The monsoon is here and that means lot of rain and stagnant water on the roads after the rain. Riding your motorbikes or driving your cars around those puddles can be quite challenging but if you are a photographer, this is a great time to play with reflections. If you take a stroll on the road, you will see that its not long before you bump into a puddle that reflects the building or the ambience around. When I head out to take these reflection shots, I make sure I take the following precautions

1. Pack light - with water stagnant all around and fickle weather, you never when it’s going to rain once again. So it’s always advisable to pack light.

2. Forget your tripod – you do not need a tripod during the daytime. This goes back to my point one.

3. Use Av – If it’s during the daytime, set your camera to the ‘Aperture Priority’ mode.

4. Focus – Decide if you would like everything in focus or keep only a part of your frame in focus. Change the aperture value accordingly.

5. Change your perspective – Try various angles to make sure you get the most satisfying reflection. Also, try different perspectives. Start shooting from the ground level and start moving up until you get to a top-down position and observe the way the perspective changes. You will be surprised at how many different shots you end up with.

6. Polarizer is cool – If you have a polarizer, make sure you bring it along.

7. Human element – Add drama by including a heartbeat and some action into the picture.

Panning is a great technique to portray the perception of motion in a picture. Panning when done right always ends up looking great and rarely fails to wow the viewer. It’s a great way to show the motion of your subjects. With a little practice, you can easily master this seemingly difficult technique. Here are some tips to take quality panning shots.

1. Use AF Servo Focus: Autofocus Servo can continuously focus on a moving subject, a feature normally only found in digital SLRs. A great feature for wildlife and sports photographers, this can help you get a sharp focus on the subject even as the background remains blurred.

2. Slow Shutter speed is the secret: Use slow shutter speed to effectively add motion-blur to the background
3. Read the speed of your subject: The shutter speed setting in your camera depends on how fast your subject is moving. The faster the speed of your subject, the higher the shutter speed. So, tt will be faster for a car than it is for someone who is jogging. Try a couple of different shutter speeds and make sure you are able to bring motion into the background.
4. Manual focus: When you know that the subject is going to be at the same distance from you, manual focus can be used. This will avoid the camera from getting confused by the moving subject.
5. Try to use a flash: Using a flash will help freeze your subject and let the background go blurry. This tip is extremely helpful at low light conditions.
6. Follow-through the subject: Practice to follow your subject through the entire frame of the shot to get the desired panning shots (Think of the way you hit a ball with the tennis racquet)

Good things come to those who wait. Wait for the perfect lighting. Wait for the subject to move slightly to the left. Wait for the bird to fly away. Wait for the pinnacle moment. Regardless of why you are waiting, patience is paramount to getting the best shot and it’s always worth it.

Panning when done right always ends up looking great. It’s a great way to show the motion of your subjects. With a little practice, you can easily master this technique.

When shooting pictures of subjects lower to the ground, get down on your knees or even the floor to shoot your subject straight on. Take pictures of kids at eye level. Remember that taking the shot looking down on your subject is rarely the best perspective.

Don’t get frustrated when your end results don’t match your expectations. One of the great advantages of digital photography is you did not loose much by trying except some time. So embrace the uncertainty and take the shot. You will learn equally from your trials and your triumphs. I had to take at least 50 shots to get this one.

Use color to bring out the mood of the scene. Watch the colors and lighting changes as the day progresses from dawn til dusk. You’ll be amazed how fast the mood can swing. Use the picture style style in your camera to bump up the saturation and contrast to enhance the shot. 10 minutes earlier this shot would not have been so colorful.

In situations where you are very close to the subject or there is very little light, the camera may have trouble auto focusing. Help the camera and your photo by focusing the shot yourself with manual settings.

When you are getting out your camera to photograph an icon, ask yourself “How can I make this my shot unique or different”? Another version of the same shot that’s been taken by millions may not be worth the time.

In low light conditions try to take advantage of the high ISO the latest cameras have to offer. You can create dramatic pictures without using a flash. Know your limitations though and beware of noise when you bump the ISO to a higher setting than your camera can handle.

Use reflective surfaces like water, mirrors, polished surfaces, and glass around your subject to add interest. Incorporating reflections will bring a whole new look to your shot.

Use the shutter speed to your advantage and show action in your picture. If you want to show your subject in motion, slow down your shutter speed. For a clear crisp look at your subject in one moment of action, increase the shutter speed.

Cropping is photographer’s best friend. Today’s prevalence for digital photography and wide range of editing tools lets you crop pictures to correct mistakes or reframe your composition sitting at home. Be sure to keep cropping in your tool bag when taking and editing pictures.

When you think you are done taking pictures, think again. See what happens when you change your angle, lens, or distance. Surprisingly, in no time you will have whole new perspective.

One of the most important tips for any shot is to know your story. Ask yourself what you are telling your viewers with your pictures. Are you sharing a feeling, sensation, moment, or theme? If you don’t know the story when you frame the shot, neither will your viewer. Rethink about clicking that shutter until you see it.

Use your judgment when shooting horizontal or vertical for every shot. Shoot vertically when you want to enhance tall objects to emphasize height. Shoot horizontally to emphasize width. When in doubt, shoot both. You can decide later which one to keep during post processing. In this picture below an horizontal framing made more sense while a vertical shot would have completely ruined the feel.

When you are in the field, city or country, look for new ways to add nature to your composition. Scout around and look for natural elements like water, earth, or vegetation to include in the frame. This technique will enhance your picture and make it more effective. I included stagnant water in this picture to bring out reflection of the tulips and add interest.

Foreground objects add depth to the picture and brings out the subject in the background more effectively. Include objects at 1/3rd the focus to enhance your subject.

This is something you should remember in all types of photography. Emphasize your main subject. Frame your subject making it larger, taller, or in sharper focus than other objects.

There is a reason why simple is king. Cut the frills, cut the distractions, cut the clutter. The more objects you remove from the picture, the clearer and sharper your story and subject will be to the viewer.

Repetitive objects make great subjects. Whenever you see a series of similar objects repeated over and over, you have found a winning composition. Repetition never fails to impress and create a unique frame.

Symmetry makes for a simple, straightforward, balanced composition. Strive for balance by adjusting your composition to establish symmetry with lines, shapes, objects, and color. Balanced and symmetrical pictures are pleasing to the eye.

As is the case for any type of photography, think before you click the shutter button. Make sure there are no unnecessary objects that would affect your composition. If possible move those objects or try to move yourselves to see if you can avoid them from your composition by moving yourselves.

Try to include a subject that would give the viewers a scale of the scene in the frame. Use people or objects that let viewers relate size in your composition.

Single subjects like trees, barns, buildings, motorcycles almost always make for great compositions. I love pulling them into the frame. Here’s a small collection of such pictures from my archives that have a single tree in the frame.

When lines of the horizon intersect with your subject it distracts the viewer and moves the attention away from your subject. It can spoil a great composition. Take some time move your frame up or down, left or right to avoid the horizon merge. In the example picture below, I took extra care not to make the horizon meet the edge of the barn.

Try to place a living being in the picture. It shows dimension and emphasizes the scale of the frame to the viewer.

Keep your horizon level and keep it out of the center of the picture. If the sky is more interesting pull the horizon down and if the land is more interesting push the horizon up.

Used effectively, foreground framing directs the viewer’s eye right to the subject. Look for frames of different shapes and sizes. They don’t always have to be windows and fences. They could be big trees as in this example.

Train your eyes to look for lines, patterns and shapes. They give structure to your picture and help highlight the three dimensional quality of your subjects. Lines lead the viewers’ eyes into or out of the picture. Find a subject for the center of attraction and then find lines that lead to it.

Don’t always try to fill the frame. Negative space can be used to your advantage. Remember, it is just as important as the main subject.

A basic tip to remember if you want to improve your composition skills. The human eye is generally drawn to a point one third of the way from the top, bottom, right or left of any image. Keep this in mind as you work on your composition

Look for frames with the most contrast to make it all that more interesting. You can find so many frames with high contrast between the darkest and brightest regions because of the shafts of light that penetrate from above make the center areas of the canyons brighter and the sides darker.

Bring some life to the pictures by placing a human subject. Here in this picture I requested a traveler from South America dressed in contrasting colors to be photographed which made the picture interesting.

These canyons are spiritual to the Navajo tribes. They talk about the forms and shapes carved into the rock by water that flows through the canyons. One of the greatest pleasure in shooting these canyons is to see the unseen, find what is hidden, and put them in the center stage and show it in pictures. The stone in the picture below has taken a form of an eagle with open wings. To see more pictures of hidden forms visit my blogpost “Finding the hidden creatures”

There will be times when you have to wait for a group of people to move before you can take a picture. So try to use that time to come up with different compositions. Look up and try to compose shots. Also remember including people in the picture is not always a bad thing to do.

Set the camera in manual mode, shoot RAW. f11 to f18 is the sweet spot for aperture and open the shutter anywhere between 2 and 6 seconds depending on the variation in light to get the best shots. Frequently check your histogram to see how you are doing.

The canyons are generally crowded. People keep streaming in and out, in large groups. So expect people both in front and behind you. With so much going around its easy to be engrossed into the view finder. So advice would be try using the live view, as well as an articulating screen (some of the newest cameras have them). When you are ready to take the shot, you can quickly check the view finder and make sure everything is good and press the shutter. This will help you be aware of things happening around you

An important note to remember if you are shooting with a DSLR is that you should not change your lenses inside these canyons because of the amount of dust in the air. Trust me you wouldn’t want to change your lenses inside the canyons. If you have a second camera, by all means, take it along with a different lens on it. You will get a different perspective. And yes, carry a cloth to clean the lenses frequently.

Use the widest angle lens from your arsenal. You have to capture a wider area with light streaks and you absolutely need a wide angle lens to do this. If you don’t own one, try renting it. Tripod is a must and make sure you turn off image stabilization. A remote trigger would help remove the vibration caused by pressing the shutter button.

Like for any travel, do your homework and get to know the place. There are two canyons – Upper and Lower – both located in Page, AZ. Mid-day(11am-1pm) between the months of March and October is the best time to photograph these slots, with the shafts of light shining down from the openings above. There are photography tours available in both upper and lower canyons. Even though it’s a little expensive than the ordinary tour, it’s totally worth it. The guides who take you along the photography tour generally do a wonderful job helping you ‘chase’ the light. I highly recommend it.

Background makes or brakes an image. One of the important thing you have to keep an eye for before clicking your shutter is to make sure the background is not cluttered or disturbing because it will not help the subject in the foreground to stand out or blend in however you want it to be.

1.Light the BG evenly with two lights one on either side.

2.Use flag to keep the lights from spilling
2.Use a light and a reflector for subject and flag or use grids to keep the light from spilling onto the background.

3.Use a hair light for separation

4.The background lights can get gels to make them colored.

If you want to be good at photography and still want to get better at it you should have patience and have a lot of it. You should be willing to wait patiently for the right sunlight or the right movement of your subject or even the right subject to show up. You should be willing to invest hours making a perfect picture

Nature offers so many beautiful subjects that are all around us. Landscape photography is an art where you have to capture the essence of the location that you are seeing in the real world and display it to your viewers in the way you enjoyed the scene yourselves. There are some basic rules that you should follow when taking a landscape photograph and as always, in photography you should not be afraid of breaking those rules.

- When Framing the scene try to find a subject with a center of attraction or a matter of importance and try to find lines that lead to this main subject. Frame the scene so that it contains a center of interest – an object that draws the viewer’s eye into the picture.

- Once you have selected the subject of attraction try to place it off-center. This is the rule of thirds.

- Unless absolutely necessary, do not place the horizon in the center of the picture.

- Try to include a subject that would give the viewers a scale of the scenery.

- Wait for dramatic lights. Sunset and Sunrise and the time before and after it are the best lights one can get for landscape pictures.

- Unless you are knowingly lighting some objects in the foreground, please switch your flash off.

- Use tripod to make sure the pictures are sharp and if you are doing a panorama shot, you should definitely use tripods.

- Try to keep your ISO to the lowest possible value.

- As always for any type of photography, think before you click the shutter button. Make sure there are no unnecessary objects that would affect your composition. If possible move those objects and if you cannot then try to see if you can avoid them from your composition.

This is a very important tip if you want to be a successful photographer. It is the heart and soul of photography. Your picture should speak to itself and convey what you are trying to say. In a gist it should speak 100 words for you. Although this is an important tip for any kind of photographer, its a must have quality for a wedding photographer. Bring out the action, emotion and motion of your subjects and tell a story to the viewer. Look through all the pictures of famous photographers and see how they tell a story about a place. This will give you some wonderful ideas that can inspire you.

Change is something that is consistent in the world of photography. With the technology advancing leaps and bounds there is literally new equipments, techniques and ideas coming out every single day. This makes it inevitable for both amateur and pro photographers to keep updated to the latest trends. To constantly keep yourself in touch with photography updates it is very important to browse through photography news, websites and blogs. The best way to go about doing this is to create a Google home page with feeds from important blogs and websites. Select photographers whom you wish to follow and sign up to their RSS feeds or add their blogs to your Google home page. Another great option is to make an alltop page for yourself(photography.alltop.com). Keep your eyes and mind wide open and accept the changes and trends.

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OK you have booked your tickets, made all your reservations and all set to get out and travel a new place. You hope to come back with some great pictures but don’t know how? Here are some tips that can get you great travel pictures

1. Look through others pictures. Before traveling to a place, go to flickr and search for that place and see what are other photographers perspectives and favorite spots. Find out the locations and add to your maps.

2. Read more about those locations and find their significance. Knowledge gives you a whole new perspective of the place.

3. Once you are at the location, do not take the camera out. Scout for different views and angles. Try to see the usual views and the unusual views, something that was not shot before.

4. Now take the camera out and think about the different type of shots you could be making at that location. viz., HDR, Pano, Motion Blur etc.,

5. Mingle with the local crowd for some great people pictures. Pictures with a heart beat is better than one without it.

Come back with great pictures to showcase.

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Tip #1: (HDR Photography) – When do you decide if you really have to make a HDR pic? If a scene that you are looking at has a dynamic range larger than your camera can capture. Simply put if you eyes goes just gaga over to adjust to different intensity of light and dark spots then its definitely a HDR scene.

Tip #2: (HDR Photography) – Fixing Sky in HDR: Lot of times when working on pictures with Sky especially mid day sky, the sky turns out to be a strange color. This is mostly due to the Halo effect. In such cases move your Luminosity in your tone mapping towards the right or remix the tonemapped picture with your original exposure shot for the sky in Photoshop.

Tip # 3: (HDR Photography) – Where should your white and black points be in Photomatix Tone Mapping? Move these two sliders right and left making sure your bell curve in the histogram does not run over the extreme points.