by Elizabeth, Delightfully Tacky
Photography is a big part of blogging. I know for myself that my favorite part of reading a blog is perusing the photographs-- I even do this with magazines. So it's important to make your photos reflect yourself and your content, and to have them not only tell a story, but also have them be visually interesting enough to capture your audience.
A lot of portrait and street style photographers use a very shallow depth of field. Depth of field refers to how much of your photo is in focus. If only a very small amount of your photo is in focus and the rest of it is blurry, you have a shallow depth of field. I usually set my camera to take photos with a small depth of field. For example, this photo uses a small depth of field where the berries and my hands are in focus, but my body and the background is out of focus:
If you take a look at street style photographers like Scott Schuman or Vanessa Jackman, you can see that they also tend to use a shallow depth of field so the focus is on their subject.
On the other hand, Tieka's photographs often use a less shallow depth of field. As you can see, both her and the background of the following photo are in focus:
It's really a matter of preference as to how you utilize depth of field. I really love a more shallow depth of field, but you can take great photographs with any depth of field. I think that a shallower depth of field works best for product and food photography.
Composition
A good general rule for composing photographs is to follow the rule of thirds. If you divide the viewfinder into thirds, both vertically and horizontally, you want the focal point of your photo to fall in line with the thirds. Check out this link to see a lot of good examples of how following the rule of thirds can improve the composition of your photos. While it may be hard to follow the rule of thirds all the time (especially when you take photos with a tripod & self timer), try using it when you can and see how it creates more interesting and dynamic compositions in your photos.
Lighting
I love taking photos right around evening when the sun is low in the sky. It's easy to get really pretty and romantic lighting, especially if you like some lens flare. To get a good lens flare, position yourself between the camera and the setting sun and start experimenting with how your lens reacts to the sun in different positions.
A lot of photographers swear by "the golden hour" which is right before sunset or right at sunrise. I definitely love taking my photos in the hour or two before sunset, the light is just so beautiful and gives a rich golden tone to your photos.
I find that it's really nice to take photos when it's slightly overcast. It diffuses the light so you don't have harsh shadows, which is nice when you are taking photos with natural light, not in a studio with a full lighting setup.
Self portraits
Self portraits are a great way to connect with your audience, it gives them a nice peek into your personality and your life. There are a ton of ways to take a self portraits, and the nice thing about self portraits is that they're expected to be colloquial and not so "professional." It's a way to let your readers see a more personal side of you. One way of doing this is by taking "arm's length" photos. These are photos of yourself by just holding your camera at an arm's length. You'll need a camera or lens that can accommodate this. I took these photos using a 24mm lens holding my camera at an arm's length:
Another way you can take self-portraits is by using a mirror. This is a really informal way of taking self-portraits, but it can be pretty fun!
Elsie wrote a nice guide to taking better self portraits, check it out!
Camera phone pictures
Camera phone photos are a fun way to capture snippets of life without needing to tote your real camera around with you. When I was on my cross-country road trip, I used my iPhone to capture moments on the road that would've been very difficult to capture with my large DSLR. The iPhone 3gs and 4 can also take video, which I definitely utilized!
Another nice thing about camera-phone pictures is that you can easily post them to twitter and facebook. When I had an iPhone I loved being able to instantly share fun photos with my twitter followers.
A bunch of people love using Instagram and there are tons of other photo apps out there. Elsie does a great round up of her favorite iPhone camera apps, check it out!
A nice online photo e-course is the one offered by Sarah from Arrow & Apple (who did my wedding photography)! It's only $60 and Sarah is a great photographer full of knowledge about photography. I definitely recommend checking it out!
