October 2017 – Camera Hacks, Cropping, Replace Skies, Reflectors, Sunset

Here’s some fun little things to try when you feel like experimenting.  It’s titled “10+ Genius Camera Hacks That Will Greatly Improve Your Photography Skills In Less Than 3 Minutes”.  That’s quite a claim there but I’ll admit, they are useful in the right circumstances.  I used No. 10 quite a lot while I was in Europe a few years ago. I’d consider it more of a photoshop technique than a camera hack though.  It’s written by Greta J. and you can find it on Bored Panda at: 

https://www.boredpanda.com/easy-camera-hacks-how-to-improve-photography-skills/

Go online and you’ll find a wide variety of opinions on cropping from you should never do it to all images can be improved with intelligent cropping.  Both sides have highly successful photographers as champions.  For me, it depends on what I’m shooting.  For Landscapes, I almost never crop.  There’s time to thoughtfully compose the image in camera so unless you missed something in a corner you should be happy with the capture.  For action shooting, Polo, Air Shows, Boat Races or any sport, I tend to shoot wide so I don’t chop off part of the subject out of the frame.  I can always crop down to the important parts later.  Here’s an article on Digital Photography School by Simon Ringsmuth titled Tips for Cropping your Images for Better Composition.

https://digital-photography-school.com/tips-cropping-better-composition/?utm

One of the things we’re plagued with as amateur photographers is time.  We usually go out to shoot on a weekend and if the atmospheric conditions aren’t right our pictures aren’t all they could be.  The most common problem is bald or uninteresting sky’s.  Fortunately, we have the ability to fix it.  One of my favorite photographers on the web is Serge Ramelli who has done a tutorial on PetaPixel titled “How to Do a Realistic Sky Swap in a photo Using Photoshop”.

https://petapixel.com/2017/08/31/realistic-sky-swap-photo-using-photoshop/

Our old friend Aaron Nace is back with a tutorial on Phlearn titled “6 Ways to Better Portraits With Reflectors.”  You can find it here:

https://phlearn.com/tutorial/better-portraits-reflectors/

And wrapping it up this month is an article from Picture Correct on photographing Sunsets.  We’re entering a great time of year for sunsets.  They’re coming early enough that you can capture your images and still get home to get to bed on time.  The Article is titled “How To Capture A Sunset Photo” by Kalyan Kumar.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/how-to-capture-a-sunset-photo/