Improve Photography

by Dustin Olsen   Need more blur? Go to: Filter > Blur > BINGO! Same with sharpening! But before we “Go to:” anywhere in Photoshop – we need to nail it the camera, first! Simple things such as adding blur or increasing the sharpness are things we can do before making it to Photoshop. We [...]

So you have an artistic eye.  You see the world in ways that are unique, interesting, and different.  You want to share this world view through your photography… but one of the greatest frustrations new photographers encounter is that when they get back to their computer and pull images off the camera, the results are [...]

Exposure is the most basic element of photography If you want to be a photographer, you absolutely must learn how to control the exposure of a picture.  It will take a minute, but this page has everything you need to know.  Click on the different camera settings on the interactive exposure tool above to practice [...]

Two weeks ago (I know, I’m slow…) on the Improve Photography Facebook fan page, I asked our community what photography tips they wish they would have learned sooner.  I was looking for lessons that many photographers procrastinate learning and it ends up keeping them back from progressing as photographers. Over 96 photographers commented on that [...]

Every time I go to my nephews’ soccer games and see all the parents with their cameras on “green mode”, or attend a sporting event and see spectators using their flash from a quarter mile away, it makes me grit my teeth.  It’s all I can do to stop from walking up to them and [...]

Photographers these days spend so much time on the Internet learning good things about photography that they never make the time to do the things that would be really great for their photography.  I’ve compiled a list of 21 things in this article that you can do today that would completely change your photography forever. If you [...]

Introduction My inbox is filled each morning with questions from readers asking various photography questions.  I’m glad to get the questions because it helps me to think of what I should write about for the daily photography tip.  You would be shocked to see how many of the questions are about sharpness and how to [...]

One of the most significant benefits to digital cameras is the LCD screen, which shows you your picture immediately after it was taken.  Unfortunately, the LCD also causes severe problems for photographers.  In this post, I’ll explain a few methods for determining if your exposure is correct by looking at the LCD of the camera. [...]

When I teach my weekly beginning photography class, I usually teach them something that I don’t believe in.  I teach it anyway since it makes things simpler for learning the fundamentals and I figure they will learn to improve their technique when they have more experience. The mistake that I teach is this:   “If [...]

Daily readers of this site already know how I feel about sharpness.   Sharpness is vital to professional photographers who make large prints, but beginners probably will not notice much of a difference between a razor-sharp photo that they view on a computer screen compared to a fairly-sharp photo that they view on a computer [...]