I’m gradually building a resource of photography hints and tips from my experience as a professional photographer since 2008. Hopefully this will be useful information, so let me know if you have topic suggestions and I’ll do my best to include them.
When to use a tripod, monopod, beanbag or other camera support
Male urban peregrine falcon - a shot like this taken at 1200mm (600mm + 2x converter) simply can't be taken without a tripod. Nikon D800E, 600mm f/4 lens, 1/400sec , f/11, ISO 1600, Manfrotto 055CXPRO4 carbon fibre tripod with Wimberley Head Tripod? Monopod? Gorillapod? Baffled? Read on! Whether or not to use a tripod is one of those questions [...]
How to Get Sharp Images When Hand-holding a Camera
Lion cub - part of a breeding and release project in Zimbabwe. This was taken with a 1/3200 sec shutter speed. f/1.4 isn't optimal for this 50mm lens, but at least the shutter speed freezes all motion. As usual with wildlife, the eyes are the most important thing to focus on, even if the rest of the image [...]
How to Photograph Birds in Flight
Male purple-crowned woodnymph hummingbird, Costa Rica. This shot required a very fast shutter speed of 1/4000 s as well as flash. It was also manually pre-focussed Photographing birds in flight is one of the most common things to want to achieve in wildlife photography, but it can be fiendishly difficult. Here I'll go through some of my tried and [...]
Should I use RAW or JPEG format?
"Windy Day' - Red squirrel. An image like this is best shot in RAW so that you can choose how to process for the highest quality. If you let your camera decide how to process into a JPEG, you've got nowhere to go afterwards. Ever since I can remember, the RAW vs JPEG debate has rumbled on. It [...]
Notes on a summer photographing swallows
It's an uplifting experience to be heralded into the office by two duelling robins, each belting out a bright song from a nearby tree, with me receiving a glorious stereo mix in the middle. It's not robins I have in mind this morning though. I've spent a good part of the summer with swallows both here in the UK [...]