The problem with the world is that it's just too wonderful. There's so much to see, so much to experience, so much to catch your eye and photograph. But your camera can't capture all of it, so how do you decide what to include?
The answer, perhaps, is that you can't go wrong if you simplify what you are seeing. Instead of using a wide-angle lens to fit everything in, go telephoto (or get closer) and cut most of the scene out. Concentrate on the shapes, shadows and lines that are drawing your eye and include only them.
Don't crop too harshly in-camera. If you've included a little too much it's much easier to take a little out in post processing rather than try and add anything back in.
You might find it easier if you start wide, then work your way in, taking closer and closer photos in stages, but I bet the ones you choose as your favourites with be the simplest ones.
Honestly, this photography business can get a little too serious sometimes. When we're concentrating on composition, depth of field and how our photograph will finally look, we lose track of why we picked up a camera in the first place - to take some pictures and have some fun.
I've been working on a piece about the philosophy behind taking photographs, nothing too deep, just snippets of things I've learnt that can be applied everyday in what we do. I was happily plowing through the usual stuff - "Get Closer", "The Decisive Moment", etc., when I wrote this:
"The Rule of Thirds helps us to avoid taking snapshots."
But as you know, there are no rules to photography or art. Everything's in the eye of the beholder. You see something that makes you laugh, you want to remember, or it simply catches your eye - and you shoot it. You shoot it because it feels great to take photographs and to save the moment for posterity, and:
"Snapshots often contain our best memories."
Look through your photos. Pick out the ones that touch you emotionally. They'll probably be snapshots. Photographs taken on the spur of the moment. Your subconscious may have impressed some sort of composition onto the scene, but chances are the technicalities will be way off. You like the photo's because they mean something to you, and if you're lucky, they'll mean things to other people too.
Relax, smile, point your camera at the things and people you love, and take a snapshot!
Gumtree - a great place for bargains if you persevere checking it every day. I picked up this Canon EF 100-300mm f/5.6 Zoom lens for £40, and it has turned out to be a bit of a bargain.
My everyday zoom is the most excellent Canon EF-S 55-250 IS, which is ultra sharp and has that ever so useful IS for hand holding at lower shutter speeds. It is however, an EF-S lens, which means that it is incompatible with most 2x Teleconverters like the Jessops one I picked up from the car-boot sale last year for a fiver.
The old push-pull 100-300 is an EF lens, so it is compatible with my Jessops teleconverter, so with it I can push out to 600mm, or if you take into account the crop factor on my 350d, an amazing 900mm.
There are of course, compromises, and with the EF 100-300 f/5.6 they lay mainly around its' slow f/5.6 maximum (although constant) aperture, which keeps shutter speed down in lower light situations, which can lead to blurred photographs.
The answer could be to put your camera on a tripod, which is fine for static subjects but no good for moving ones, or if you've got a newer camera, wack that ISO up to get the shutter speed fast enough to eliminate camera shake and subject blur. The most practical solution might be to recognise how to get the best out of the lens, stop it down to f/8, and then use a tripod for fixed subjects, or only shoot moving ones on Sunny days!
Using an extender poses more problems with light. A 2x Extender cuts out two stops of light, which means it turns the lens into the equivalent of f/11, or f/16 if we've stopped it down to increase sharpness. To put it another way, if the shutter speed was at 1/500th without the extender, it'll be 1/125th with the extender, enough of a reduction to introduce an awful lot of camera shake and subject blur. The final problem with using an extender on this lens is that you loose auto-focus, so it's back to squinting through that view-finder and twisting the barrel in the old-fashioned way.
Don't let this put you off though, because as you can see from the samples below, which are all hand-held, you can get good results, and I'm sure with practice I'll get even better images.
Known for their even light, contemporary look, and slight "halo" effect, pro flash-type ring lights are prohibitively expensive, so the LED, lens-mounted lights that can be seen on eBay look appealing, but as you can see from the above video they do have their limitations.
The main problem is that although they are bright, and this 48 LED light looks bright, they are no where near as bright as a true flash. This means that for macro work you'll still have to use a Tripod, and for Portraits a fast lens and a close subject will be the order of the day.
Now, if you've got a newer dSLR that performs will at high ISO's, say 1600 and higher, you may well find a LED ring light a more useful tool - your shutter speed will increase, so you can shoot hand-held and at further distances from your subject, but until I get a replacement for my decidedly noisy Canon 350d / Rebel XT, I'll just be using my 48 LED Ring Light for macro tripod work.
If you're in the UK, download the Gumtree Android App on your Android or IOS device and get into the habit of checking the photo gear sections - accessories, cameras and film cameras, and you'll definitely get a bargain sooner rather than later.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 10:43PM 
