1. Learn to shoot in manual mode.

I recently came across a study conducted [...]]]> I wanted put together a post that highlighted what I believe to be five key actions to taking better photographs. I asked myself, “What were my big a-ha moments while learning  how to shoot photography?”. So here they are!

1. Learn to shoot in manual mode.

I recently came across a study conducted by Sony that showed that nearly 2/3 of DSLR owners never take their cameras out of automatic mode. A lot of those consumers think that if you buy a more expensive camera, it will automatically take better pictures. Unfortunately this is not the case. If you put your DSLR camera into automatic mode you are officially the owner of a very heavy (and expensive) point-and-shoot. The great thing about a DSLR camera is that it gives you control. I shoot a lot of interiors and I love the fact that I can make the image as bright and beautiful as I want. Shooting in manual is not as complicated as you may think either, we’ve had over 1,000 members learn to shoot in manual mode over the last year. I still get excited every time I see someone post their first manual shot in our Facebook group. Here are some shots from some of our first-time manual shooters:

(Photo credit clockwise: Matt Knowlton, Susan Rodgers, Kristin Flanary, Jennifer Martinez)

Learning to shoot in manual mode is a game changer and once you know it, you will always know it. Camera companies will continue to make cameras better and better, with more megapixels and cooler features, but the basics of shooting in manual will never change. Learning how to use ISO, aperture, and shutter speed together is the first step in taking better photographs. Once you learn how to shoot in manual, you’re on your way!

2. Understanding light 

Light is everything when it comes to photography, and it can definitely make or break a shot. One of my a-ha moments was about hard light vs. soft light. Soft light is light that has been diffused or spread out in some way. Light can be diffused a number of different ways, anything from the clouds in the sky diffusing the sun, to the shade of a tree that is blocking the direct sunlight. A lot of lighting setups also come with diffusers that are often called soft boxes. Notice in the top image below how the shade from a tree has created soft light that is spread out very evenly across me, as opposed to the bottom image where the sun is hitting me directly and casting hard shadows.

I would encourage you to start noticing light all around you. Notice how it hits things, and the different hues of light at different times of day. Finding the right light can be one of the biggest challenges of getting the shots you want, but understanding a little bit about light will go a long way to taking better photographs.

3. Lenses

Just like learning to shoot in manual, using great lenses can be a real game changer. I will never forget hanging out with a group of photographers when I was just getting into photography and someone asked me what I was shooting with. I felt a little insecure because everyone there was shooting with Canon 5D’s and I replied that I only had a Canon 30D. He said, “The body doesn’t really matter- it’s all about the lenses, man!”. Turns out, lenses have more to do with the look and feel of your shot than the body of your camera does. Different lenses get different looks and are designed for different types of photography. Lenses also determine the Depth of Field of your shot through aperture, which is awesome for getting the cool blurry background called Bokeh. There are two main type of lenses- prime lenses and zoom lenses. Prime lenses are also called fixed lenses because they are fixed at one focal length only, and don’t have the ability to zoom in and out through different focal lengths like zoom lenses do. The rule of thumb with lenses is that you get what you pay for. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t get a good lens at a good price, it just means that the more expensive lenses are usually built better, and have glass lenses instead of plastic.

4. Post-processing

I don’t know one professional photographer that doesn’t do some kind of enhancement to their photographs through post processing. Josh, who is the other half of Shoot Fly Shoot, owns a film lab that scans film for professional film photographers, and even they run their scans through Lightroom to do some post processing enhancements. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve downloaded my images only to find out that they don’t look as good when I get them on the computer as I remember them looking on the back of my camera. This day and age there are a lot of options available to photographers to help enhance their images.

Everything from Photoshop to Lightroom, I bet your favorite photographer is using one if not both of these programs to enhance their images.

5. Practice, practice, practice

Believe it or not, this may be the most important step of all. One of my favorite photography quotes says “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst”. You can read every book and take every class on photography in the world (and understanding the basic principals of photography is important) but nothing will speed up your journey like shooting A LOT! I would also encourage you to go out and shoot with friends and other photographers, too. It won’t take as long as you think to knock out those first 10,000 shots!

Here’s an infographic for quick reference:

They come in so many rad colors and they have a lot of different book covers to choose [...]]]> I wanted to share a cool photography related product with you today. Artifact Uprising is a really awesome photo book company.  With the use of 100% recycled paper, they offer hardcover, softcover and Instagram friendly books.

They come in so many rad colors and they have a lot of different book covers to choose from. I recently made a book for my wife of our son.

The website has super easy templates to use if you aren’t so photoshop savvy.  If you are, you can totally make this book as custom as you want. A 50 page 8.5 x 8.5  linen book with a custom book cover is about 70$, that is about $1.25 per page.  

There is something very special about having a print or book in hand of your work. In the digital world we live in, most of our amazing work stays in digital format and hardly ever gets printed. I want to encourage you to make prints and books of your family so you can actually have something to pass down to your children other than a hard drive full of digital images.

I know my wife and I will cherish this book of our little guy for years to come!

*This is not a sponsored post and we have no affiliation with Artifact Uprising- we just really dig what they do!

We launched two more classes this past month, so we wanted to publish a post about each of them here today.

The first new class is called Photoshop Touch Up, and it’s all about re-touching photos of people in Photoshop. We worked as re-touchers for several years before we started our own [...]]]> Hello!

We launched two more classes this past month, so we wanted to publish a post about each of them here today.

The first new class is called Photoshop Touch Up, and it’s all about re-touching photos of people in Photoshop. We worked as re-touchers for several years before we started our own photography businesses, and we’ve included all of our techniques in the Touch Up class. You can see some examples of the techniques we’ll cover by moving your cursor on and off of the photos below. Everything from how to soften skin, remove blemishes, and add vignette effects…

…to how to reduce redness in eyes without making them look too white…

…to how to tame down fly away hairs, add sparkle to eyes, and whiten teeth…

…to body reshaping:

Our favorite kind of exercise- ha!

If you’re interested in checking out the class, just click on Photoshop Touch Up in the Classes tab in our menu bar.

The cost is $25 and the class is an hour and 40 minutes long. And just like all of our other Photography and Photoshop classes, our Photoshop Touch Up class video is hosted on Vimeo, so once you purchase it, you can watch it at your own pace, as many times as you’d like.

We also launched Photography 102 last month. It’s about all things that “changed the game” for us, and helped take our photography to a new level. Here’s a short overview video that shows all the different topics we cover in the class:

We also explain how to handle pesky, blown-out windows, and how to use a flash to take naturally lit-looking photos of not-so-naturally-lit places and people…

In the portrait photography section, we go on location and Josh breaks down every step of his thought process so that viewers can cut right to the chase when it comes to photographing people…

We’ll also share all of our post processing tips and tricks. Shooting in Raw, and learning how to adjust our Raw files made all the difference in the world, so we packaged up our experience in simple terms that are easy to understand and apply.

We also created 40 different Adobe Camera Raw presets that are included with the class so that if you don’t feel like moving controls to enhance your photos, you can just click one button and the preset will do it for you! Here are a few of the presets that come with the class…

To purchase the class, just click on Photography 102 in the drop down menu under our Classes tab in our menu bar, and if you have any questions- please feel free to let us know, and we’ll be glad to answer them a.s.a.p!

She had been wanting a new camera bag, so I Googled  ”cool camera bags for women“.  Unfortunately, nothing that cool really came up, and I was sort of surprised at how [...]]]> We love sharing links to cool camera-related stuff, so I thought I’d blog about a gift I gave my wife for Christmas last week.

She had been wanting a new camera bag, so I Googled  ”cool camera bags for women“.  Unfortunately, nothing that cool really came up, and I was sort of surprised at how many camera bags are geared toward men. Most of the bags I came across were black, which is cool with me, but I knew my wife wanted something a little more feminine, and that looked more like a purse.

I went to ETSY.com, where you can find all sorts of handmade goodness, and after some searching, I stumbled upon a chevron-patterned bag that looked just like what I thought my wife would want.

But wouldn’t you know it, that particular bag was sold out. (Of course it was – it’s killer!)

I really, really wanted to get her that bag though, so I took a chance and contacted the seller (Darby Mack) who was AWESOME! She wrote me back and said that she would make my wife a bag in time for Christmas.  I was blown away because I had written her on December 18th, (#procrastinator) and sure enough, the bag showed up on my doorstep on December 23rd.

My wife was super happy with the bag. It’s perfect for a DSLR and a few lenses. It also has a few pockets on the inside and outside for all your extra stuff.

Anyway- I just wanted to pass that link along in case anyone else out there was looking for a bag like I was.

Happy New Year!

*This is not a sponsored post and we have no affiliation with Darby Mack’s camera bags- we just dig ‘em!

Let’s start with focal length. Focal length refers to how much you can see through the lens. It’s important to note that the two most common lenses [...]]]> Choosing the right lens is an important part of getting the results you want. The two most important things to consider are ‘Focal Length’, and ‘Depth of Field’. 

Let’s start with focal length. Focal length refers to how much you can see through the lens. It’s important to note that the two most common lenses are zoom lenses and prime lenses. A zoom lens has the ability to zoom in or out through a range of different focal lengths. For example, my 17-40mm lens can shoot at both 17mm and 40mm and all points in-between. Whereas a prime (or fixed) lens has only one focal length and cannot zoom. If you want a closer or wider shot with a fixed lens, you have to physically move forward or backward. Let’s take a look at some of the different ranges:

As you can see, 18mm (and lower) have the widest focal lengths and are considered wide angle lenses. Wide angle lenses are great for landscapes and interiors because you can fit a lot into your shot. A 200mm lens would be considered a telephoto lens, and they’re great for zooming into shots that may be further away. To give you an idea of how a shot looks at different focal lengths, I took three shots, standing in the exact same place, with three different focal lengths.

Remember, I stayed standing in the same place when I snapped all three shots. I never backed up, or moved forward. Look how close the 50mm lens is compared to the 10mm lens. Pretty cool, huh?

Now it’s easy to see why 50mm lenses are so popular for shooting portraits. It’s a great lens for capturing closer shots with that beautiful blurry background. And speaking of beautiful blurry backgrounds, that brings us to the second part of choosing the right lens which is ‘Depth of Field’.

Depth of field refers to how much of the image is in focus, and this is accomplished through aperture. Different lenses come with different maximum aperture openings. You can read more about how it actually works here, but for now, the important thing to remember is simply this: The smaller aperture number (f/1.4) equals a more shallow depth of field which makes the blurry background.

So choosing the right lens depends greatly on how you want to final image to look. If your going for an up-close look with a blurry back ground, prime/fixed lenses with wide apertures (f/2.8 or lower) will do the trick, but if you’re shooting a bedroom or bathroom, you’re going to want a wide angle lens that will take in as much as possible without distorting. I shoot most of my interior shots with a 17-40mm lens, how about you?

Josh followed us around and shot random footage so we would always have a memory of our trip to [...]]]> I thought I’d put up a fun video our friend Joshua Pittman shot of us at Haven this past June. I can’t tell you how much fun we had meeting new friends and talking photography.

Josh followed us around and shot random footage so we would always have a memory of our trip to the A-T-L!

ShootFLYShoot from The Bearded Man Film Co. on Vimeo.

I’m working on a post about focal length that I’ll be posting in a couple of days, until then I hope you guys and gals are having a great week!

Hey there! We’re super excited to announce our Shoot Fly Shoot Affiliate Program! It’s open to anyone who would like to partner up with us and it’s free of charge. The only requirement is that you must have an active Paypal account. (That’s where we’ll send your payments each month.) To get started, simply add [...]]]>

Hey there! We’re super excited to announce our Shoot Fly Shoot Affiliate Program! It’s open to anyone who would like to partner up with us and it’s free of charge. The only requirement is that you must have an active Paypal account. (That’s where we’ll send your payments each month.) To get started, simply add one of our Shoot Fly Shoot buttons or badges to your blog (or website), and in return, we’ll send you 30% of all sales that are generated from the referrals you send our way, each and every month.

To track your sales, you can access your Affiliate Dashboard at any time by clicking on the AFFILIATE LOGIN tab in the LOGIN drop down menu in the top, right hand corner of the menu bar on our home page.

Affiliate cookies lifetime for tracking a sale is 30 days.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us at ShootFlyShoot@gmail.com.

Click HERE or on the banner below to get started!  Thanks for swinging by today, and to those who are interested in partnering up. We sure do appreciate it!

In a perfect world, I would [...]]]> A couple of weeks ago Layla and I stopped by a house in Montgomery to shoot some quick pics and chat with the owner about his wonderful home. We only had about one hour to tour his house, so I had to shoot as quickly as possible.

In a perfect world, I would set up a tripod and use a low number ISO. This allows me to make the image brighter by slowing down my shutter speed. But since I was hand holding my camera, I had to use a much higher ISO number to make the images brighter. The main point I wanted to drive home today is that using a higher ISO number is completely okay. For example, I knew the pics I shot that day would only be used online, and wouldn’t be shown any larger than 600 pixels wide. When the images are that small, you can’t really see the graininess that a high ISO causes.

Here’s a closer look…

Even at 600 pixels wide the image below still looks nice on the internet. You can start to see the graininess a little on the back walls, but it doesn’t ruin the shot by any means.

If we zoom in to 100% you can see how grainy the higher ISO has actually made the image…

…so if I were shooting this photo for print, I definitely would have had to shoot it using a tripod. Magazines require high resolution images that should be as clean as possible, but if the image is never going to be blown up or printed bigger than a 5×7 don’t panic if you need to use a higher ISO!