There is no point shooting a lot if you never analyze what you have done. The process that should go hand-in-hand with shooting more is analyzing more. Analyze more means to bring more conscious consideration to all the images you look at, both yours and other people’s, and to setting aside the time to actually [...]

Ideas of natural talent are being overturned by a focus on practice. Practice makes perfect. Like many skills, photography requires practice, practice and more practice. Recent research is presenting a convincing case that our old ideas about some people possessing natural talent and genius are wrong. Sure, people may have a natural predisposition in certain [...]

Other people’s reviews can assist you when making a purchase decision. But once you have your gear, you need to do your own testing. Reading the manuals is only the first step of getting the most from your camera gear, you have to become familiar with how it actual works in practice. This means playing [...]

Clean images are not always what we want. So let’s dirty up your photography. If you think back to analogue photography, we often made use of very grainy film, soft focus, blur or rough forms of printing to create a particular look. There is no reason not to do the same with digital.  There are [...]

Where people are looking in your images offers you another level of control. We are very sensitive to where people are looking. Consider how disturbing it is when you are talking to someone and they look away from you. We are very keyed into people’s eyes and we can use this in our photography. One [...]

Optimal growth and development occurs when you are outside your comfort zone. The concept of a comfort zone is a useful one. Your comfort zone encompasses everything you already know, can do readily, people and places you know, and such. When we are within our comfort zone we are, as it goes, comfortable. It is [...]

Sometimes we are so overwhelmed by choice that we actually do nothing. There is a fix to this. Choice is a wonderful thing, it is the freedom we crave and so many in the world do not have. Yet choice can be a double-edged sword, especially when it comes to creativity. Whether we are a [...]

ImageMaker photography tip number 6 Photography, along with other art forms, has so-called rules: rules of composition, color theory, and so on. Rather than being called rules, they really should be called principles. Part of our growth as an artist is to know these principles. Study of composition: ideas of rhythm, mass, line, form, contrast, [...]

ImageMaker photography tip number 5 For many of us there is such a rush to new creation of images that we do not reconsider our old ones. Especially for those shooting digital, but even for film users, there is a perpetual focus on our latest images. We may do a lot of work on an [...]

ImageMaker photography tip number 4 When you shoot off-tripod, just how flexible are you? Shooting on tripod is for when you want to really work, carefully, a single position for a while. Shooting off tripod allows us huge freedom of movement, yet many of us do not make as much use of this as possible. [...]

ImageMaker photography tip number 3 Most of us do not use a tripod anywhere near as often as we should. But this oversight is easy to correct. Tripods have other benefits than just supporting the camera in very low light. They can help to make images sharper even at hand holdable shutter speeds, take some [...]

ImageMaker photography tip number 2 You cannot create photography (or any other form of art) for a fictional, ideal customer or buyer. You can only create for yourself. Now obviously if you are shooting commercial photography for a client you must please the client. That is a different situation and shooting to please the client [...]

ImageMaker photography tip number 1 Shoot what you love and what you hate. Anything you are ambivalent about, leave. Emotions are powerful and two of the strongest are love and hate. When you are passionate about something your emotions will be strong. The strong emotion you have (either way, love or hate) will eventually lead [...]