In this day and age of digital cameras, you’ve probably heard or thought that all you have to do is push the button and great pictures magically appear. Not so fast.The fact of the matter is, you can have the best digital camera, but if you have no clue in what you are doing, you are gonna take horrible shots.
I would love to give you some good tips to help you improve your photography skills. These tips are coming from years of experience as a San Diego wedding photographer.These tips are all about the lighting and they will some of biggest reasons for you success in taking photographs.
First great tip in regards to lighting. Now if you are taking shots outdoors during the day, natural sunlight provides some of the best lighting possible. Now you are probably thinking, “that’s easy, when you are a San Diego photographer since it is always shiny there”, when in actuality really bright sunlight can cast harsh shadows.Or it will wash out the face details while the sun is overhead.
Overall, most of the shots you are going to want to take with the sun behind you.This eliminates any harsh shawows from effecting your shot from the sun. But there will be some instances when you want to try different angles when you are trying to get some shadows into the shots.
Now that we have addressed the shots during the day, what about those night shots?
The key to taking photos at night is turning off your flash.Of course if it is absolutely dark with no light you wil need it, but for times when there is some lighting, use the lighting around you, but make sure the shutter speeds are slow enough to let light in.Also, stay steady when you are taking your photograph or you will cause the picture to blur.Applying these couple of techniques will make a dramatic difference for those nights shots you take.
The third and final tip with using lighting to capture great photos is the golden hour.There is this time that photographers like to call the golden hour or magic hour, and that is sunrise and sunset.
During these times of the day you will capture great shots that allow you to capture more warmer and inviting colors. You will be able to capture that golden lighting you won’t catch any other time of day.
There you go.Probably the biggest tip in taking beautiful photos is to make use of the natural lighting around you. Knowing what techniques to use for different parts of the day, or just scheduling a photo shoots to capture those times of day will help you become an excellent photographer.