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The Best Telescopes and Kits for Beginners

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Focus Camera
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The features of a good beginner telescope make it easier for a novice to become familiar with the hobby and all the majesty of the night sky, and they mean that ideal telescope kits are not nearly as expensive as you might worry. Many of the major brands such as Celestron and Meade telescopes make affordable telescopes for beginners of all ages that balance the right price point with ease of use, versatility, and durability.

Start by asking yourself how much room you need to grow as an astronomer. If you are very confident that you’ll continue the hobby, consider a model with more power and flexibility. If you aren’t sure, focus on entry-level functionality and telescope kits that cost less.

A has good beginner’s telescope a few other characteristics. A large aperture is ideal, and you don’t want the strongest magnification. Being more “zoomed in” makes it more difficult to find the objects you want to see in the sky, and beginning astronomers appreciate seeing things like galaxies, as opposed to craters on distant planets’ satellites. Weight is usually an issue, because you want to be able to move the telescope around; this also makes durability valuable.

Many beginner telescopes in the mid range have on-board computers that facilitate aiming, and many can collaborate with a smart phone. This is a great feature because it means you can get started star gazing without learning to read a star chart and understand seasonal shifts in the position of celestial bodies.

You also have to decide if you prefer a refractor, which has the typical long, skinny body and requires no maintenance, a reflector, which has a short, stout body, uses mirrors to focus the light, and typically costs less, or a hybrid.

All that being said, here are a few great beginner options.

Celestron FirstScope

celestron 1

This scope – there are actually a few different options under the same model type – costs under $100 and is great for children who want to look up into the night sky and see the moon and some other stars. With a simple telescope kit that offers interchangeable eyepieces, special filters, and a CD-ROM to help explain astronomy.

Celestron LCM 60

This affordable model boasts easy setup, a lightweight mount with computerized controls, and the ability to use NexRemote telescope control software to help you find objects in the sky. It is powerful enough to see thousands of celestial bodies and satiate the interests of a budding astronomer. Telescoping lets ensure the eyepiece can be comfortably placed for children and adults. And the eyepiece itself is easily upgradable so you can get more zoom when you’re ready for a bit more power.

Meade ETX 80

The most expensive on the list, this reflector model costs just over $300, but is one of the most versatile computerized telescopes on the market, effective for stargazing and viewing terrestrial objects. Ultra-portable, equipped with powerful optics and electronics for an exhilarating experience, and capable of seeing over 30,000 celestial bodies, this is either a great step-up telescope or a more flexible starter for astronomers who know they will need room to grow.

Getting started with astronomy is exciting for anyone who has stared up at the night sky and dreamed. And you only need an introductory telescope kit to get started learning about and loving stargazing.

Use Your Digital SLR Camera Right for Excellent Amateur Travel Photos

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Focus Camera
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Taking wonderful photos makes it easy to remember and reminisce about a trip later, and pushes you out the door to explore during the trip. You might think that filling a camera bag with the best digital SLR cameras and photography gear is one of the most important steps to ensure beautiful travel photos, but if you’re an amateur photographer, these other tips are nearly as important as any specific piece of gear.

Preparation and having the right photography gear is obviously important, but once you’re in the moment, you have to focus on technique and strategy to get the photo, not on the gear you did or didn’t buy or bring.

Shoot, Shoot Now, Shoot More.

shutter bug blog

If you stumble upon a beautiful view and a butterfly happens to alight on your child’s hand, use whatever you’re holding – your smart phone, your little point-and-shoot, or your DSLR – so you don’t miss the moment. Get comfortable snapping away quickly when once-in-a-lifetime moments present themselves. And take a lot of photos, especially of movement or action. You can take your time to practice composition and fiddle with digital SLR settings for landscape photos.

Use Your Eyes, Neck, and Feet to Find the Right Photo

Zoom lenses are terrible for amateur photographers. Instead of relying on tech to get you closer, use your feet to walk around and “zoom” manually. Shifting perspective helps you see the best version of the photo. The same goes for using your eyes to look closely and actually “see,” so you notice small details that will absolutely make a photo. And turn your head; look up and down, and crane your neck as you walk around. Life is 3D, so don’t restrict your photos to just one, 2D plane.

Compose Photos of People and Still Life Differently, But Use the Rule of Thirds

Whether you’re taking a photo of your children looking at fish in an aquarium or beautiful ruins in the jungle, don’t forget this composition basic. However, people and animals look best with different composition choices than a bowl or a flower. Typically, people benefit from the rules of thirds and need lead space. Put your aquarium-loving kids on the thirds line that creates space in front of their faces, not behind them. With ruins or other still objects, it’s more up to your discretion based on other elements and what you want to emphasize.

Follow Nature’s Cues

Follow the natural lines and shapes life presents. Mountains, buildings, and trees offer up lead lines and clear perspective points. Bodies of water create flat horizon lines. Hills and old roads are often blessed with graceful curves. These elements are ideal for structuring your photos to tell a story and lead the viewer to what you want them to see. Work with them.

Amateur travel photography is about layers of discovery. From learning about what your digital SLR camera can do to getting to know new places to growing more familiar with these tips along with all the other techniques you have to internalize, it’s a great journey. Climbing the learning curve doesn’t have to hinder you from taking awesome travel photos along the way.

Master Your Home Studio: Setup, Settings, Photography Backdrops & Accessories

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Focus Camera
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Taking great studio photographs at home requires the right equipment, layout, strategies, and techniques. Start with identifying the type of photography you want to do and then follow these tips – ranging from which photography backdrops and camera tripod are ideal to the best settings for different types of photography – to get your home studio in shape for your photography goals.

The Setup

Photo studios let you control the environment, most importantly light. Mastering home studio photos requires the equipment to let you do this, which you can put together for thousands of dollars or hundreds, depending on your flexibility and creativity.

For starters, you need a room that is big enough for you to photograph the subject using nothing shorter than a 50mm lens, in order to avoid distortion. Most photographers who shoot full-body portraits find that the freedom to put 20 feet between the subject and the camera is the minimum. You can get away with 15 feet, but this may cause cramped frames or a bit of distortion. The other essential feature is the ability to control natural light. It’s great to have access to it but you also need a way to block it out whenever you want.

Next you need a photography backdrop, or better yet more than one. Simple, solid neutral colors and an option with a bit of texture are perfect, and you can order them for around $20 for the cheapest rigs with basic rolls of paper.

Lastly, you need artificial light sources and fill elements, which you need to position in relation to your subject area and tripod. Choose between continuous and flash lighting; the former are less expensive but the latter are more versatile and don’t create as much heat in your studio. You need a primary light with a diffuser at an angle to the subject. You can change the angle and height to create different effects. A bounce card or reflect helps create fill light by bouncing light from the main source to brighten the darker, shadowed side of the subject and soften contrasts. Every shoot has a unique ideal amount of bounce, so it’s important to play around with this before a shoot and figure out a range of what you might like. Then your main camera can be hand-held or on a tripod, and it should be connected to the studio lights to control the flash.

Gear Settings and Photographic Techniques

Getting the room right is only half the battle to mastering home studio photography (if that)! Think of setting up a shot as building a composition. Position your subject first. Then turn the lights on and play with their position to get the visual effect you want. You can take a few sample photos as you adjust the light to get a feel for the mood before you move on to getting your camera settings right.

The main settings are ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. If you are using flashes, their speed limits how fast you can set your shutter speed, typically not faster than 1/200 unless you spend a lot. Typically you shouldn’t set it any slower than 1/160, even if you use continuous lights, unless you want a specific effect. Set the ISO to 100 unless the camera’s manual specifies a different “native” sensitivity. Then close the aperture down to f/5.6 or smaller. Then take a few shots and use the camera’s histogram to evaluate your exposure and make any setting adjustments. The other option is use a light meter to identify ideal settings for the amount of light.

Your best option with ambient light is to block most of it, especially if it comes from yellow incandescent light, because it’s difficult to eliminate the color effects of that lighting. If you have ambient light you want to use or can’t eliminate, you need to configure your white balance and exposure more carefully. The camera picks up light you don’t notice with your eyes, and the color from overhead lights and windows can alter your final product. Most pros suggest turning off auto-white-balance to give you more control during editing, which means you can’t rely on your camera to compensate for unnatural ambient light

Apply these basics, from setting up your photography backdrops to assembling your studio to getting the right settings on your gear to begin a foray into home studio photography. They lay a solid foundation on which you can build to really master the art.

Go Beyond DSLR Camera Basics for Awesome Indoor Photos

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Focus Camera
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Indoor photography requires understanding indoor photography basics. You can’t just strap on a new DSLR camera and a lens hood and expect these photos to come out perfectly. You should read all about the basics of the exposure triangle of ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. But these tips will help you actually figure out what makes awesome indoor photos.

1. “Scout” light for the subject

DSCF1006 Photography by Ben Shaul 

If you’re shooting food or other still objects, find the best natural light in the space and use that. Turn off the overheads and move the table near the window, for example. Indoor shooting requires you to find available light and get maximum use from it for more natural colors and contrasts. For people, it might be more difficult to stage the right light, even if it’s just your family, because you want to “capture a moment” of authenticity. Instead, you should pay attention to the direction, intensity, and color of the light to choose the best camera settings, and orient yourself so that you are at an angle to the natural light options and the faces of your subjects.

2. Shoot in “burst mode”

Excellent photographers take dozens of photos for every shot they like. You should expect to take even more. Burst mode, also called continuous firing mode, lets you hold down the shutter button to snap several photos, slightly more than one per second. Any time you are shooting action or people and you want to capture emotions on their faces, this is a great way to increase your chances of capturing a perfect shot, with everyone’s face looking good and in focus. It basically gives you more chances for very small details to line up correctly.

This is important for awesome indoor photos because contrast and natural skin tones pose a significant challenge, and small changes in the angle of a person’s face are often enough to capture more light and natural skin tones.

3. Prioritize one setting to build your exposures

Most DSLR cameras have aperture priority and shutter speed priority modes, which make it easy to tell your camera what’s more important. Evaluate the setting and decide if a fast shutter speed, good bokeh, or a deeper depth of field, or minimizing noise is the priority. For example, if you have lots of natural light and are shooting a child playing, then you should prioritize crisp focus. In this case shutter speed and ISO are the most important settings. If you know that ahead of time, it’s easier to fix the primary setting and then change your ISO and aperture as necessary.

4. Relax and don’t “chimp”

Many of the best indoor photos come from casual gatherings with friends; they’re about capturing the moment. You have to relax and get comfortable using a camera – a lot – to be ready to capture that moment when it happens without sacrificing the pleasure of being in the moment. One way to make the camera less obtrusive is to stop “chimping,” meaning checking your viewfinder after every shot. The process is abrupt, the same way a person burying their face in a smart phone interrupts the flow of a conversation. Minimizing this to create a more natural feel increases the opportunities you will have to capture that awesome indoor photo.

5. When in doubt, stop down to blur the background

DSC00555 Photo by Photographer Ben Shaul 

One of the things that makes for less-than-awesome indoor photos is the weird stuff in the background. Chairs, half-open doors, and shoes on the floor can spoil a shot. If you have enough light, a tripod or a still subject, or don’t mind photo noise, stopping down the aperture to blur out the background with a narrow depth of field is an easy fix for this that simplifies composition.

DSLR cameras are awesome tools for great photos because they accommodate several skill levels. Use these tips to take advantage of their flexible settings for incredible indoor photos.

Jump Into High Speed Photography with a Digital SLR Kit

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Focus Camera
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High motion events such as sports, family parties with kids running around, and occasions where animals are active require very specific settings, strategies, and gear. You can do a lot with a digital SLR kit and even your first upgrade wide angle lenses. But you need to learn the ropes to get good photos, and these tips will help.

Gear

You don’t have to start with a big gear upgrade unless you’re sure you want to stick with high-motion sports, but digital SLR kits can’t keep up with your needs once you start trying to take top-quality action shots. The most important thing is a fast, telephoto lens with image stabilization. This lets you get the emotions on faces and fill the frame with the subject in motion, whether it’s a player jumping or an animal lunging. Some people also use a monopod to support it and help with the weight and image stabilization that becomes much more pronounced with longer telephoto lenses.

If you aren’t springing for new gear, you need to learn other work-arounds to maximize the effectiveness of your lens and other gear. Focus on getting the settings right, discussed below, finding enough light, and getting closer to your subject.

Camera Settings

Generally you want to let your camera operate with the fastest shutter speed possible, assuming you want to eliminate any image blur. There is an entire field of motion photography that utilizes blur, but for conventional high-motion shots, you want to “freeze” the action. This requires coordinating other settings to let in enough light.

Increase the ISO as much as you can tolerate. The higher ISO settings, above 800 or 1600, may introduce noise and graininess into the shot, so you have to determine what your priority is. Then open the aperture. The more open it is, the faster you can set the shutter speed and still get enough light. This also shrinks the depth of field, which can be beneficial or problematic depending on what kind of shot you want. Figure that out ahead of time with some practice shots so you don’t have to fiddle with settings during the action.

Next, shoot in servo or drive mode. This lets you snap several photos in rapid succession without having to repeatedly press the shutter button. You just press once and it keeps firing until you release, which is a great way to accidently get a good shot. To support this, be sure you have a large memory card and several spares. They fill up quickly.

Take Control of Automated Settings

White balance and focus are two settings typically left to the camera’s computer. However, if you’re shooting an event indoors or are very concerned with camera response, you should set white balance manually. Once it’s set, it won’t ever look weird and your camera won’t have to process it before taking the shot.

Manual focus is something of a bogey man for new photographers. However, many digital SLR kits are slow to focus, and this timing can cost you. Instead, learn to focus manually and get the focus ready before the action happens so you’re prepared and in control for that unique, picture-perfect moment.

Choosing Your Spot

Get close to the action. This is never more important than if you can’t afford a huge, powerful lens. To do this, you have to figure out where the dramatic moments will happen. At a party, kids may range far and wide across outdoor space, so you have to pick your spot perfectly for lighting and emotion. At a sporting event, most of the best shots happen near the goal or scoring area.

Just be sure you also consider getting enough lighting so that your shots aren’t underexposed. And avoid the flash. It’s better to walk around, or better yet, scout available lighting ahead of time, instead of relying on the flash, which can be unpredictable and create harsh contrast.

Prepare for Shutter Lag with Good Timing

Timing is everything with high-motion event photography. Two ways to change your behavior to deal with this are being prepared and pressing the shutter half a second ahead of time, and not “chimping.” If you’re shooting a batter in baseball, for example, instead of waiting and reacting to the contact between bat and ball, press the shutter a little early and hold it down through contact. This way you can’t be late.

“Chimping” refers to checking your LCD viewfinder after every shot. At sporting events this can be dangerous, and it always means you are taking your eyes of the action. That’s the easiest way to miss a once-in-a-lifetime shot. This is good advice at any event. Find the right moment to review your shots so you aren’t always looking away from the subject.

Digital SLR kits provide you with more than enough equipment to begin taking photos at high-motion events. You just need to follow these tips and learn the art of action photography to start taking powerful photos regardless of all the motion.

Macro Photography Essentials

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Focus Camera
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macro photography Check out Macro Photographer, Eljay

If you’ve ever wanted to take those incredibly close photos of plants, animals, and other small things that pop with stunning color and detail, you need to learn about the macro photography and the essential macro tool kit. It includes the right DSLR camera, macro lenses, and a few other pieces of specialized equipment.

The first thing to consider is a simple conversion tool called a lens reversing ring. If you don’t have the budget for an expensive macro lens and compatible housing, you can use this tool to literally reverse the direction of your lens, turning it into a decent macro lens. You’ll still have to pick up some other equipment, but this is a decent alternative if you’re already invested in your DSLR camera and want to save.

The Camera

If you’re just getting into macro photography, you can stick with the first DSLR camera body you already own. As long as it has a tripod mount you are fine. However, if you’re ready to invest, you should look into full-frame cameras with much larger sensor chips, because they offer a larger dynamic range, which is helpful for capturing all the beautiful details and contrasts that show up in macro photography.

The Lens

This is the heart of the issue. You probably need a macro lens. The reason these are so important is that they magnify the subject, making it appear life size. This is different from conventional lenses that rely on a zoom factor. They also facilitate much shorter focal lengths so you can get very close to the subject and still achieve perfect focus, while simultaneously enjoying the right aperture for this type of photography. Unfortunately, macro lenses are among the most expensive hardware for a given camera.

A Tripod

Macro lenses decrease depth of field. You have to close the aperture to compensate so you can get that entire bug or flower into focus. This then requires a slower shutter speed to let in enough light – and most macro lenses aren’t particularly fast anyway – which is one of the main reasons you need a tripod to stabilize. Macro photography subjects often occur in low-light settings where adding the right artificial light is difficult, further necessitating a stabilization tool. You don’t need to focus on anything macro-specific for the tripod, but following the common guidelines for a first tripod, especially that it can get quite low to the ground, is important.

Light Modifiers

When every detail is magnified several times, it’s important to get the lighting right. And the mounted flash on most DSLR cameras won’t cut it. A hand flash with remote as well as a small set of mirrors, bounce cards, and diffusers is essential for any indoor macro photography. These allow you to control the contrast and fill lighting to accent your subject properly. If you’re working in nature, you won’t have time to set up all these light modifiers, but you will need to be handy with the hand-held flash and a diffuser setup that works for the setting.

Accessories

Every photography kit should include tools to remove dust, wipe dust and grit off the camera and the lens, and dry the camera off. Whether you’re working indoors or not, you need to be able to keep your rig clean and protected from the elements. Make sure your camera bag includes these accessories as well as backup batteries and extra memory cards. There’s no reason to risk needing one of these simple items when you don’t have it.

That’s is for the essential macro photography tool kit. Pros compliment their DSLR cameras and huge macro lenses with lots of other items like filters and meters, but for someone who is getting into the art or even expanding, this tool kit will be sufficient.

Top Photography Resolutions for Amateurs – DSLR Lenses & More

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Focus Camera
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The new year brings New Year’s resolutions, and for photographers these commitments are a great way to set the right tone for the coming year to achieve the goals you have. While consistency might be the buzzword for all of the items on this top ten list, everything from DSLR lenses to film SLR cameras also shows up.

1. Start a big, long-term project with weekly or monthly milestones.

The best way to make yourself more consistent is with a large goal comprised of several smaller, more proximate goals. Giving yourself hard deadlines and tangible milestones will ensure you consistently attempt new things and push yourself, while also producing one impressive product at the end to show for all your hard work.

2. Slow down to “read” and learn from the photos you see that evoke a reaction.

With all the photos we see online and in the media every day, we have countless examples to learn from photos that are powerful and those that fall flat. If you slow down and analyze why you like or dislike photos, you can learn a lot about what makes photos good for different contexts.

3. Push yourself to learn a new photographic technique.

Whether you find something on a photo blog, from a photo you see, in a class, or reading about photography techniques, learning more specific skills requires practice and focus. Early in the year you should identify one skill or technique that you really like and which meshes well with your style. Then push yourself to work on it all year.

4. Review photos from a “session” more effectively.

Digital photography leads to taking more photos and keeping more junk photos in backup. Committing to process of reviewing them, more closely and in one sitting, enables you to throw away unnecessary photos and to evaluate your work, identifying the photos that worked and those that turned out poorly. This process makes learning and improving much easier and more constructive.

5. Research and practice to actually work on weaknesses you identify through review.

This is less explicit, but the idea is simply to identify weaknesses, identify proven strategies to work on them, and then spend the time to improve. Most people who make good on this resolution come up with a clearer way to measure it, such as photo project that requires them to take actual photos towards a long-term goal, and on in which they won’t succeed unless the directly address certain weaknesses. This resolution is like saying “get better at photography,” but focuses on the how of that goal.

6. Learn to edit and improve at editing your photos.

Digital photos make editing easy, so it’s time to take advantage. We all take OK photos that we could cheat and sweeten with a photo editor. Dedicate time to learning how to do so. Even if you just figure out how to crop your photos and deal with the overexposed portions you’ll end up able to salvage what would otherwise end up deleted. Depending on your goals, that could be a perfectly legitimate way to get some beautiful wall art that you can look upon with pride and enjoy the memory of the photo.

7. Organize your photos into an intuitive, navigable folder system.

You have how many gigs of photos on your hard drive? Unless your photos are organized well, going through them to find the ones you want to print or use for some other project will be a huge hassle, not to mention the difficulty of winnowing out duplicates and bad shots if you haven’t already uncluttered. Take the time to organize your photos in an intuitive way, such as by year, by month, and then by date, event or subject, and location, and finding them later will be much easier. After all, one of the best things about photos is getting to enjoy them later, but you can’t do that if you can’t find them.

8. Back up photos on a hard drive and the cloud more regularly after sorting.

Once you’re photos are organized and you’re in the process of reviewing and purging, you can get into a regular and reliable backup habit. Most people who care about their photos advocate two backups: one on an external hard drive and one on a cloud service. This isn’t free and it is time consuming, but it ensures that neither hacker, nor virus, nor house fire will rob you of your irreplaceable photographs.

9. Explore the range and sweet spots of less-used gear.

Whether you just have a kit lens that you’ve grown comfortable with or you don’t ever rotate between DSLR lenses, if you’re like most photographers you have gear you aren’t using to its full potential. Take some time to read up on your camera body and all of your lenses, then practice using them with their “sweet spot” settings to achieve your other photography goals. This point of this resolution is to stop forcing camera equipment to do jobs for which it wasn’t designed and instead get familiar with each component’s strengths.

10. Contribute to a website/start a blog/update your blog on a regular schedule

There’s nothing better than external accountability to make you do something. Promising a regular contribution to a photo website or starting your own blog and owing your readers adds extra pressure to develop your style and skill, if only by virtue of having to regularly produce new photos worthy of publication. Add that this can help you work to find a focus or theme, which is a great way to avoid running into the problem of struggling to find content, and you benefit a great deal just from the act of contributing.

These are just 10 of the best Near Year’s photography resolutions that can help you do more with your amateur love of photography. Try one or more to get better photos and improve, whether or not you take the time to invest in new DSLR lenses.

Tips for Shooting After Sunset with Digital Cameras

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Focus Camera
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You can’t just walk outside with a digital camera after sunset and start taking the photos you see in your mind’s eye. But you have options even if you can’t afford expensive low light cameras and other gear designed to make night photography easier. Consider these tips and techniques so capture the world you see after sunset.

Find some light.

If you can see it with your naked eye, there’s light shining on it. Find that light source, ensure that it’s enough for your camera, and orient it towards the subject in such as way that you maximize use of the available light. Whether that’s a candle from a café on the corner, a street light, or the moon reflecting off the ocean.

Get the gear.

Even if you can’t purchase a whole new camera, you have to invest in a tripod to do any serious night shooting. Tripods enable longer exposures with slower shutter speeds by eliminating camera shake. The less light you have available, the more useful a tripod is. A shutter remote is a great help at the slowest shutter speeds. The simple act of pressing the shutter button to begin the exposure can shake the camera; a remote means you don’t have to touch the camera until the shutter closes.

If you want to shoot people at night and will be using a flash instead of available light, you should invest in a handheld flash so you can direct it deliberately and diffuse it more easily for more realistic contrasts. Wide angle lenses also help, especially if they have a huge aperture, because they let in more light so you can reduce the noise from a higher ISO and achieve better sharpness without opening your aperture all the way.

Learn the settings.

Basically, you want your camera to let in as much light as possible to deal with the low amount of available light at night. Obviously you have to adjust this for certain brighter, high-contrast shots. To do this, you’d open your aperture as much as possible and increase the ISO. However, many people actually advocate using the lens’s sweet spot for the aperture, which is usually near the middle of the range, and dialing down the ISO to 800 or below, forcing to use a slower shutter speed to make up the difference.

Lastly, be willing to underexpose your shot a little. It’s a night photo after all. The best way to do this is taking a test shot and using the histogram setting to identify contrast and light imbalances; on most cameras, the light meter is virtually useless at night. Using your judgment you can craft beautiful photos full of the details you see and which still look like night shots.

Slow down to compose.

Slow exposures take longer. When every shot takes more of your time, investing more thought and planning before you press the shutter button will save you time in the long run. So slow down and compose your shot with your eye before you look through the digital camera’s viewfinder, and again looking through the camera on the tripod. Especially if you’re shooting a relatively fleeting night-time effect, extra planning so you don’t miss your opportunity is essential.

There are a lot of obvious digital camera tips for night shooting, especially relating to how to compose your shot or find the best piece of equipment. These suggestions give you more of an overall approach to the process of shooting after sunset so you can get photos of the world you see at night.

Digital SLR Cameras: Street Photography Tips

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Focus Camera
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street photography Photo by Photographer Shane Drummond 

Although street photography is about spontaneity and having an eye for a good shot as you walk around, planning and thinking ahead can make every street photography outing more successful. Planning ahead helps you prepare for what you will encounter so you can have the appropriate approach to getting the right shots. It also helps you make important practical decisions about gear and strategies. Most pros offer tips about how to behave once you’re out there so you get the shot. These tips help you get ready; from digital SLR Cameras to what to put in your camera bags to how to deal with people, consider these tips before you go.

1. Learn the laws and local culture.

Local laws and culture have a big impact on what you’ll be able to do, especially if you want to photograph people. Assuming you’re shooting in the United States, you have a decent amount of legal leeway in public, but you never know when you’ll meet an overzealous or ignorant police officer, or a misinformed person on the street who gets offended or worse. So it’s good to know the local culture as well. This goes double for shooting abroad, where people might have different opinions about public privacy, gender interactions, and a host of other things that could create a problem.

The point of learning all these things is to be able to make informed decisions about your behavior and photography strategies. In some places, it will be best to be secretive and furtively snap shots before nonchalantly walking away. In others you’ll be able to scout a location and set up camp so to speak, waiting for the right elements to walk through your frame. You need to know where you’re shooting before you can really figure out how to shoot there.

2. Pack light for the street(s) you’re visiting.

All pros will tell you to pack light. So light, in fact, that unless you have a very good reason, many advocate just a lightweight mirrorless system with a fast, wide-angle lens that fits in a pocket or your hand. And nothing else. This can be the right call if you don’t already own a digital SLR camera you’re not fond of replacing. But if you do have a DSLR – which will be larger and noisier – you can still pack a small lens to be quicker and less obvious.

And either way, it’s often worth packing a few other things even if you don’t go for a big camera bag. These should include simple things like a cloth and a plastic bag in case of bad weather, a replacement battery and an extra memory card, and a lens cleaner. Conveniently, you can fit all of these items in a small pocket to stay light and convenient.

3. Scout backgrounds and locations with the kind of action you want.

Regardless of the kinds of street photography you like, you can still scout the town. If you’re going to be shooting architecture and other stationary elements, you want to find the best time of day for light. You might realize that most places you want to shoot look best in early morning, but not have time to get photos of all of them on one day, so the scouting will help you know when to come back. Or you may be looking to shoot people and a certain type of dynamic shot. Scouting will help you figure out where to shoot so your photos have interesting and relevant backgrounds, and so you know what time of day to show up for the best shots.

Preparation and these tips can help you prepare to take better photos and improve your craft. Because in the world of street photography, digital SLR cameras are for once not kings – timing and attitude sit on that throne.

Tips for Photography Business Success

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Focus Camera
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Everyone who strikes out on their own to take photos for a living has to come to terms with the reality of running a small business or fail. It takes a lot more than just upgrading from point & shoot cameras or getting better with digital SLR kits. Among other things like accounting and networking, you have to publicize your business. Try these essential strategies to promote your photography business so you can get more work and focus on doing what you love, taking great photos.

1. Make Your Website Client-Friendly

Although a beautiful website that compliments your photos perfectly can be fun to design, good sales design is about the customer’s experience. It needs to be easy to navigate, not distracting or annoying – think music that plays during a flash video before you enter the actual site – informative, and have a clear way for customers to view your photos, learn about you, and contact you with questions. Even if you already have a site, there are a number of photography site platforms that can help you create this if you aren’t able to spend big on a developer and designer.

2. Get Active on Social Media

Facebook and Twitter are the starter sites, but there are also several photography-focused options, as well as newer options like Pinterest, where you can network with other photographers and get your name and work in front of potential customers. From micro-blogging to active networking, there are a number of ways to leverage social media to find customers. Each site requires a different type of activity and tools to use optimally, but the basic value is that they allow you to focus your efforts on potential customers interested in your niche, both in terms of region and type of photography, to increase the income-value of your publicity effort.

3. Google and Search Optimize Your Site

If you have the time and energy, you can follow an online search engine optimization for photographers guide to help generate organic search traffic. Effective regional and niche targeting is essential to making this cost effective. Even without a big SEO effort you can take advantage of Google+ business to get your business listed. This helps with showing up on Google Maps searches and gives customers another way to find your contact info and site.

4. Run a Useful Blog

Blogging works best when coordinated with social media, but it is important on its own as well. If you have a blog people like to read, they will remember you and business will come. You have to share things though, so your site and your inbound social media traffic are visually attractive and have staying power. Share photography tips, photography and photo projects, or even just the highlights of shoots you do for clients.

5. Give It Away Cheap Where It Will Be Seen

Whether you barter your service with other small businesses, offer discounts for other online businesses that need photos (and will give you photo credits), or even provide photography for free to a local city or municipal event. The point is to showcase your skills in such a way that people may see it, think the photo is great, and then visit your site. That foot in the door is all you need, and the cost of the discount can actually be very low in terms of the price per exposure.

None of these steps are easy, and they all pull you away from you Digital SLR kits, but the payoff for doing them well is a thriving business.

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