Short and Sweet

1. If you are going to shoot fireworks this July 4th, start with the settings 1.6 seconds, f/16, and 100 ISO. Use a tripod and put your camera on manual exposure mode. Prefocus on building lights or street lamps at an approximate distance of the fireworks. Note that the longer the exposure time, the longer are the streaks. 2. When photographing animals, always focus on the eyes. I prefer more depth of field, but if the light is low and you don’t want to raise the ISO, the shallow DOF is ok as long as the eyes are sharp. Most importantly, keep your shutter speed fast enough to freeze any sudden movements.

3. Try desaturating the colors in your pictures. It’s a very artistic way to interpret a scene. In this shot taken at White Pocket in Arizona, I opened the hue/ saturation dialog box in Photoshop (Image > adjustments > hue/saturation) and moved the saturation slider to the left until there was just a little color left. 4. To help increase depth of field in macro work, try to make the back of the camera (i.e. the plane of the digital sensor) as parallel as possible to the plane of the subject. This is especially important in low light scenarios where depth of field is sacrificed because you need a larger lens aperture. §