Best Photography Tips For Bloggers and Website Owners
is close to my heart. I shared some photography tips in the past, so if you are interested in a few other techniques you’ll want to check that out…
Before we get into the nitty gritty of showing you how I set up for these shots, I thought that I’d toss in a couple of my pretty pictures that I captured in shooting for this post. If you are indeed a blogger, a website owner or conduct any sort of business on-line those pretty shots or “money shots” are so important!
I had a successful e-commerce business for a number of years and I owe a good amount of that success to the fact that I learned how to style and shoot decent photos. It’s always a learning process, continuously! DSLR cameras keep advancing and I’ve been able to move up the camera food change over the years, so I try and improve every day. Practice, practice and then practice some more!
Timers…I have one around here someplace (actually I have a couple…but always lose them!). Today is one of those days that I couldn’t quickly find them, so I decided to show you that you might not need one if your camera has a self-timer mode available. Most do, and here is the back of my Canon shown in LIVE VIEW MODE to show how that looks…
I shoot in RAW and use BACK BUTTON FOCUS…another post for another day if you’d like to know more. It’s important to make all of your adjustments before you focus and THEN press the shutter release to start the 2 second timing. You DON’T need to shoot in Raw or use BBF and can use AUTO or another setting of your choice and still use the timer function. Make sense?
If you are learning to shoot in manual, play around with your focal point selection (among other things). In this shot I have the aperture set to 2.8 to let in maximum light and create background bokeh, and I’ve set my focal point on the flowers…
Although I shoot in manual I don’t set my lens to manual focus because I wear glasses and just can’t get it as crisp as I’d like since my vision is compromised that way. As long as all of the settings are correct it works well…
If you have your camera on your tripod it doesn’t mean that you should set it and forget it…so move it around, raise it up and down and look for different angles.
In the top photo I’m not only closer to the trophy cup, but I allowed some of the light from the French door behind to get into the shot and create a lighter photo. I tend to purposefully overexpose my photos because it’s become my signature style, but you don’t need to do that if it’s not your thing…
I love natural light photography and although I do have some studio lighting and an external flash, I don’t use them a whole lot. THIS is the lighting kit that I do use when necessary and it’s very affordable…A book that can make you much more of a photo taking rock star in understanding that all important idea of light is THIS ONE. I can’t recommend it highly enough and for $16 it’s well worthwhile!
If you enjoyed this post, here are a couple of other photography articles: Photography For Bloggers & Makers I Must Have Photography Gear