Better Photos
From beginners to pros, I'm taking you from photography basics to creative challenges to find your unique passion for photography.
Better Photos
002 Mastering Focus & Sharpness
* Photographer Toolkit- Photo Prompts for Families, ChatGPT business growth prompts, The creative shotlist
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Getting sharper photos is easier than you think when equipped with the right settings. We demystify crucial camera settings for sharp images, discuss the magic of snow as a natural light reflector, and explore engaging ways to prompt kids into action.
• Creating captivating snow photos
• Snow acts as a natural reflector, enhancing photo brightness
• Engaging prompts lead to joyful, candid family moments
• Importance of aperture, ISO, and shutter speed review
• Focus modes: continuous vs. single-shot autofocus reviewed
• Introduction to new AI photography app for blending memories
• Challenge to experiment with autofocus settings and areas
If you have any questions, feel free to message me @BPoshPhoto on Instagram, and if you post anything, I would love to see it. Please use #BetterPhotosPodcast and just let me know if you are having any struggles or if you are still wondering about something, and we can hopefully answer those questions on future episodes.
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Hey, mama, whether or not you're trying out your camera for the very first time or you've been doing this a while and just looking for some creative inspiration, I've got all that and more. I'm here to help you see your world differently, challenge you creatively and find your passion for photography. Guys, we are back with another episode of Better Photos. How did you do on your challenge? Did you try it out? Did you figure out something else that you didn't know before with the aperture, your shutter or your ISO? Let me know how it went.
Speaker 1:I am about to do mine today because we are expecting snow. It's Friday and my kids are off school because of the weather, even though they definitely could have gone to school. But everyone is waiting in anticipation for snow, because where I am outside of Charlotte, we haven't gotten snow for like three years, like nothing. So it is a big deal. My husband went out and bought like all the snow outfits and made sure we all had gloves and all the things, so I was really praying that it would snow, because who wants to go through all that effort? And then for nothing? So even driving to the gym today, it was like there was already salt on the roads and I'm like can't we just be stuck at home? I'm okay with that. Like I got my workout in, I've got my groceries, like we are okay with canceling all the things.
Speaker 1:Everybody loves to get those pictures in the snow and if you've ever wondered why, it's because the snow bounces the light from the ground up onto your skin. So it bounces the light to your under eyes, to your wrinkles, anything that is shadow it is going to illuminate and brighten up. So people love snow photos and that's why People also use reflectors. If they want that look in other photos and maybe they do natural light photos and they don't use flash, then they can use a reflector and reflect the sun to bounce light into their subjects. Or they can use it in a studio with flash and bounce light off the flash back onto their subjects and not use natural light. So I will link some of those things in the show notes if you're interested in adding that into your photography. I don't really use those things because I'm trying to be minimal and that's just more to carry and you can still place people in ways where you don't have to use a reflector to minimize skin textures and things like that I will talk in the future about, I think, next week, actually with light. You can stay tuned for that. So some prompts to get some photos in the snow.
Speaker 1:If you want to set your phone on a tripod or your camera, you can get some really cute photos by cueing or prompting these things with your kids and just be ready to capture them. You can set it on a self timer. You can do an interval timer, which I love to do on my camera, but you could also have someone else holding the camera and just making sure that they just hit the click button, just hit the shutter, so you can tell your kids to hug you tight, to stay warm, and so just wait for the kids to come and hug you and keep you warm. You can tell them to have a snowball fight. Let's have a snowball fight and let's try to throw the snowball at whoever has the camera. You can say give me a kiss on the cheek. You can spin in a circle and holding hands and laughing. You can say who can catch snowflakes on their tongue, and those are some fun candid moments. You can say, show me your silliest snow angel pose and have the kids lying in the snow. Maybe lie down there with them would be great to get in the shot. Do an overhead shot of that. You can also have the camera change angles some with just your hair, some above you, some a wide angle or far away Lots of different options there.
Speaker 1:You can all be in front of the camera and you can say something funny. I always like to bring in like inappropriate kid words to make kids laugh or just to get those natural expressions. So I apologize to the parents when I bring up words like poop and poopy. If you've had a session with me, you've definitely heard me say that. So sometimes I'll be like okay, look at whoever has the stinkiest feet. Or I'll say look at daddy and say poopy really loud, and say poopy really loud, and so that creates a lot of funny smiles. You can also say let's warm up by pretending to blow on our hands together Basically anything that helps a child not know that they are in a photo and that the camera is there capturing them. That is key for my business and the way that I like to shoot. I like to get candids but they look posed, but they were really just prompted.
Speaker 1:You can also say everyone put their hats or scarves on me like I'm a snowman and they can dress you up with funny stuff or something like that. Other things that you can do without prompting is you can make sure to give everyone a big hug. You can do piggyback rides. Maybe dad is holding mom on a piggyback ride, or maybe you guys are walking away from the camera holding hands, or maybe you're walking towards the camera holding hands. Maybe you build a snowman together and you get a picture with the snowman. Or maybe you're pointing out the funniest things about the snowman so that people are not looking at the camera, which I feel like creates a more genuine moment. Mom or dad pulling the sled with the kids on and everybody laughing, maybe tossing kids in the air that's always a go-to of mine. Maybe you bring a blanket out and everyone cuddles in the blanket. Or maybe you just get everyone's boots in the snow or the feet prints. Or don't forget, like some of the detail shots of cold hands, cold noses, their snow gear Because, as we all know, kids grow up and those things will change and just document the fun of it all. So those are some things that you might want to try, whether it snows today or sometime in the winter. Document the fun of it all. So those are some things that you might want to try. Whether it snows today or sometime in the winter, those are going to be some fun things that you'll want to come back and listen to this episode. If you are in an area that has snow or maybe it'll snow again in North Carolina, hopefully, hopefully or if you're at a ski resort, or if you are going sledding or if you're going anywhere with snow, then this is a good list to refer to.
Speaker 1:Um, another thing that I just saw on Instagram which is very intriguing. I don't know if things get like this promoted to me, but I definitely downloaded it and I haven't played around with it yet. But it's called Reviva, I think is the app and it takes like an old photo or you can mix it with like an old photo and a new photo and it makes it uses AI to make people come alive and make it like a video thing. So there's been some posts. I guess it does the same thing, like I've seen some of those reels that were going around where it's like somebody gets smushed and it looks like cake almost, or they get like it's like a picture or video of somebody and then like they blob down to like I don't know, like something gushy um, I guess that's what this app does too or like oh, it's called like Squish or Crumble, but the oh or Cakeify is one of them. You turn like a picture into cake, like somebody cutting it, okay. So those are kind of weird, but it definitely stops you in your tracks. So don't be alarmed if you see that on my Instagram sometime.
Speaker 1:But the interesting one is just the blast from the past and hugging the future. I'm really intrigued with this. Like it showed a picture of like grandparents, like an old photo of your grandparents or maybe like war times or you know, just like a super old photo and you I don't know if you take a picture of it or you scan it onto your phone, I don't know, um, but then you can somehow it makes it come alive and makes them like kiss each other or hug each other or dance or something. So I don't know, I kind of want to get like a picture of my grandparents or I don't know put a side by side, like you can take like a future current image of you and like an old-timey picture of your mom or something, and put them side by side and like the people come out of the image and like, hug each other, like in the image, I don't know, it's so mind-blowing and so I just downloaded it. So I'll have to keep you posted, or check out my Instagram next week to see if I post something about it, because it looks really cool and you know, like you're always trying to stop the scroll when it comes to business, you want people to engage and be like whoa, oh, my goodness. And then, anyways, that's kind of like more businessy stuff, which I will talk about some of that, if you decide that you want to take your hobby to a business, or maybe you already are a business and want to take it further.
Speaker 1:But for today, we are going to be talking about focus settings. So and if you or someone you know are expecting this year, please have them reach out for newborn sessions. I also have some other sessions coming up at a greenhouse and some with many highland cows, so be sure to check in the show notes about those sessions and I would love to see you this year. So if you've ever been annoyed with getting a blurry photo, today's episode is for you. So today we are going to talk about the next important thing with our camera settings and that is your focus modes and getting your photos sharp.
Speaker 1:If you turn your camera on and go to your settings, what we learned last week is that your aperture decides what is in focus and what is blurry, and how much blur you have in a photo. Iso really shows how much light you want to let in or what your camera can read. So in a dark room you want to bump up that ISO and on a bright day you want to turn it down to make sure that you don't have a bunch of noise or grain, especially when you're shooting skin tones. I don't want to have to. I mean, you really can't even Photoshop that. So just to be safe, before you you shoot, you want to make sure that you have all your settings correct, and then the last one shutter speed is getting a photo sharp or blurry. But if you have all of those settings correct and you are looking at your meter and it is at zero or around zero, and so you have all your settings good, which, honestly, that was my main goal slash.
Speaker 1:My only goal when I started out was to make sure that my exposure triangle was good and I didn't really have any other agenda other than that. It was just with my newborn I was turning it down to the lowest aperture that I could and just doing all the other settings. And then, as I grew as a photographer, there was things that I wanted to change about that and try to purposely put in motion, blur or to purposely get some things in focus and some things not, or details that I wanted to pay attention to in focus and some things not, or details that I wanted to pay attention to. So if you're just starting out, the first thing you want to do is just make sure that exposure triangle is correct and you are making your meter fall somewhere around that zero, but if you are still not getting sharp photos.
Speaker 1:The next thing that we want to look at is your focus modes. So we have two things that we want to look at focus modes and focus area and under your settings when you turn your camera on. This will be different for all types of cameras, but when you find your focus mode mine is says AF, mf, and then I go to one and focus mode you'll have a couple different options and then I go to one and focus mode. You'll have a couple different options, but the main two that you want to look at is single shot autofocus and continuous autofocus. Single shot autofocus is going to be when you have a subject that is being still, so maybe you're not even photographing a person, but if you are, it's like one person and not a child, unless it's a baby sleeping or something like that but you want to make sure that that subject is very still for having it on that mode. Continuous autofocus is what you will probably want it at most of the time. So that says continuous AF, and that just means that your subject will be moving and so the camera will have to keep readjusting focus. The other thing that you could do is manual focus, and that is helpful if you want to physically move the focus from one thing to another, or if you want to sit it or set it at a particular focus. Say, you're doing a landscape and you don't want it to change or keep refocusing on the mountaintop or a tree or a stump or things that are going to be coming into the foreground. So that's mainly when you would use manual mode for autofocus or for manual focus.
Speaker 1:The next thing that you want to look at is your focus area. Okay, so your focus area is going to be where you can have it to, and so different cameras are very different. So my canon, when I had that, you had focus points and there were like little squares on the screen and you could move your squares to what you wanted in focus. And so my first camera did not have a lot of squares to choose from, and so you kind of had to just pick one and make sure that what you were photographing was in that square or move yourself, which was pretty, pretty hard. But then I upgraded and then it had like 80 focus points or something. But then you're moving your dial around trying to find the focus point that you want for your image.
Speaker 1:And when we talk about composition we'll kind of talk more about the best focus areas. Because there is you have on the mirrorless camera the wide focus area, and this is going to kind of guess where you, if you have the continual, continuous autofocus, it is going to keep changing what is in focus, if it's on the screen and it's getting closer to you, or if you're touching the back of the screen and touching the thing that is moving or where you want focus, but it is going to try to guess what you want in focus. If you have the wide area it's going to be pretty much the whole image is what your camera is searching for for focus. So that'll help you out. Generally there is zone focus. So on zone you can either pick if you want the top zone, like if you're shooting vertically instead of horizontally, and you want the top of your image to be where your camera is trying to find focus first, then you can set that. If you want the bottom range of the image, then you can set that, and so that can just help you out with focus that way too. So there's wide, there is zone, there is spot focusing, there is zone, there is spot focusing, and so on that you can basically just pick a spot of where you want the image to be in focus. So on the back screen you can just select or touch it with your finger.
Speaker 1:That one I like or I'm really just learning more about these. I've had it in wide and continuous for a while on my Sony camera and, like I said, on my Canon I manually adjusted all the focus points. So it's something to get used to on mirrorless, because sometimes I'll press where I want it to be in focus and then the camera's autofocus will pick up another subject. Or the nice thing about Sony is why people want the Sony mirrorless is because of their face and eye auto detection, which is great when you're photographing toddlers or kids running or families that are moving to get their eyes and faces in focus. But sometimes I'm wanting to capture their fingers holding something or a tiny detail shot where their eyes and face are in the image, and so my camera automatically thinks that I want to have that as my primary focus their eyes. But I'm trying to tell it like I don't want their eyes, I want their hands or their fingers, and so I think I'm going to switch to spot focus so that I can just see if that makes a difference. I think it should.
Speaker 1:And so there's spot, which is like the direct, exact spot that you want to have in focus. But then there's spot expanded. So if that spot what you're trying to focus on moves a little bit so say a kid's hand holding a flower or something and they move a little bit to the left or to the right when you're photographing, then your camera will adjust it a little bit. If it's on spot expand, also tracking wide and just regular wide. There's zone, then there's also center focus, and so this might be one if you want to start out doing center, and basically that means it is going to get whatever is in the middle of your composition, in the middle of your frame, in focus, but if your image goes to the side or you're trying to do the rule of thirds which we'll talk about later in composition, then this is not going to be the best option. So what I would suggest is playing around with wide and the spot expand if you have that, and you can try center and see which one you like the best.
Speaker 1:Take a day of shooting and see what images land in focus. And is it the focus that you wanted? Is it the kids hands, but you wanted the eyes? Is it the eyes, but you wanted? Is it the kid's hands, but you wanted the eyes. Is it the eyes, but you wanted the hands? And so just getting used to your settings and knowing what to change is so helpful, and so that's going to be something that you have to learn on your individual camera and what works for you.
Speaker 1:The challenge for this week is going to be changing your settings on your autofocus mode and area. So go ahead and change your focus mode to continuous autofocus or CAF Whatever setting your camera says may look a little different, so you may have to do some investigating there and change your focus area to wide, photograph five things using that mode, and then change your focus area to center and take five more photos. Then change it to spot or spot expand or spot expand tracking, and take five more photos. Then you're going to upload those on your computer or look at them through the viewfinder and see where are you nailing focus the most. Is it on wide focus area, is it on center, is it on spots? And then you can know what better settings you should have for the next time you shoot. So go ahead and try those out.
Speaker 1:If you have any questions, feel free to message me at BePoshPhoto on Instagram, and if you post anything, I would love to see it. So please use the hashtag BetterPhotosPodcast and just let me know if you are having any struggles or if you are still wondering about something, and we can hopefully answer those questions on future episodes. For you, you can take everything that you've learned today and hopefully make better photos. So I will see you guys on episode three next Monday. Bye, bye, you, you, you, no-transcript, no-transcript.