Sharpening is one of those terms that often makes photography purists shiver. After all, if a camera and the lens are doing their job properly, the picture should naturally be sharp and require no further processing, right?

Well, yes and no. Ideally this would always be the case. In a perfect digital world, the picture would be perfectly sharp, perfectly exposed, and the color levels would all be perfectly recorded by your camera.

Sadly, the world of the digital photographer is often times less than perfect. » MORE

If you’re a photographer and you follow the trends and fads of the business, you’re likely aware of the term HDR or High Dynamic Range photography. It’s sweeping the internet, and everyone wants to know how to do it. Why?

HDR photography creates a very surreal effect, where every part of the image is “properly” exposed and well defined. I think of it as hyper-realism, because a properly done HDR image (when done properly) is one that best reflects what I see with my eyes.

Technically, this is done by combining multiple versions of the same image, all of which have been exposed slightly differently. It’s easy to push the images too far, however, and ruin the effect - but if you’re good, you can create simply stunning photographs. » MORE

A picture is worth a thousand words, but even with such a verbose image, capturing the feeling of motion and freezing it in time is still tricky.

One of the best ways to do that is through the use of panning - by blurring out the background while keeping the moving subject in the foreground in focus. You’ve likely seen the technique in pictures a hundred times, but here’s how you do it. The first thing you need to realize is that this technique requires practice. You’ll find that about 1 in 10 pictures comes out looking right. This success ratio will improve over time, but it’s really hit or miss a lot of the time.

Set your camera to continuous shooting mode. If you’ve got an older or less expensive camera you’ll end up shooting two or three frames a second. With a higher end camera, you can shoot more than eight or ten frames per second. The idea is to shoot lots. The more you do, the better your chances of getting that 1 in 10 shot. » MORE

Depth of Field (DOF) refers to the distance between the farthest and nearest points which are in focus. It can also be identified as the zone of acceptable sharpness in front of and behind the subject. In the picture of Nemo, above, you’ll notice that in the left hand shot he’s totally in focus, from gills to tail fin. In the right hand shot, his tail fin is blurry.

When you take a picture, there are several factors which can control or impact your depth of field. Less depth of field is called “small” or “narrow” or “shallow”. Having great depth of field is called a “wide” or “large” depth of field.

There are lots of reasons why you may want to control the depth of field, and make it narrower or wider. Most of these are because of artistic decisions, when you want to force attention to one part of the picture, or when you want to obscure another. » MORE

A common misconception among photographers when shooting outdoors is that you’ll want a nice sunny, clear day to take pictures. If it’s not beautiful weather outside, you won’t get beautiful looking shots, right?

In fact, I find the opposite to be true, and you will too, once you try it out.

When you’re shooting outdoors in bright, sunny conditions, you’ll find it’s hard to control the lighting. Sunlight is harsh, and will create harsh shadows on your subject, not to mention a tough situation to balance out. There aren’t too many light sources which are brighter than direct sunlight. » MORE

I’m always looking for new and interesting ways to light a subject, and one of the best places to pick up inspiration when it comes to lighting with strobes is from Strobist blogger David Hobby. Apparently, DIYPhotography thinks so too, and they’ve built a cool new tool for our strobes to play in. » MORE

Memory cards are cheap these days. Well… the super fast ones or super big ones aren’t so cheap, but generally speaking the price of cards has dropped so much that you shouldn’t have much reason to worry about how many pictures you can fit onto a card.

 Still, people like to delete pictures they think they won’t like using their camera. There are a few good reasons why you likely should avoid doing that - not least of which is the time it takes to weed through good and bad pictures.

Here are three reasons you should stick with what you’ve got until you have time to sort through them on your computer. » MORE

Posing a model is a tough thing for some photographers to grasp. A lot of it is technical, of course - and you’ll find that certain angles and certain poses work well a great deal of the time. The trick behind getting the great shots, however, lies in your ability to communicate and work with your model(s). A lot of it has to do with the kind of rapport you can build with them.

This is tied in to your charisma as a photographer (and as a human being), and is something that can’t really be taught, but simply knowing that your banter accounts for a better working environment can dramatically increase your chances at producing the sorts of shots you’re looking for. » MORE