Taking Pictures

[Fran]

Hi Donna I am sure Dawn will be along soon with some tips for you. I think a lot of photo taking is more luck than management. Start with an half decent camera and you have to just be lucky half the time when you capture the moment. One of the best tricks I think is when you have your piccie use a photo editing suite to zoom in like I did with this piccie

Here is the original picture...

So you are focusing just on the subject and not all the background. Sure Dawn will be able to help. She is brill with photography!


Great piccies Smudgley!!

[Donna]

Thats a good idea Fran. Will try taking it from further back and then cropping? Or do you enlarge the bit you have cropped?

[Fran]

Originally Posted by Donna

Thats a good idea Fran. Will try taking it from further back and then cropping? Or do you enlarge the bit you have cropped?

No I don't enlarge it, I just crop. The problem I am having as you can see from the piccies above is I just can't resize to a smaller piccie without losing quality. That's something I am working on at the minute

[borderdawn]

Have just seen this Donna, will post when I get back from B&Q,
Dawn,

[Donna]

Originally Posted by borderdawn

Have just seen this Donna, will post when I get back from B&Q,
Dawn,

Thanks dawn!! Most appreciated!!

[borderdawn]

Ok I'm back!

As Fran says cropping is a good way of just framing the part of the photo you want, it really acts and enlarger. When you crop do NOT reduce the size of the pic first, crop it straight from the camera, when you crop you lose resolution, so the picture will become poorer quality. I try to fill the frame with just the subject (in animal cases) that then will make it better for printing, same as before, higher resolution without the need for cropping.

For action type shots, use the "sports" setting on your camera, I tend to use manual settings, but on compacts and some DSLR's you do have a sports setting so use this for everything moving, it increases the shutter speed and "freezes" the action. Here are a couple of examples of dogs taken on the sports setting.

If I had used a normal setting or one with a slower shutter speed, such as "scenery" the dogs would of been very blurred.

I take portrait pics for clients dogs, with these I always try to fill the frame, because I print them for the owners. I do head studies as a rule, but have done body shots aswell. I use the "portrait" setting, it gives the background a blurred look and therefore keeps the focus and attention of the camera on the subject alone. For indoor shots and flashes you do get problems, using a red eye reducer can help, but it usually releases a series of flashes which is supposed to make the pupils contract, yes it does, but by that time the Cat has its eyes shut! Try the auto setting, or if you can turn off the flash use that, or even try putting something over the flash AFTER you have focused, keeping your finger on the button, sometimes this does work. One other thing is you could try not getting the Cat to look directly into the camera. These are a few pics I have done of clients dogs, taken on the portrait setting.

I also try to have an uncluttered background, again keeps the focus on the subject. The pic of the pup was taken in someones arms, note the red jumper!

I hope that may help a bit, please ask if you want to know anything else, I am not by any stretch of the imagination an expert, but I'll help if I can.

FRAN.
I will install the software I got with the camera later today and see if I can see how to reduce pic size for you using it.
Dawn.

[Donna]

Excellent pictures Dawn. I just have the eye problem with my cats mainly. They look like x files rejects!!! Your pictures you have taken indoors - is that with a flash in daytime, or nightime, or no flash? Thinking of the big smiley picture of Wiggy recently.

[borderdawn]

The smiley pic was indoors and with the flash, but as you can see his attention it focused slightly above the camera, and he was on the cat post higher than me too, just takes the edge off the flash hitting the eye.
Dawn.

[Donna]

Will keep practicing Dawn!!

[Fran]

Originally Posted by borderdawn

FRAN.
I will install the software I got with the camera later today and see if I can see how to reduce pic size for you using it.
Dawn.

Thanks Dawn! Gorgeous piccies!!!