Our eyes are always going to be directed to the sharpest part of a photograph first. I am not sure why things work this way biologically, but it is a statement of fact. You simply have to take this into consideration when you shoot.

Proper focusing is especially important when you are taking photos of people. The subject's eyes should always be in pinpoint focus. Granted, there are times when you choose not to focus on the subject's eyes to direct the viewer's attention to another part of the photo and that's perfectly fine. In most cases, however, the subject is going to be the most essential part of the photo and thus it is vital that his or her eyes are tack sharp. If they are not, the area that is sharp will direct the viewer's attention away from the real subject.

Take a look at the photo below.

Clearly, the bride is meant to be the subject of this photo. The bad focus, however, means that the bride is secondary to the flowers on the wallpaper. Again, this might be a desired effect in some cases but in this case, it just does not work.

Here the bride's eyes are in focus and this directs our attention to her. There are a lot of other shapes in this photo that could be distracting but because they are not in focus, our eyes do not give them much visual weight.

So remember, eyes on the prizes (?) - the eyes.

Good lighting is essential for capturing a great photograph. However, there are bound to be times when the available light is just not ideal for the scene you want to capture. The auto white balance feature on most digital cameras nowadays tend to do a good job with difficult light conditions, but there are still situations in which the white balance feature performs poorly. Fluorescent light, for example, is one such situation.

There are also times when there is inadequate time to change the white balance setting on the camera to get the color you want. (This is why shooting in RAW is always the best option - but more on that in a later post.) What results is usually a photo with strange color tones. A white plate might look pale yellow for example.

This short Photoshop tutorial which will show you how to quickly correct the color on your photos so they look better. Let's have a look at the photo below:

The photo is dominated by orange hues, which gives the image a very amateur look. Furthermore, the cake is supposed to be the subject in the photo but all the colors blend into each other which means the subject does not stand out enough from the background. This is not what we want, so let's fix this.

Click to enlarge.

1) Duplicate the background layer by right clicking the background layer and pressing the "Duplicate Layer" option. Alternatively, click on the background layer and press Ctrl + J (or Command + J on Macs).

Click to enlarge.

2) Bring up the Curves menu by going to "Image, Adjustments, Curves" in the top menu bar in Photoshop. Alternatively, hit Ctrl + M (or Command + M on Macs). Click on the black eyedropper button in the Curves dialogue box and click on an area that is supposed to be black in the photo. I selected the area under the cake.

3) Repeat the same step with the white eyedropper. I selected the whitest part of the base of a ribbon on the second tier of the cake. Once you have selected both your white and black eyedropper samples, hit the "OK" button in the Curves dialogue box.



You should now have an image that looks a lot more natural. The great part about Curves is that you can always bring up the dialogue box again and repeat the whole process if you are not satisfied with the initial results. Also be sure to save the photo as a new file when you are done. It is always a good idea to keep a copy of the original file around.

What is a photograph? Essentially, it is just a split-second recording of the light within a scene. It is vital, therefore, that you know how to control the amount of light entering your camera. There are basically three things you can adjust to fix the amount of light being captured: aperture, shutter speed and ISO.



ISO - This is probably one function that everyone uses on their cameras. Everybody knows that they have to turn up the ISO in low-light conditions to allow them to take a decently exposed photo. But what exactly does turning up the ISO do?

Every digital camera has a sensor chip that detects light. Once light is detected, an electronic signal is sent to the processor. This is where you get an image from. Increasing the ISO setting increases the sensitivity of each individual light receptor. At high ISOs, a signal can be generated even if there is only a faint light shining on the chip, thus you can capture images even in low-light situations.

However, increasing light sensitivity decreases resolution. Anyone who has studied the photo-receptors in the eye knows this because the same principle applies for rods and cones. This is why it is always best to use the lowest ISO setting; high ISOs tend to create grainy images because the camera has to "guess" what colors to fill the empty pixels in with.



Shutter speed - This is a pretty easy concept to understand. Slow shutter speeds allow more light in, fast shutter speeds allow less light in. The only confusing part is that on dSLR cameras, the higher numbers are actually the faster shutter speeds. But you have to remember that the numbers (80, 160, 320 for example) are really fraction of seconds (1/80, 1/160, 1/320 respectively).

Use fast shutter speeds for action snapshots and slow shutter speeds for capturing movement. There is a lot of room in between for creative exploration. One last note on shutter speeds - unless you have really stable hands or you are using a tripod, you do not want to shoot at any speed lower than 1/100th of a second (i.e. 100 on a dSLR) if you are looking for a sharp image.



Aperture - Too many people get confused about apertures. They really are not hard to comprehend once you get a grasp what is going on. An aperture is the opening in the iris of the camera. They are measured by what are called f-stops.

Smaller f-stops let less light in but produce sharper images - more of the photo is in focus. Bigger f-stops let more light in but produce "blurrier" images - less of the photo is in focus. As with shutter speeds, all f-stop values are really fractions. This is essential to remember because cameras only give you numbers and not fractions- 2.8 and 16 on a camera is really 1/2.8 and 1/16.

This concept has left a lot of beginner photographers disorientated. The smallest aperture being the biggest number on a camera screen always throws people off. But just remember we are always dealing with fractions and you should be all set.



So there you have it then. The very basics of photo taking in a nutshell.
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