Photo Tips

13/05/2013 In Competition, Photo Tips, Venture Blog By sengmah

Will you create the next Mona Lisa?

While photography is a relatively recent invention, photographers have much to learn from the other visual arts -- notably painting. In an article entitled "What the Mona Lisa Can Teach Us About Taking Great Portraits", Darren Rowse explains how an analysis of this enigmatic portrait...

03/04/2013 In Photo Tips, Venture Blog By sengmah

WTF-stop?!

If you're a beginner photographer, then chances are you're a bit stumped by the relationship between the aperture value and the size of the aperture. Beginners who have attended the Getting Started in DSLR Photography workshop we run will be familiar with this relationship and...

17/12/2012 In Photo Tips, Venture Blog By sengmah

Flash exposure compensation and the distance scale (!)

At a recent Flash Photography Fasttrack workshop, a participating photographer noted that when he dialed the flash exposure compensation (FEC) on his flash down to a negative value, the range shown on the distance scale on his flash increased. At this point, if you're scratching your...

06/08/2012 In Photo Tips, Venture Blog By sengmah

Daylight long exposures with ND filters

Have a look at the photos below. They're both taken at the same time and location - however, they both present the scene very differently. The first is your typical location snap - taken hand held at a fairly fast shutter speed because there's plenty of...

01/01/2012 In Photo Tips, Venture Blog By sengmah

Rejuvenating your photography – some thoughts for a New Year of image making

The end of one calendar year and the beginning of the next is always an occasion for pause and reflection. As photographers, we have a tendency to assess the development of our work over the past 12 months and to look at the direction we'd...

30/10/2011 In Photo Tips, Venture Blog By sengmah

The light meter: useful tool, or photographer’s crutch?

Some photographers argue that the light meter is an obsolete tool in this age of digital photography. After all, the histogram gives you more accurate and useful information on exposure, information you can use to adjust lighting intensity when shooting with strobes. Others argue that the...

27/04/2011 In Photo Tips, Venture Blog, Workshops By sengmah

5 tips to better DSLR photography

We've just wrapped up our last Maximising your DSLR workshop for our summer photography programme and I thought I'd share some of the key points raised in this workshop. Maximising your DSLR is a one-day photography course aimed at photographers new to shooting with a digital...

25/02/2011 In Photo Tips, Venture Blog By sengmah

Beer weather

Perth has been absolutely baking under a heatwave - we've had days on end where nighttime temps have not dropped below 20C, and daytime temps...

28/01/2011 In Photo Tips, Venture Blog By sengmah

Get over your fear of flash

At some point in our collective photographic careers, we'll need to deal with the flash. There's no avoiding it. As much as you want to claim to be a "natural light photographer" you know that there will come a time when you'll need to wrap...

31/12/2010 In Photo Tips, Venture Blog By sengmah

Five Photo Projects for the New Year

A New Year often means new resolutions. Whether we keep them or not - well, that's another story! But a New Year can also present a great opportunity to give your creative juices (and your camera) a kick start. If you're really into your photography, then...