Two of the most common ‘mistakes’ a see among beginning photographers are; shooting at the wrong time of day, and choosing a boring point of view.

The best time of day to shoot pictures is in the warm light of early morning, or late afternoon. Unfortunately, when we travel with family or non-photographer friends we can’t always control the time of day when we will find ourselves in an attractive area. We can however spend a minute or two considering the best vantage point for our images.

Most beginners and casual shooters never go farther than the “tour-bus shot”. You’ve all seen these I’m sure: those pictures that were obviously shot from a standing eye-level position, from the first spot the photographer landed on as they stepped off the “tour bus”.

Boring!

Why not try a different point of view? Drop down on your knees. Look for an elevated vantage point… a flight of stairs or a balcony, perhaps. Is there something interesting you can place in the foreground to provide more visual interest and tell the viewer something more than they would learn from the tour-bus shot?

In and around the neighbourhood of Montmartre in Paris you will find many restaurants, shops, and street vendors selling work by local artists and art reproductions of all types. My original plan on this trip was to visit this area late in the day, and then continue to shoot until well after sunset as the street lights came on. However, an unfortunately timed remark by the desk clerk in our hotel convinced my wife that she wanted no part of being out after dark in this part of Paris; so it was that I found myself in Montmartre around 11 am the next morning.

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But, despite this I was determined to come away with at least a few good images of my visit to this historic neighbourhood.

This picturesque little restaurant Le Consulat”, in Montmartre is one of the most often photographed in Paris and has even “starred” in a number of Hollywood movies. It immediately caught my eye.

The first image above is the basic tour-bus shot. It suffers from a boring point of view and a lot of distracting visual clutter.

In the second image below, figuring that the art reproductions displayed for sale at the shop on the left would make an interesting foreground for a picture, I moved over close to the display, and dropping to my knees, zoomed my lens to its widest-angle setting. This allowed me to compose an image that included the display from an unusual point of view (near street level) and show the restaurant “Le Consulat” as a background element.

The result is a stronger, more interesting image.

Images of places are always made stronger if you look for something interesting to put in the foreground. What makes this image work are the strong lines created by the rows of the art display leading your eye to the buildings in the background. To get this effect I had to get low to the sidewalk to make the display become an important part of the image. You couldn’t shoot this image standing up and shooting at eye level.

The next time you are out with your camera, spend a few extra minutes thinking about where you might find an interesting point of view!

from the Digital SnapShooter’s Guide to Great Pictures at www.ppsop.com”

I have added today a new article containing some notes on how to enhance your on camera flash from discussions on this in my workshops

When you want to “freeze” motion, it’s intuitively obvious that you would use a very short shutter speed so that a moving subject will rendered sharply in your image. Generally speaking this is desirable, since it allows you to capture that fleeting peak instant of action, assuming your reflexes and sense of timing are up to it! Sports and wildlife shooters are expected to do this all the time.

But what if you wanted to capture a feeling of motion in your still image? How would you accomplish this?

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Next to poor focus, the biggest killer of sharpness in your images is vibration.  Not just the kind of vibration that comes from hand-holding your camera at too slow a shutter speed.  That kind is more properly referred to as camera shake, and the solution there is a sturdy tripod.  But, even if you use the biggest bad-est tripod you can carry, vibration can still affect image sharpness under certain conditions.

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The ability to shape and control the light on a subject is one of the most significant technical skills that set a professional apart from an amateur photographer. Film and digital sensors do not “see” the same way that people do. Where your human visual system can instantaneously compensate for huge variations in illumination levels, film and digital sensors do not share this ability.

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