#32 – Turn your subjects and unborify your photos.

Mounties know how to pose. Me? I could have turned my feet a bit more.

People are not flat.

Yet if you go through the pools of photos on the Facebook, Flickr or instagram, you’ll see snapshot after snapshot that makes it seem like everyone in the group seem less real than a Pixar character. There they are, standing straight up with toes pointing straight ahead – you’ll notice it a whole lot in those small group photos you take at your best friend’s birthday party.

Good photos – and good snapshots have dimension and depth. They should look like you could step into the frame and put your arms around anyone in the frame. Here’s how.

Start with the feet.

Taken straight on, the would have looked boring.

I once had a photo teacher who said “start with the feet and the body will follow.” Turn your subject – or in a group photo, turn a few of them – so you can see some depth. You want shoulders to be angled instead of flat. Suddenly, your photos look a whole lot more interesting.

Make it look natural.

On a great angle, but not sure he looks a llllllll that natural (still a great looking' kid!).

As soon as you tell someone to do something when you’re holding a camera, you’ve got a decent chance that they’ll “pose” for you. For most people, posing looks just wrong. Keep talking to whoever is in the photo to make them forget the camera. Still posing? Make them do the goofiest pose you can imagine. It helps shake out the butterflies.

Move.

If you’re standing on perpendicular to your subjects, move yourself a bit. They’ll hardly recognize what’s happening and by the time that they do, you’ll have your killer photo.

Bonus – Accessorize your gadgets with these must haves.

I apologize to all the wives out there.

Over the years, my fondness for new gadgets (hello Second Generation Core Macbook Air!) has been a bit infectious and a few of my male friends have joined me for the adventures. TVs. Cameras. iPads. I’ve lined up for them all.

Being a good friend means that I do a bit more than conscript my pals for the daylong lineups at nearby gadget shops. Because I want them to get the most out of those gadgets, I go on (and on) about what they’ll need to enjoy them all the more.

With Back to School coming up, you might be considering a new purchase. Before you head out there, I suggest investing in these three items:

Invisible Shield

I despise scratches. Ditto for nicks. Dents aren’t any better. I like my stuff looking new for as long as possible (it also helps when I sell the stuff to get the latest tech), so I invest a few extra bucks in slapping a second skin on laptops, phones, even camera screens. My choice is the ZAGG Invisible Shield. It’s a bit fussy to install and peels during the year, but my year-old iPhone looks like it came out of the box.

Griffin Stylus

This one’s mainly for tablet and laptop users. I storyboard out photo and video shoots. Back in the day, I’d scribble my work on a piece of paper and then scan it in. It’s annoying and cumbersome. I played around with different styluses (styli?) and found that the Griffin was a favourite. It writes smoothly, lets me sign documents and helps churn out my handdrawn work really easily.

Better Straps

No matter how good your camera, the strap that came with it probably sucks. It’s made out of nylon, chainlink or  whatever. If you’re carrying around a dSLR all day, it’s going to punish your shoulder. Get a bouncy strap like this one from Optex. As you walk, it bounces with you and makes everything feel lighter. Same thing goes for your backpack or satchel. If you’re carrying around lots of stuff, forget the padded stuff – look for the neoprene laced bouncy stuff. Your back and shoulders will thank you.

#31 – Blur the background with aperture.

“How’d I do that?”

You’re on vacation and you snap a shot of your boyfriend/mom/child in front of some landmark/landscape/landsomething. You look at the screen on the back and your subject looks fab – and the background looks even better because it’s softly blurred.

How did you do that?

Actually, it’s pretty easy. A couple of posts back, we talked about “aperture” – the ability of your camera to open up the lens to let more light into the camera. There’s another side to aperture, and it’s this – the more light you let in, the faster it blurs stuff in the background. Shoot at f11 and everything is mostly in focus. Shoot at f2.8 and there can be some serious blurring in the background. Photographers call it “depth of field” and it instantly makes your pictures look more professional.

The good news is that it’s super easy to blur out the background. Here’s how:

Turn your camera to the “Av” setting.

This lets you select an aperture you like and the camera figures out things like shutter speed.

Adjust your aperture to big bigger.

That’s a smaller number like 5.6, 4, 3.5 or 2.8.

Play around.

Try stuff out and see what works. There will be times that you take a close up of something at 2.8 and not see much blurring and times when you’re shooting at 5.6 and see lots of difference between the foreground and the background. The only way to know for sure is to experiment and have fun!

Warning – how much light you have is important.

As with any of the big three – aperture, ISO or shutter speed – you need to be aware of how much light you have. A bigger aperture (smaller number) lets more light in, which means you can try this out indoors and outdoors.

#30 – Shoot during the “golden hour” for the perfect portrait glow.

You know the look.

It’s about two in the afternoon on a glorious summer day. The kids are playing in the sprinkler and you want to get a great shot. Click goes your camera and as you look at the back of the screen, you furrow your brow and deliver the look that says – “this just does not seem right.”

When it comes to taking better pictures, there’s a time and place for everything.

Shooting outdoors in big, bright sunlight can give you some pretty ugly photos. It’s why wedding photographers tend to shy away from mid-day shoots. The sun is high. The sun is bright. The sun fries everything in its path.

All that changes in the hour before the sun dips behind the horizon for the day. “The Golden Hour” happens before sunset, when that great big ball of fire starts to give off rich, soft yellows and oranges. Makes for great landscape shots – and even better portraits. Turn your subject into the light, turn off your flash and let everyone bask in the nicest light you can get outside of $5000 in equipment.

What you do…

·      Get outside an hour or so before dusk.

·      Turn your subject so they look into the fading sunlight.

·      Turn off your flash.

·      Click.

What’s the real difference between a cellphone, a point-and-shoot and a dSLR?

What are you really paying for when you buy a camera?

More megapixels? The ability to shoot more photos per second? Extra control over the look of your photos?

All of these things are true, but what’s most important is how the images look. I went out with pro video blogger Tej Babra (on the hottest freakin’ day of the year) to find out. After we’d frappucinoed up at the Unionville Starbucks, we went into the fading light to see what our cameras could do.

Cellphone – iPhone – grainy, weird exposures.

Taken with an iPhone. Stuff is blurry and grainy.

 

The good thing about a mobile phone is that you’ve probably got one attached to your body somewhere. If you’ve got enough light, it should do a pretty good job. You won’t get zoom and the camera software can make some weird decisions for you, but you can use these to your advantage. The nifty trend in cell phones is that the pics aren’t supposed to look all ungrainy and well lit. Apps like instagram apply filters and let you do allllll sorts of cool stuff.

Point-and-Shoot – Canon G11 – good images, but has trouble in the low light.

Similar shot with the G11. Loads less grain. (The shot is underexposed on purpose).

Good things – small, more control, better overall pictures. Bad things – slow, often grainy in low light, too easy to set everything to “Auto” and hope for the best. I’ve got a high end point-and-shoot and like its performance overall. It gets challenging when I try and use the manual settings. Controls are buried in menus or jammed under buttons that don’t make a whole lot of sense. A great middle ground between the phone and the DSLR.

Yikes! G11 no like super low light.

 

dSLR – Canon 5D Mark II, 7D and 40D – fast shooting, but heavy and lenses count.

Exact same settings as G11 - except this one's on a better camera with a wider aperture. Notice how smooth everything looks.

 

If I could shoot with nothing but a dSLR, I would. Absolute control. Great flexibility. Photos look fantastic. We tried the 50mm 1.8 (about $100) and 50mm 1.4 (nearing $200) on the bodies and the results were sharp (anda bit startling – check out Tej’s blog on the lenses here). The problem of course is that dSLRs are big, bulky and not fun when you’re on family outings. Try holding a newborn while changing lenses at the same time. Nobody in your entourage – kids, girlfriend, passersby – will be impressed. 

40D. You don't have to spring for the top of the line camera to get good results from a dSLR.

#29 – Make everyone look smarter, thinner and prettier.

I’m not what you’d call a “thin” guy.

I’m tall. I’m middle aged. I’m – well it’s my blog so I’ll be kind to myself – cherubic.

Generally, I’m just fine with that. It’s just that when I get around to looking at myself in most pictures, I think “oh man – who’s that fat dude?”

When it comes to photos, everybody you know has something that they fear. Crows feet. Double chins. Moles. Personally, I think these things make people look beautiful and individual. The person your photographing probably doesn’t agree.

So if you want to be a star in the eyes of the people you take pictures of, know a few simple tricks that make everyone look just that much better.

Look better – use white balance + Clean and Clear wipes.

Here’s how to deal with pale and shiny people. You can manage the tan-less (guilty as charged) by taking a photo of them outdoors near dusk. The light is rich and golden, making them look … rich and golden. Using a flash? Try putting a little translucent orange duotang cover over the flash to create some colour (just not tooooo orange). If that doesn't work, just shoot in black and white. And as for the shine that comes from a little sweat? Try Clean and Clear wipes. Works like a charm.

Look thinner – get up a little higher + use shadows.

Shoot someone from a higher angle to make them look thinner, simple as that. Want to hide something specific? Get them to turn their body into the shadowy side of the photo. Instant svelte.

Look prettier – know which is a model’s “best side” + use depth of field.

Remember the old adage “photograph my good side?” That’s a real thing. People have better sides to photo. Take a couple snaps of yourself on each side and decide. Another idea? Soften the look of the photo by turning up the aperture (up = a lower number like 2.8). We’ll cover “depth of field” in another post. For now, be happy that you just made someone look fabulous.

Daily examples + conversation on Facebook.

Like “Frame One Photo” on Facebook for examples of the week’s theme, inspiring images, contests and more.

Bonus tips on Twitter.

Follow @frameonephoto on Twitter for weekly tips and links to nifty photos.

#28 – Use the RAW file format now to make editing easier later.

Shot in RAW, easy to convert to black and white.

It’s like doing ballet in a phone booth.

You’ve got all these megapixels in your camera and yet you only have so much space on your memory card. What do you choose? Small file size? Jumbo JPEGS? RAW?

I say buy a bigger card (they’re crazy cheap these days) and use the RAW setting – it’s what I do on every one of my cameras, from the giant SLRs down to my point-and-shoot.

RAW is a digital negative.

RAW is kinda-sorta the digital camera equivalent of the negatives you used to drop off at the pharmacy back in the film camera days. The files are uncompressed so the file sizes tend to be very large – and not every point-and-shoot camera out there actually has a RAW setting.

RAW files give you flexibility.

Because it’s a digital negative that hasn’t been compressed, a RAW file lets you do all sorts of things when you edit your photo on your computer. Did you or your camera pick the wrong white balance? You can choose a different one in your photo editor. Because the RAW files are uncompressed, you also get the cleanest file to work on. That means items in the background can be sharper and look better.

 

What if you can’t shoot RAW?

If you’re using an older or inexpensive digital camera, there’s a good bet that it doesn’t come with the RAW option. What do you do then? Shoot on the highest quality file setting you can. You won’t get all the bells and whistles of a digital negative, but you will have more flexibility when it comes to making your photos look fanfreakintastic.

Daily examples + conversation on Facebook.

Like “Frame One Photo” on Facebook for examples of the week’s theme, inspiring images, contests and more.

Bonus tips on Twitter.

Follow @frameonephoto on Twitter for weekly tips and links to nifty photos.

Bonus – Three cool extras for your summertime photos.

Tarnation.

It’s hot enough out there to develop a Texan accent and come up with some homespun metaphor about the heat.

Lucky for us, we’re talking about a cool photo technique this week – and to add to the coolness (coolosity?), three pieces of gear worth checking out:

Gorilapod – The bendy tripod that wraps around just about anything.

How many times are you at a summertime party and can’t find someone to shoot a great snap? That’s where the gorillpod comes in. It’s small, light and the legs bend into crazy shapes so you can wrap it around just about anything. A simply and cool add on to any purse or knapsack.

Photojojo! The Book – Great ideas for fun and funky photo projects.

Photojojo is just about one of my favourite spots on the Internet. They’ve always got great ideas, tips and projects for anyone who wants to do a little more with photography. Hitting the beach? Get this summertime read to tagalong – it’s worth a flip through.

 

Plushtography – For when you need a nap.

I have six kids. I like to nap – and now I want to nap with a giant pillow that looks like a camera lens. This falls in the “so ridiculous I must have one” category. Sadly, they’re currently backordered on just about everything. If you’re a little too into photography, these are for you.

Want to se some great photos and get in on some seriously good photo discussions? Check out Intel Canada’s page on Facebook.

#27 – Shoot vertically for a whole new way to look at things.

People are vertical. Tall buildings are vertical. Vases full of flowers are vertical.

And yet, 90% of your photos are horizontal. Sure, I just made that statistic up, but if you’re anything like every other person with a point-and-shoot camera, you’re taught that horizontal is just about the only way to take a picture.

If you’re only shooting horizontally, you’re missing half the great photos you should be taking. Shooting vertically gives you a whole different perspective on things. It forces you to think creatively by not putting every single part that landscape in the shot. It challenges you to crop faces when taking a picture of a person. All you need to do is turn your camera and watch the magic unfold.

Take two photos of every person.

If I’m taking a portrait, I’m sure to tell my subject I’m going to do two shots – one vertical and one horizontal.

Get crazy with the headroom.

This is one of my favourite tricks – add a whole bunch of headroom overtop of your subject. It’s great when shooting in gyms or at awards ceremonies because you often have a great big curtained backdrop to work with.

Resist the urge to go horizontal.

Cameras are built to make you think about taking every picture horizontally. Challenge yourself. Try shooting every picture with a vertical look – even the ones of horizontal things. You’ll surprise yourself and your photos will look memorable.

Daily examples + conversation on Facebook.

Like “Frame One Photo” on Facebook for examples of the week’s theme, inspirational images, contests and more.

Bonus tips on Twitter.

Follow @frameonephoto on Twitter for weekly tips and links to nifty photos.