Tips & Tricks
by Alan Martin

Photography Tips

• Always change lenses with the camera off, down, and away from wind.
• Format your memory cards before you use them. To ensure no data loss, it is always a good practice to totally reformat your card after each download to your computer.
• Keep sand far away from your camera. Even a small amount of sand can ruin a camera lens.
• Check your sensor for dust by shooting f/22 against a bright area (e.g. the sky or a window) at a slow shutter speed.
• Always shoot in color even if you want black and white. You can convert the image into black and white later and you will have an image with a higher resolution.
• Use the centre point of focus and AF-S(Nikon) or One shot drive mode(Canon) to lock and hold the focus; it's very fast and accurate.
• Daylight fill flash can really improve a foreground.

15 Safety Tips

1. Use a UV filter to protect all your lenses. Remember, it is always cheaper to replace a filter than a scratched lens.
2. Keep a supply of plastic bags (rain covers) with you. Better yet, invest in a professional rain cover (inexpensive but invaluable).
3. Always use lens cleaning cloths and lens cleaning pens (avoid liquid cleaners). Liquids can easily leak in your bag, damaging equipment.
4. Avoid dangling straps off a table. It is easy to pull the camera off the table.
5. Make sure you always zip up your bag when not using it. It is easy to pick up the back while it is unzipped resulting in equipment falling out (especially true for backpacks).
6. Be very careful around liquids. Keep water, coffee, and other drinks on the floor or on a different surface entirely from your expensive equipment.
7. Buy a professional sensor cleaning kit to clean dust and dirt from your camera's image sensor. Check your sensor's cleanliness regularly and avoid annoying dust retouching in Photoshop (a giant time waster).
8. Using old messy camera bags when traveling so as to not attract attention to your gear.
9. Take the time to always pack your bag properly and check to see that no sharp edges are exposed that could scratch equipment. Avoid any liquids in or around your bag while your gear is in transit.
10. Backup your digital memory cards after every photo-shoot. Use a laptop or a hand held backup device. Lost images mean time wasted. Some images can never be reshot.
11. Only buy high quality, fast, and professional memory cards. It is worth the extra investment and significantly improves the reliability of your photography.
12. Always change lenses with the camera off, away from wind, and always leave your camera open and exposed for as little time as possible.
13. Format your memory cards before and after using them. To reduce the chance of lost images.
14. Keep sand far away from your camera. Even a small amount of sand can ruin a camera lens.
15. Backup your images after loading them into your computer. I recommend the most important images get burned and store in a safely deposit box.

The Photographic Process

It all begins by either actively making the photo, pre-visualizing it, changing an existing scene or capturing a moment and taking a picture of what you see.

The passive approach to picture taking has a lot of room for creative freedom through adjustments to focal length, depth of field, angle of view etc.

When I see something that catches my eye. I try to decide exactly what it is I like and concentrate on bringing out those qualities in the best way possible. This is the creative photographic process in action.

The subject of the photograph helps determine the lenses, and composition. Landscape and scenery usually lend well to wide-angle lenses. Portraiture is best in the 100mm range. Wildlife is difficult to do with out a telephoto.

Metering the light will allow you to refine the lighting, mood, and look you want. Beyond just getting the light right we have to think how those aperture and shutter speed setting will affect our photos.

During the compositional process, a photographer will shoot, recompose and reshoot. Effective composition takes concentration and continuous scanning of the right, left, top, and bottom of the viewfinder. The end goal is to make sure nothing needs cropping, or to be removed, or added later. Wherever possible a photographer should always try to get the composition precisely right in the camera. Photoshop should really be used to make good photos great not repair poorly shot images.

We are usually trying to steer the "viewer's eye" with our composition and focus. Remember that the eye goes to the brightest and sharpest part of an image first. Our job as photographers is to get the brightest, sharpest part of the photo to fall where we want it.

I feel my most basic, yet, challenging task as a photographer is to try to get perfection between the four walls of the frame.

Considering all the things that can make you dislike a photo, this is no easy task. One good tip is, the more distractions there are, the more telephoto you should shoot. Wider angle lenses are great for beautiful scenery but they include so much of what's around that it is easy to catch signs, garbage, or other things that take the focus away from your subject. Also telephoto lenses naturally tend to blur the background more, therefore softening an otherwise busy background.

When exploring a subject photographically I feel the main simple question that keeps coming up is "what do I like, what don't I like?" Through angle of view, depth of field, lighting and blocking we can often find a way to keep what you like and loose what you don't.

As I see it, as photographers, sometimes we are searching for a photo and then taking it, e.g. a landscape. Other times we are thinking of an idea, creating it, and then capturing it, i.e. still life.

Regardless of what type of photographer you are, you usually have the ability to add something or to make the photograph a little better. It may be just a quick swivel to avoid a distracting background, or searching for an unusual angle but just by asking yourself, "what can I do to make this better". You will have improved your photograph.