portraits, pet portraits, events coverage or complete wedding packages.

The most compelling part of digital photography is the idea of showing pictures to people wherever they are, as long as they are in front of a computer connected to the Web.

The overwhelming majority of older photographs are catalogued under the term "albumen prints" - the most common type of 19 th-century photographic print. Additional headings are assigned describing the typical cardboard mounts to which these images are attached - stereographs, cabinet card photographs, and cartes-de-viste.

Finally, If you plan on working with older photos, establish handling procedures and adhere to them whenever photographs are being used. View photographs in a clean, uncluttered area, and handle them with clean hands. Most 1860s-90s paper photographs are albumen. Even non-collectors associate horse-and-buggy and Old West images with the soft, sentimental tones that were produced by the albumen process. If only photographs are stored in a given area, 30-40% RH is best. If photographs are stored with paper, parchment, or leather materials, it may be necessary to maintain 40-50% RH to avoid placing unwanted stress on non-photographic materials.

Leo Pierson lives in Kentucky with his wife, five children and six cats. He helps people use simple technologies to save fuel. See this technology and get free information from his site at: [http://www.NoMoreFuelCosts.info]

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Article
Backlighting

by Esther Beaton

Backlighting is one of my favorite lighting techniques. No, probably the favorite. Newbie nature and wildlife photographers don’t have a great sense of different lighting styles; they just sort of shoot in the full sun. Fortunately, my experience with formal portraiture and studio shooting has given me a lot of knowledge which I can adapt to nature photography. In this newsletter, I’ll share the basics of backlighting with you and which will have you producing fancy results in to time.

Backlighting is a lighting style often used in portraiture, but it can be applied to any life form, including wildlife and plants. It is particularly effective in landscapes. Think of those nostalgic images of Tuscany grapevines or wheat fields across rolling slopes - most of those are backlit scenes, taken late in the day when the sun is low. I depend on it in a lot of my Scenics.

Adds Depth and Dimension

So just what is backlighting? What makes backlighting so effective and why do I love it so much? Backlighting is light that is hitting the back of the subject. There are two things it does to a photo, any photo, whether of buildings, people or a lamp post. First, backlighting adds 3-dimensionality. Remember, a photo is usually a print - in other words, 2-dimensional. Photographers have forever been looking for ways to add the third dimension- that sense of depth - to the print. The best way to do this is to separate the subject from the background. And a really great way to do that is to add a rim light around the edge of the subject. This is where backlighting comes in: it outlines the back edge of a subject and makes it pop out from the background, or as an artist would say, puts it in relief.

Intensifies Colours

Another wonderful effect of backlighting is the way it intensifies colours. You may have been taught that the way to bring out the best and most intense colours of a subject is frontlighting. Well, in a sense that’s true: frontlighting is good for solid subjects. But with translucent subjects, those that are almost see-through, like plants, leaves and flowers, backlighting really comes into its own. However, I was surprised once to find out how an object that I thought was solid was in fact relatively translucent. When I was shooting a story on funnelwebs (those big, hulking hairy brutish-looking spiders) I set up my normal studio formula, which included a backlight for the rim effect. Lo and behold, the results were amazing. The spider was lit up from within, seeming to emanate a reddish glow. So, not only does backlighting add the rim effect around the edges - it can also transmit light right through the subject. Try it yourself. Find an autumn leaf and notice that in frontlighting it is dull orange. Put the light behind it and notice how it glows red, almost fluorescent, and that all the venation and patterns become prominent.

Reduces Contrast

Another effect of backlighting - and this tends to happen more in scenics like distant landscapes and wide views - is that it evens out differences in lighting. When the sun is low in the sky, the shadows cast will not be too dark. There won’t be a dramatic difference in tones between the sunlit areas and shadows. Let’s say you're in a forest and you're looking at the shadow side of trees. Very often in such a scene the sunlight hitting the ground will be reflected back up onto the trunks of the trees, lightening up those shadows, thus evening out the difference between light and dark tones.

Increases Contrast

Another way that the tones are improved with backlighting is when a rim light is created. When the sun (or other light source) hits the back of a subject, it creates a pencil line of light around it. If it’s a mammal, the fur seems to light up. This outline is so intense that it will be overexposed or “burnt out”. But that won’t matter because it's not necessary to see detail in those narrow bands of light. The effect is one of creating contrast in an otherwise flat picture.

How to Employ Backlighting

To carry out backlighting is very straightforward. You don’t have to learn any complicated rules here, all you have to do is position yourself towards the sun. You face the sun, putting your subject between you and the sun. It might take a while to “get your eye in” as they say, because most of us are more comfortable looking at objects in “normal” frontlighting, and until you get used to it, backlit scenes look too dark to the untrained eye.

Add Fill Light

The only serious concern with backlighting is that you may require some fill light. Because you’re viewing the shadow side of your subject, it may appear dark and dull, particularly when it’s not translucent. You might have to fill those shadows in with a bit of light from a flash unit or reflector. This is called “filling in” or “adding a fill light”. You don’t want to over fill the shadows and make them look fully lit. That would diminish the lovely romantic effect that backlighting gives. The easy way to achieve good balance is to use a white reflector. It usually bounces back about half the quantity of direct sunlight and that’s a perfect balance of fill. 

The other acceptable method is to use a flash unit - and this is where some real artistry is required. Thankfully, modern dedicated TTL flash units make it easier than ever. All you have to do is reduce the normal output by dialing down the the exposure. In the last newsletter, where I talked about using flash for birds, I recommended using minus 2/3 stop as a starting point. Most units want you to make changes in 1/3 stop increments but if you can set minus 1/2 stop, that is fine too. You’ll have to vary it depending on the distance your flash unit is from the subject or by how dark the subject is. (Of course you won’t be using flash on a big landscape scene; the light bouncing around and into the shadows will provide adequate fill.) Also, you don’t need fill-in flash on a translucent subject as that would kill the colors.

Lens Flare

One last thing to remember with backlighting is to prevent direct sunlight from landing on the front element of your lens. Your lens hood might not long enough if the sun is very low in the sky (see the Quick Tip above). The cleaner the front element of your lens and the more recessed it is, the less any flare will trouble you.

Don’t be afraid to try backlighting even when there is an overcast sky. Sometimes enough sunlight penetrates through a light layer of cloud to give you a glorious effect.

I encourage you to get our there and start practicing some backlighting. I hope, like me, you'll become a passionate convert.

Want to know more? At least six backlighting lessons are available in The Nature Photography Cookbook, an e-book full of practical techniques in an easy-to-apply, recipe style format.

Please note, this article is Copyright Esther Beaton. You may not copy it or use it without my written permission. Same for the pictures.

Esther Beaton is an award-winning, full time professional photographer and the author of The Nature Photography Cookbook. To learn about upcoming workshops and to get cutting edge tips on how to shoot nature like a pro, sign up for her free Photo Tips newsletter at www.estherbeaton.com. You can also forward this newsletter to a friend using the link at the bottom.

Three Tips for Capturing Nature Images

Based on a conversation with Nature (and other) photographers

George and Gail Hardy

Get down and dirty! Well…this isn’t really a tip, but you need to know that this is sometimes what it takes to get a great nature shot. Nature photography is an art form in itself and this is emphasised by the number of competitions that have special sections for this category. You may have taken a great shot in your backyard of a kookaburra and think this will count as a great nature shot. But…is the eye completely in focus? Can you see every feather in the lighter sections and every feather in the shadows and dark areas? Have you correctly blurred out the background to eliminate anything to distract the viewer from the main subject? And did you catch that kookaburra in mid flight, with food in its beak and chicks waiting to be fed.

If you did get that shot…then you’re already an expert. But if you missed all of that, then perhaps these three tips will help you understand what it takes to capture that perfect nature image. In our conversation George and Gail discussed birds, insects, plants and fungi. Not to mention reptiles!   

These tips should give you a good head start on what to do to ensure you don’t sink. As consumers have more and more choice about what marketing they view, when they view it and how they view it, you need to make sure you don’t miss the boat.

1. Observation

You simply cannot get the best shot without getting out there into the wild and observing what is going on with the wildlife around you. What is out there, what do they do and where do they go? There is nothing new about this step. It has always been the key to successful Nature and wildlife shots. What better way to enjoy your photography than to be in the great outdoors with the sounds and sights of nature all around you. Whether it’s birds, fungi or landscapes, this is definitely one of the most enjoyable forms of photography for those who enjoy exploring. Don’t forget to look under your feet. What is growing and what insects could you be missing if you don’t look down.

Once you fully understand the subject you are targeting, the next step is to look at the best ways to shoot them (photographically speaking). Do some further research about them before you go out, such as what are their fears and who are their predators? You may even decide that the predator is more interesting shot. Will they leave the area if you get too close or pick up on your scent?

A good way to start is to break up the season into the types of photos you want to take. Depending on where in the world you are, you can have your Fungi season, your bird season and your insect season. This is where the observation and research comes into it. You may need to do quite a bit of walking and this may include asking permission to go onto private property. Don’t be afraid to ask as you may be pleasantly surprised how many people won’t mind photographers on their land.

2. Patience

You’re going to need plenty of this! In fact (and I don’t mean to put you off), unless you are being paid to take the photos or you’re retired, you may just not have the time for nature and wildlife photography.

You may need to watch birds for a few months before you will notice them with nesting material, which indicates that they will soon have chicks to feed. Follow them and make note of their habits to find the best time and place to get your shot. This means going back to the same place day after day, week after week and watching and following them. Patience!

For fungi, it sometimes takes a little while to evolve in the morning and some of them don’t like the sun very much at all. In NSW, March is a good time of the year to start looking for the more elaborate species. When you see the ground is very wet and you start to have leeches crawling on you and sucking your blood, then you know you’re in the right spot. Here’s where you will often need to get down very low, even if it means lying in the mud, to get your shot. You may also have to return to the same site at various times of the day to find out when the lighting is at its best to make certain you get the best possible shot. Patience!

Around May is the time to look out for the eagles and that type of thing, because eagles nest earlier than most other birds in a lot of areas. Sea Eagles can be seen as far inland as Maitland to nest and they don’t only eat seafood. There’s nothin’ like a good rabbit, another bird, a snake or even a pelican, they’ll eat the lot. Fledging time of a sea eagle or a wedge tail eagle (they’re very similar) is approx 100 to 110 days from when that bird is hatched before it leaves the nest. They would be in a nest, probably a hundred foot up in the air on a tree that would be approx 8 foot in diameter and hoping Mum and Dad will come and give them a feed each afternoon. Patience!

Next up you get the smaller birds like the robins and the honey eaters. They start around September as Spring is their best nesting time, with the water birds being best around March. 

In between times, insects tend to come out when the weather is warmer, around November, which makes for good tucker for the chicks. You may be able to get some quite interesting insects in your own back yard. Make sure when you are lining up your shot that there are no man made objects in the background, such as houses, fences, power lines etc. It will not only spoil the shot, but it will not be eligible to be entered into a nature competition. Many flies and insects will actually eat each other and these make great nature shots.  Look out for caterpillars and by watching closely, you may then catch a butterfly being hatched or follow the butterfly to watch them hatching their eggs. Patience!

Also look for dam areas where there are reeds because not only do many birds lay their eggs in the water but a lot of the damsel flies and the dragon flies actually lay their eggs in the water too. Then, they turn into little nymphs which climb onto the stems and hatch out and they become the mature damsel flies and dragon flies again…so it’s just an evolution from one to the other all the way through. I think that covers the fungi, the birds and the insects. Patience!

3. Reaction

This is about preparing yourself for how you will react when you have the shot lined up and what you have to do to get yourself in the position to take the shot, without scaring the subject away.

You may need to be up to 75 to 100 feet away from the actual nest. Have your camera close, but not yourself. Use a cable release that you can extend out to up to 100 feet away from the nest. Then you hide and wait, without taking your eye off the nest, for the perfect shot. None of these birds are going to say “Hey, here I am, look at me!” You need to be ready to react in an instant because if you miss-time it, you miss the shot. It’s likely that you’ll miss more shots than you get.

Sometimes you can get closer and the birds won’t worry about you. You may need to be up a step ladder to get the right angle and you could be there for up to six hours waiting for the shot. George says that when offering Gail lunch while she is up the ladder her reaction is usually “I’m busy!” So, they’re the sort of things you have to do and put up with. You may be in a swamp getting Grieves or Reed Warblers and you’re getting into water maybe a foot to two foot deep with a hide (camouflage tent) set up, it’s 40 degrees and the mosquito’s are ‘round everywhere and you just cannot move out of the hide. Once you do and the birds see you, they’re gone! You don’t get any more shots that day. So you have to get in the hide early and you stay there, watching and ready to react.

To stop birds in flight you have to have a lot of light. If you’re using available light you have to get enough light so that you can use your lens at almost 2000^th second to stop the wings. Otherwise they’ll just be blurred and you can see parts of other images through them.

The other way is to use artificial light, such as a flash. You really need a flash that can be set to manual. If you can get within a metre or so of the nest with your camera and two flashes and set your camera on manual at around f11, 125^th second and your flashes anything from a 16^th to a 64^th power, it will stop the wings and they’ll just be frozen in time. You need to time it right and react as the birds are coming in and the wings are open and birds breaking (they’re wings are always laid back and open when they’re breaking and they’re legs are outstretched). This will allow you to see all the feathers in detail. And that’s how you do it.

I hope you’ve learned from this article, Let me remind you that there are camera clubs all over the world and they are one of the best ways to learn more practical ways to improve your photography.

Engagement Marketing

Three Tips for a Successful Engagement Marketing Plan

By Julie Watson

Based on a conversation with Marketing Consultant

Patrick Zuluaga of “PMZ Marketing”

You may not be getting married, but these days you need to be ‘Engaged’! It’s the new buzz word being used to describe a type of relationship building with your potential customers and works with all of the new social media that we hear about and use today. Engagement Marketing is basically building a relationship one to one with a potential customer, having dialogue and interaction, all prior to them buying or referring your product or service.

Patrick says that the key to the best use of engagement marketing is to guide them to your automated online presence and it can be quite easy. I have put together three tips based on our conversation to help you gain better marketing results. Beware! The tide of online networking and social interaction and sharing is rising and you may drown if you don’t have a plan of action. To stay afloat you need an online presence to market yourself or your business.  

These tips should give you a good head start on what to do to ensure you don’t sink. As consumers have more and more choice about what marketing they view, when they view it and how they view it, you need to make sure you don’t miss the boat.

• Multi-Channel Plan

You need to understand your target market. Who are they, what do they want and where are they looking? There is nothing new about this step. It has always been the key to running a successful marketing campaign. You need to be very specific so that you can be most effective. If you have a wide audience that you can target, break it into smaller segments so that you can achieve better results by being more relevant to each group. A portrait photographer may think that every person is a possible prospective client. By breaking it down into segments, the photographer can then choose different mediums to target different groups. They may choose to specialise in ‘Baby Portraits’, so they need to target new Mums.

Once you fully understand who you are targeting, the next step is to look at multichannels to reach them. It’s no longer your choice as to how you want to reach out to them. You have to find where they are and use those channels. What other websites might be targeting the same crowd as you? Join in on their forums and as you do this you will begin to form relationships with them, gain their trust and understand what it is they want. Once you have started dialogue with them, you can interact so they become interested in what you have to offer and want to know more about your own services or products that may help them with their needs. Twitter, FaceBook, emails, blogging, forums…all of these could be used as part of your multichannel plan to reach out to your audience and drive them back to your marketing message (your website).

Remember that at this stage you are only making conversation to find out the type of people you are dealing with. Never try to sell anyone anything through a forum or blog or on your social media or you will loose friends very quickly. Build the relationship and make sure that you only offer your webpage after the conversation has become relative to what you have to offer.

• Web Presence

Now that you know that the information, products or services you provide is relevant to your prospective customers needs, you need to reach out to them and show them what you have to offer. Your most important medium is your web presence, as statistics are now showing that people are in front of their computer for longer per day than their TV.

Your web presence should be the centre of all your marketing messages. This is where you can capture those people and engage them to take action in preparation to buy and influence others through referral marketing. You can educate and inform then and convince them of your products and services and then use a call to action to get them to buy. Make sure you offer great value to them when they visit your site or they will soon leave.

• Call to Action

Your messages need to be transaction driven. Once you gain visitors to your site or presence and you give them the information that is relevant and valuable to them, you need to have a call to action so that they are more likely to respond and interact or buy your product or service. Some typical action driven messages might be; “Buy Now”, “Limited Time”, “half price for one week only”, “click here to register”, “visit our blog for more information” or “click here to view my portfolio” and all of these messages give the customer an action to take to get further information or make a purchase. You are basically telling them what the next step is that they need to take to get the offer and when they need to do it. Your website is a marketing engine and, as control is being lost to marketers, it becomes all the more important that you capture these buyers who now control everything regarding their purchasing experience.

Many people will visit and purchase from a site that has been referred to them by a friend. Adding a link to share your site or information with others is a relatively new and exciting way to introduce visitors to your marketing message. You are not simply ‘sending to a friend’ through an email, but able to automatically share your page to their social media and forum friends. By adding a call to action ‘share this’, you have your interested prospect saying to all their friends “hey, look at this great site I found with interesting information about………” and it will link directly to your website/presence, blog or portfolio.

You will multiply your sales by automating the process, so that selling one product becomes as easy as selling thousands of products. If you are selling photographic images, then the process should be automated so that the customer receives their print or downloadable image quickly and with a minimum of fuss. The process is the same for every customer, no matter how many sales you make, keeping your costs and time to a minimum.

The three main areas that you want to engage your target market into are; engaging to dialogue, engaging to buy and engaging to refer and I wish you all the best in doing this by using the three steps in this article.

Three (and a half) Tips for Posing Your Subject for Portrait Shots

Three Tips to Successful Blogging and Social Networking

Based on a conversation with Online Marketing Professional Belinda Jackson of Web Chameleon

Now days when someone says “A little birdie told me” then it’s not because they heard a whisper around the office. It’s more likely that they have been twittering or tweeting!

To be good at anything you do you need to be educated. It’s never going to be easy at first and you will save a lot of time and frustration if you learn a little about these media before you use them. There are many sites on the internet where you can pick up free information about Blogging and Social Networking.  The latest interview with Belinda Jackson on Ezi Pix is a great start. By becoming educated you will have confidence and not be so overwhelmed by where to start. There is so much information out there you need to make sure you don’t continue to read about it and never get anything started. Check Web Chameleons free information and also blogbybelinda.com. I found a couple of great videos, free on this blog which helped me understand Twitter, and now I am a Twitter Bug! It gave me the confidence to just jump in and get started. There is also great info about how to set up a blog.

If you’re not sure about blogging, you can also learn a lot about them on the internet. You will need even more education before you can build your own blog, but it really is easy once you know how. Check out a few blogs and then start making some comments. Of course, once you have your own web presence, you will leave a link back to your own blog, website or portfolio.

Whatever you do, don’t miss out on this massive opportunity to build your customer list or gain traffic to your own portfolio or website. Just do it!

2. Make Time

3. Consistent

Once you decide to go ahead and start a blog, then you need to be consistent. This strategy is not a one hit wonder or overnight success. If you decide you are bored with it, and don’t keep posting information on a regular basis, then it just won’t work. Social media also needs to be consistent or people will become bored with you. At first these strategies seem a little complicated because you are not sure what you are doing. You must persist, even if it’s only to log in and say “Hi” and then log out again. This will help you familiarise yourself with the site/blog and you will soon be able to quickly and easily log on and add quick comments and post articles. Before you know it you will have a following of people and visitors. Hopefully, this will increase your sales and ultimately your profits.

So if you make the decision to use one of these media, you need to be consistent. Use one at a time if you are time poor so that you gain maximum benefit from it. For blogging it does take a bit of time to start to get a profile built up so you need to get out and look at other blogs in your industry and start commenting on those so you start driving people back to your blog and getting people commenting on yours. The only way you can do that is by building ongoing relationships with people online and being consistent in posting content to your blog and also being consistent in using the social media which may also lead back to your blog.

So whether you blog, twitter or facebook, you can always be a ‘friend’ of mine by searching for me now. See you on the other side.

Three Tips for Breathtaking Panoramic Landscapes

Based on a conversation with professional Landscape Photographer Geoff White of Landscape Decor

I just spent 30 minutes in the great outdoors, photographing a fence! I’m learning to take breathtaking Panorama’s. Yes, you heard me right. In my conversation with Geoff White, I learned this is a great trick to making sure you know what aperture settings are right for your camera/lens, before you even get to your place of interest. Geoff is incredibly knowledgeable in the subject of landscapes and as he say’s “I really only see in panorama!”

What’s that, you want the opportunity to do some ‘doors off’ shots from a helicopter?

This is a must read article for you with a very special opportunity to do just that. The excitement, the vista’s, the adrenalin rush, and of course the images. Geoff can take you on a magical tour of some of his favourite places and teach you many more exciting tricks than shooting fences. You will be on location, hands on in his workshops. Check out my three top tips to taking breathtaking panoramic landscapes which I discovered during my conversation with Geoff.

1.    Steady on.

Use a tripod. It is impossible to get a good landscape shot without a tripod. Today's digital cameras, in their compact and ultra compact forms, may look ridiculous perched atop a huge tripod, but don’t let that stop you using one. There are many fine companies that make lightweight, easily transportable tripods. Lightweight is important because, if you walk all day or night looking for those special shots, a tripod can get very heavy very fast. There are also tiny table top tripods that you can use on the roof of your car or on top of a wall.

Tripods are a necessary evil, but anytime your shutter speed needs to be slower than 1/60 sec. at wide-angle, you should be using a tripod to prevent camera shake and a blurry picture. If you are fully zooming in without a tripod, you will probably need to have 1/125 sec. or faster.

To understand what the best aperture is for your lens try setting up your camera on a tripod against a textured surface like a wooden fence. Then manually focus on that wooden fence and shoot an image at every available aperture from 2.8 through to the maximum aperture of the lens. Have a real good look at those on your computer screen, particularly out at the edges and the corners of the shot and you will find that the edges and the corners will be quite soft at f2.8 and as you go through you might find that the optimum aperture for your lens is f11 or f16. By doing those tests, whatever the optimum aperture is, that’s what you need to be shooting your landscapes at.

2.   Simplicity

K.I.S.S. (Keep It Super Simple). Make your images as simple as possible. It’s the simplest images that are the ones that are the best. Have you ever taken a shot just on sunset with nothing but the stunning colours in the sky and just one tree, or even one person as a silhouette and nothing else? These simple shots are the ones with the ‘wow’ factor.

Often times when you look at a landscape image it’s not particularly evident what the subject of the image is and it’s the simplest images that really stand out the most. It can be a winding creek in the foreground that leads your eye gently to the mountain ranges in the background or a paddock of canola taken at just the right angle to make your eyes want to wander over the flower tops and onto the lone gum tree in the middle of the crop. Simple, but stunning and effective.

3.    I see the light!

You may see the light, but are you shooting at the appropriate time of day for the shot you are taking. If you’re shooting a rainforest shot or a waterfall, you definitely don’t want to do this when there’s sunshine. You want to do this when there’s a leaden overcast sky. As heavy overcast as you can get and you’ll get beautiful rich greens and you’ll get fantastic shadow detail. On the other hand if you’re shooting beach landscapes and stuff like that you don’t want overcast, you want sunshine. So choose your subject according to the light you’ve got for that day. Geoff recommends planning ahead and having a couple of options so that no matter what the weather, you can still go out and get your shots.

Of course, light is the most important part of any photo. Even if the composition and focus are out, the image will still be pleasing to look at if the lighting is good. Is the light falling at the right time of day and at the right angles? This gives the image its artistic elements.

At the end of the day, most people don’t get that great shot they are after because they are not out there practicing and doing it. So in the words of Sir Richard Brandson “Screw it, Lets do it!”