The art of portraying people with your camera is not simple, a good portrait has to balance several things: originality, good composition, quality picture,… It’s hard to capture the personality of your model, which I think the 20 photos in this collection did. Photo by Patrick Shaw. Photo by Miss Lulu & The Teaspoon Shortage.

One technique that many photographers use to add a ‘wow factor’ to their images is to shoot with a shallow depth of field. In doing so they isolate part of the shot which is nicely in focus while throwing elements in the background (and sometimes the foreground) out of focus and into a lovely blur. Here are a few shots that use the technique of shallow depth of field. Image by purplemattfish

Have you ever met a Lego enthusiast? They can be a lot of fun to talk to and will open up a whole world (or perhaps ‘culture’ is a better word) for you around the little colorful bricks that many of us stop playing with as kids. Many Lego lovers are also keen photographers who love to document their work, fun, humor and creativity. Here’s just a quick sample of some of the hundreds of thousands of Lego Photos on Flickr. Image by kennymatic

Canon has a Virtual Lens Plant in which you can see how lenses are manufactured. It’s a fascinating documentary video, and worth watching if you have any interest in camera equipment. Image © Canon, Inc.

Nearly every survey I’ve seen published in a photography magazine that asks readers their favourite subject has the same winner – landscapes. Why is this? I suspect it’s because landscape photography is seen as a relatively easy subject. Most people live within, or relatively close to, a landscape of some sort, and I’m sure that most photographers enjoy capturing the natural beauty around them. Today we’ll be exploring the idea of landscape photography in a new direction – fine art, black and white images. Along with explaining the reason and thinking behind this technique, I’ll offer a few tips to get started.  

You’ve been taking pictures on your point-and-shoot camera and your cell phone for years, and it’s been all well and good, but you want more. You know there’s a whole world of photographic choices and possibilities that pocket cameras and multipurpose devices can’t match. So you pick up a digital SLR and get ready to dive into the world of serious photography.     Now you have to deal with the lens question. If you’re buying an entry-level digital SLR like a Canon Rebel T2i or a Nikon D5000, then you’re probably getting a “kit” consisting of the camera body and an 18-55mm, f/3.5-5.6 lens. While it’ll certainly let you take pictures and your results will look better than anything you’ve done with a point-and-shoot, that kit lens is inferior to almost any after-market lens you could pick up. If you’re serious about getting into photography, you’ll want to pick up at least one decent lens on top of your new SLR kit....

Several weeks ago I published the first post on what I’ve learned about food photography. It was so well received that I decided to continue with this series of posts. That first post was about some of the basic features most modern digital cameras (point and shoot included) have. I also mentioned that the single most important thing to always consider when taking pictures of your food (and in other kind of photography, too) was the lighting. In this post I will try to explain how those two things come together, your camera’s features and lighting. But as I’ve always said, the best way to understand your camera and take better pictures is by experimenting as much as you can. For this little exercise I am going to use these beautiful guys, Mr and Ms Tomato and Mr and Ms Tomatillos. As in the last post, the only editing the following pictures went trough was compresion and resizing. You can see al the technical information of these pictures on their flickr pages.

Photoshop actions can be a big time saver, especially when you’re trying to add a specific effect to a photo and you’re not sure how to do it. Thanks to talented and generous Photoshop users, we can simply click a button and our photography can take on a whole new look. For this post we’ve rounded up over 100 Photoshop actions for enhancing your photos. In this collection you’ll notice a wide variety of actions, from vintage effects to amazing color alterations. Above image by Sid Black. Nothing but Memories (10 Actions) Retro Color Action Pink Action

HDR or High Dynamic Range imaging (also HRDI) is a technique that allows a greater dynamic and wide range of luminances between light (direct sunlight) and dark areas (shadows) of a scene more than normal digital imaging can produce. It is also the process of taking several exposures consisting of a normal, under-exposed and over-exposed shots, and merging them together into one composite HDR image retaining all interesting details from all three exposures. If you really want to delve and learn more about HDR, here’s a good technical read about it, FAQ – HDR images for photography from hdrsoft.com. I have been fascinated lately on how beautiful these HDR images are. So I took  time to gather some of the best HDR tutorials around to learn more about the techniques used in this interesting photo artistry. 1. Merging HDR in Photoshop CS3 Tutorial from Photoshopcafe.com This tutorial will teach you how to shoot, merge and tone-map photos to extend the dynamic range and produce those...

An action or set of actions are series of tasks that you can play back on a single file or a batch of files – tool actions, menu commands, palette options, and so on. For example, you can create an action that changes the size of an image, change its resolution, applies a filter effect, and then save the file in your desired format. Save that action and simpy play it to apply. Photoshop actions are absolutely great time-saving tools for designers and photographers. Photoshop and Illustrator each have their own predefined actions installed that will help you perform common tasks. You can already use these actions as is, customize them, or create your own new actions. You can record, edit, customize, and batch-process actions, and you can manage groups of actions by working with action sets. If you don’t want to worry yourself creating your own actions, you can take advantage of the many that are freely available from the web. Today, let me make it easier for you if you’re particularly...