Don’t miss out on the everyday moments you want to capture with your little ones! Photographing infants and toddlers can be the most exhausting and stressful assignment for a professional with a limited time frame and cranky kids, but those of you with your very own portable human and a camera have no reason to miss out! Make it a point to keep your camera in a quickly accessible spot. Convenience is key!

Here are just a few simple tips to making sure you capture the moments before they’re missed. Most of these tips are for both point and shoot and SLR users. If you’re the type that’s never switched your camera’s setting from automatic, give it a try and you’ll be amazed at the great shots to be had. Here are some tips:

1. NO FLASH

Get a more professional look even if you are limited to a small point and shoot by using available light. Open up the curtains and play right next to a window or outside under open shade. Overcast days are great for this. Your shutter speed will be slower without the flash so try a higher ISO setting if your shots look a little blurry.

2. USE COLOR

Adding a little color can brighten a shot and create a fun fresh look. Try pining a colorful sheet up on the wall behind the play area. Using a colorful chair, rug, pillow, etc… look around and you’ll find something fun!

3. NAP TIME

Take advantage of nap time! Try using a dark sheet or blanket, it really helps with the contrast especially if you enjoy converting your shots to black and white. It’s also a great time to get those extreme close up detail shots of feet and hands wile they’re still. Try close ups for a fun collage or multiple photo frame.

4. ZOOM!

If you’ve a got an SLR and a decent zoom lens you can capture amazing candid shots of everyday activities. Just sit back, keep your camera in hand and click! If you’re more than 15 feet from your subject go ahead and turn the flash off.

Again, the most important part of getting the shot is not having an amazing camera, but keeping the one you have nearby.

It really got me thinking about what it takes to take a truly great photo and it’s actually very simple. Here’s the real secret:

Show people something they’ve never seen before

If you think back to a photo that really inspired you or moved you, it was probably a photo of something that you’ve never seen before. Or it was a photo of something you have seen - but captured in a really unique way that you’ve never seen before.

There are billions of photos out there of people posing in front of things, there are billions of photos out there of places and things - and they all eventually fade together - but what makes a photograph really spectacular is something that captures attention.

This is why I love HDR, tiltshift, fisheye shots, and anything else that’s just different from the norm. You don’t even have to go anywhere to take a spectactular shot - just look around wherever you are and DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

To help you get started thinking in the right direction, here are 10 ideas:

1. use shadows

2. get closeup

3. capture patterns

4. use long exposure

5. get low

6. blur it

7. use lots of empty space in your composition

8. use reflections

9. capture motion

10. get down, look up

And that’s not even scratching the surface - there are plenty more resources for taking unique, interesting, and creative photos. Now go out there and capture something truly unique.

Tilt shift lenses focus on a single part of the photo and shift (blur) the surrounding area to create an optical illusion of miniaturized scenery. Real tilt shift lenses are quite expensive, but a similar effect can be achieved by using Photoshop after you take the photo.

Tilt shift photographs create an optical illusion that makes scenes appear as if they are actually miniature models (like your uncle’s train set). The outer edges are blurred which tricks the eye into perceiving everything in the unblurred parts as miniature. There is a Flickr group dedicated to this technique. It’s a fun post processing trick - and it’s quite easy to reproduce.

Here is my (and Drew’s) Photoshop tutorial for creating fake tilt shift photos.

1. Taking the photo. An above ground shot is usually best for this type of technique. Cityscapes, crowds, streets, and similar things are perfect.
2. Open the shot in Adobe Photoshop and click onto “quick mask mode”.
   
3. Select the gradient tool.
4. Select the “cylindrical gradient reflected gradient”.
   
5. Draw vertically upwards from where you want the point of focus to be up the screen to the top of the window, and release the mouse button. A red transparent line should appear.
   
6. Go back into “Standard Mask Mode”.
   
7. In Photoshop CS2 or CS3 go to Filter > Blur > Lens Blur (Or if you have Photoshop 7.0 you can use Gaussian Blur). Then select the amount of blur you’d like. You can experiment with the radius value a bit to see what amount of blur looks best.
8. (Optional) For a more “plastic” feel you can increase the saturation and contrast in the photo.

There you have it - you should have a nice “fake tilt shift” photo. You can experiment with lots of different photographs - some are a lot better than others for “miniaturization”. Below are a few more examples. Feel free to link to your own tilt shift photos in the comments. Happy shrinking!

In the video the steps are:

Set the dial to “P” “A” (aperture priority - per Helmut’s comment)

Go to “Menu”, Settings (pencil on the left), and scroll down to #12 (BKT Set), press the dial right, Go down to AE & Flash, press the dial right, Select 2.0 Step, and press the dial right “OK”.

Now you will see a BKT setting on your top LCD panel that looks like this:

Take 3 photos (each little black bar disappears once you take them in turn). Voila - you have the photos you need for your HDR.

The 3 consecutive photos taken from the shot in the video are here:

Each one is taken with a different exposure setting - the EV Steps. Once you combine them all in HDR processing software (I use Photomatix) and tweak the settings, the resulting photo should look like this:

Maybe next time I’ll take a photo of something more exciting than some garbage cans and a driveway

I recently got the people at HDRsoft to create a Photomatix coupon code for our readers (anyone can use it) for 15% off any of the HDR software programs:

VPG15
(Update: see below - it’s now VPG8)

This coupon code will work for any of these products:

• Photomatix Pro (the versions is 2.5.1, 3.0, etc.)
• Photomatix Tone Mapping Plugin for Photoshop
• Photomatx Bundle

To get this discount applied to your order, follow these steps:

• Go to the Photomatix order page
• Click the buy button for the software version you need
• In the box where it says “Coupon Code (Optional)” put in: VPG15 (04/08 Update, the 15% coupon expired - but you can use VPG8 to still get 8% off)
• Click the recalculate button
• It will show you the special discount applied with your new price
• Complete the rest of the order form

That should do it. To give you an example: the regular price of Photomatix Pro is $99 so with this coupon code you should be able to get it for $84.15.

Once you have Photomatix installed you can go through their short tutorial (which you can see once you launch the program). It’s pretty clear and easy to follow. Once you have a chance to experiment with your own HDR photos, you might want to join the Flickr HDR group. Hope to see you there.

While Visual Photo Guide might be all about technique for the casual photographer, sometimes I find photos that I just have to share. Case in point: Antarctic underwater photos. While you and I will probably never get a chance to take photos in the Antarctic Ocean, we can still draw a lot of inspiration from these.

The following set is from Time Magazine’s series entitled “Life Beneath Antarctic Ice“. Simply stunning…

I found out these images are actually taken from a book with the same name:

One of the questions people ask me all the time is what digital camera they should get. Since new models come out all the time, it usually takes some time to research the best cameras at any point in time. So I decided to put together a list of the best and most popular digital cameras (point & shoot) for the second half of 2007 by comparing available information and data from Amazon, Flickr, eBay, Circuit City, dpreview, CNet, and more:

Canon Powershot SD850 IS Digital Camera

Price: $356.48 (Click to check current price)

This camera is a new model from the popular Canon Powershot / Digital Elph line. It’s an Amazon Bestseller (4.5/5 star rating), is one of the highest rated point-and-shoot cameras on Zdnet, dpreview, and Cnet. I’ve loved the Elph series since a friend of mine bought one in 2002 - the picture quality has always been really superior.

• 8 Megapixels
• Image stabilization
• 4x Optical Zoom
• Face detection & red eye correction
• High quality lens & 2.5″ LCD screen
• More features and reviews

See sample pictures taken with the Canon Powershot SD850 IS.

Black Sony Cybershot DSC-T100 Digital Camera

Price: $353.88 (Click to check current price)

A few years ago I bought the Sony Cybershot DSC-T1, an older model of this camera, after spending days researching the best options. It was my favorite camera for a very long time. The Cybershot T100 is the new model of the same line but is much improved. It’s slim and compact - perfect for your pocket (without making a buldge). It comes in silver, black, and red (the black version is very sleek and sexy). It’s one of the highest rated cameras at Circuit City, ZDnet, Cnet, and a bestseller on Amazon.

• 8 Megapixel
• Carl Zeiss (quality) lens with 5x Optical zoom
• Image stabilization
• 3″ LCD screen
• Quality MPG Video mode with in-movie zoom
• More features and reviews

See sample pictures taken with the Sony Cybershot DSC-T100.

So there you have it. My picks for the best two point and shoot cameras in the market today - just because I know they’re both very well rated, I’ve had personal experience with each line, and have seen the quality of the pictures taken with them. If anyone asks me what camera to get, I’ll just point them to this page (for the next few months at least). Oh, and if either of these are out of your price range and you don’t need it to be very compact or full-featured, you might want to check out the Canon Powershot A550, which is a good value at $128.94.

See the entire Amazon bestseller list.

Since the direction of my desired shots was westward-facing, having the sun at about 60 degrees above and pointing my way was producing washed out shots and giving me sun spots. After a few shots I realized my folly. Here are some examples:

If you’re planning to take some photos, make sure you time the sun correctly and avoid having sunshine directly above, or at a direct angle of your camera, especially when taking shots of things you can’t physically move.

Early mornings and late afternoons (right before the sunrise) usually provide the best lighting. For any time of day, though - make sure the sun is at your back as much as possible. In the mornings it will be at your back if you’re facing West. In the evenings it will be at your back if you’re facing East.

Here’s my crudely hand-drawn illustration - in an attempt to live up to this site’s name:

There’s just so much beauty in the world and every single one of us has the ability to capture a small part of it through our digital cameras or our drawings. Each one of us can stop time for just a split second and share that single moment with the rest of the world - and sometimes, often when we least expect it, that moment will touch a very intimate nerve within those who see it and enrich their lives spontaneously, even if just for a fleeting moment.

This is why I love photography. I look through my sister Ineta’s photos, my beautiful girlfriend Angela’s - some of them are just so amazing. And neither of them considers herself a professional, not by a long shot.

This is why I love photography. And this is why I created this site. And this is why I want to encourage everyone to take photos.

I don’t care who you are or what type of camera you use, you have the power to capture the beauty of life through a single click of a button - and remind someone, even half the world away, what a wonderful place we live in.

Since I take a lot of night shots and HDR sets (which require 3 photos from the same perspective) I need to shoot from a steady spot, but tripods are not always the easiest accessories to carry around. The nice thing about the Joby Gorillapod is that you can fold it and take it with you. When I first read the reviews about it I was skeptical about whether or not it would be able to handle the weight of a Nikon D50 SLR with a lens, but it’s able to hold it fairly well - so if you have the lighter Nikon D40 or anything about that size, you should be ok.

Last week I was able to curl the gorillpod into my cargo shorts for an evening out in St. Petersburg. It was a little bulky, but manageable. If you’re a woman (or European) and have a purse, then it’s probably even better.

You can fold the joby gorillapod into many shapes and either use it as a low-lying tripod or you can curl it around different objects such as fences. It’s not the steadiest thing around, but it does help quite a bit to get a nicely focused shot (especially if you put it on a timer). It also comes with a locking mechanism that lets you lock the head so you don’t accidentally slip the camera off.

Here are some photos I’ve taken while having my camera positioned on the Gorillapod SLR:

1. HDR on the sand, 3 shots while holding it with my hand
2. Wrapped around a balcony rail, on a timer - about 10 seconds
3. Sitting on a bar, holding it by hand for - about 5 seconds
4. Sitting on a concrete slab, holding it by hand

If you want other people’s opinions, you can read the Amazon reviews of the Gorillapods here:

• Basic Gorillapod ($25)
• SLR Gorillapod ($40)
• SLR Zoom Gorillapod ($55)