Joshua Dunlop

Learn how to use fill flash to brighten backlit portraits and balance flash power with ambient light.

A guide to photography laws in the UK, covering public places, venue rules, privacy, police powers, and responding to objections.

If you’re like me and don’t particularly like the look of HDR photos, but still want to find a balance in exposure when shooting two contrasting brightnesses, then you will definitely find the burn and dodge tools very useful. They’re used a brushes in post production software, so you can add them where they’re needed.

This is a post that most people would just brush over, not even thinking about the importance, so I congratulate you on reaching this far. I can almost guarantee that you’re currently making one of the mistakes listed below if you’re new to photography, so this post should hopefully help to kick a few bad habits.

Learn how light, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focus, and composition affect your photos. Start with a short practice exercise, then use diagrams and examples to understand your camera and lens.

Whether it’s Halloween, a birthday or a night out with friends, there’s always a party to photograph. A post on party photography might seem like a weird idea, but it’s not as simple as you may think; that is, if you want to get good photos. I’m known amongst my friends for my photography at parties, because I regularly have my camera with me, and record the parts of the night that are often forgotten by morning.

When it comes down to quality for price, bang for buck, a 50mm 1.8 is one of the best lenses on the market, and an upgrade that I recommend to every new SLR user. A 50mm f/1.8 lens can be an affordable upgrade for your camera.

I get asked to critique photos all the time now, and I’m happy to do it, but I often feel that people’s photography would dramatically improve if they could see for themselves where they’re going wrong. Small things that I would do differently can make a big difference to the end result. The sooner you learn to critique for yourself, the better, as it means that you’ll be able to study your photos as you’re taking them instead of getting home and wishing you could go back and retake them.

Learn what common photo editing terms mean, including exposure, white balance, Definition, saturation, and vibrance. See each adjustment applied to the same photograph.

When a frame is being divided by a single, dominant line, it’s more often than not, a Horizon, as they’re fairly common in outdoor photography, particularly landscapes. If the photo is of nothing particularly interesting, then usually this line becomes the dominant part of the photo for the way in which it separates the frame.

Triangles are in almost everything we see, in one way or another, it’s just a case of distinguishing them and knowing what to do with them. They make great compositional tools as they’re easy to make, manipulate, and are remarkably common. Triangles are a great way of combining different compositional techniques such as lines and paths and using them to create a more interesting part of a photograph, but the best part about using a triangle is their ability to make a photo feel stable or unstable.

In the acting and modelling world, black and white headshots are commonplace in portfolios, and if you want to diversify your own photography portfolio then it would be a good idea to add this skill to it. Headshots are laid back and can be a lot of fun as you play around trying to come up with something creative.