When I first started photography I didn’t realise how to crop a photo to get a better looking shot.
Now when I say crop this can be done in two ways
First and best is to crop in camera ! To crop in camera simply means using the full field of view of the sensor/lens. This will give you the best quality image and use all the megapixels to best advantage.
Second way is to crop in post. This isn’t a good as the first option, as it lowers the resolution of the image by taking away vital megapixels
But when you’re learning it’s one of the first ways to find what looks best! As sometimes you don’t see the full picture until you get into post. Where you then see that ‘ oh that looks better’ moment!
A few simple rules when cropping are not to cut limbs off such as fingers and such like!
Now this post isn’t going to be about the full depth of cropping! It’s just going to be a simple idea that cropping a body in the right place !
Below are three images to give you a better idea!
3/4 crop image Cutting the legs of here give a much more pleasing look than cropping lower towards the knees you could crop a little lower but be very carful not to go to low! 1/2 Crop – this is a stunning crop for boudoir style shoots and for fashion too. Though with this shot the rule of not cropping limbs is used selectively but done to a point where it’s still pleasing to the eye. This 1/4 crop is used more for portrait and beauty Cropping here give a much closer shot of the subject and when shot like this in camera give plenty of detail to work with ! It almost makes the subject lifelike and in the same room!
The above is just a little of whats needed to create a more pleasing image! Over the coming weeks I will post a more in-depth post for what to look for and how to capture the images in camera
Until next time please feel free to try this and tag me on Instagram to show me how you got on! @adriandayphotography and please feel free to like and comment! Too
It’s definitely been a new process for me, getting to grips with creating content for my YouTube channel! One showing what I can do and two learning that process of editing ! With out buying into a big program like adobe premier pro right away!
I’ve managed to do a few videos and post them up! I like the out come, again this is all done using mobile editing ! But still these are in 1080p or 4K so that’s not so bad on quality as YouTube will render the video in algorithm if it’s low quality and put it way down the list of showing!
If you would like to see the two videos click on the images below and please give it a like and maybe even a follow on my account!
This month I thought I would try something different ! I wanted to step away from social media a little and see what’s happening elsewhere.
Well I’m always looking for inspiration on Pinterest and everyone’s always posting did you see this? did you see that? on Pinterest! So ! I started posting my work to my Pinterest account ! https://pin.it/LA2I4vz
I created a folder and named it simply my photography, and then started adding the work I had stored on my mobile device! Now it’s all pretty simple to do when you have the Pinterest app! Just click the + sign and add the image and any details such as title, info and a weblink if you have one!
Now if you’re used to facebook or Instagram the algorithm it kicking our butts with low views and paid content advertising. So I’ve been used to 100 ish impressions on an image. Now With this I’ve not paid to promote any image! Everything has been organic. The first few images didn’t do to much 20 impressions and as I was saying thought okay this is about normal.
20 impressions only!
So I posted a few more images and they started going up 160 – 200
168 impressions! Going up!
Then come the first big impression jump and to me I was happy organic views of an image more than I’ve had on social media in years ! 556 impressions in the image below!
Boom 💥 over the 500 mark!
Some of you may be thinking this is normal now I’ve only seen big number showing up on image of nudes or news posts other get a good number due to following! Now my following is low! Pinterest 40 followers Instagram 1450 not big at all!
Well I was a little addicted by this stage I started adding images to build up my portfolio and possibly gain the same kind of impressions a few of them didn’t get many view but then others started growing! 600+ 800+
And then there it was I hit my first 1200 views on and image! I was bouncing off the walls ! Me, my work, a Photographer on a lonely mission to get known!
Boom 🤯 1.2k impressions
Now this was in my first week ! I’m only on week two now and my numbers on certain images are still low but then others are getting over the 1k but yesterday one image went ballistic! I posted an image just before leaving the house to go run some errands!
When I got back I was thinking about my image was it good enough it wasn’t someone I had posted shooting on there in that style before! Well it got the better of me and I picked up my phone and clicked the app! And there it was ! 6500 impressions! Over 6.5 k Of views this was shocking ! Happy understatement of the day! Mind blown head shock! Here is that image!
#mindblown 6.5K impressions
Well I’m definitely blown away with that now with Pinterest you can see the monthly stats on posting just to my photography pin board this month has so far racked me up 26K of impressions and 18K audience 18000 people seen my page that’s more than see my Instagram last year in just two weeks ! Let alone a month!
Below is my stats
Last 30 day Pinterest stats
So honestly if you’re trying to get your work seen by the masses the maybe social media like facebook or Instagram are not the way forward ! They’re a great medium and in fairness you could help the views by posting links to social pages too! Just to gain a little extra viewing! But my new best friend is definitely Pinterest!
It’s helped my website to grow, it’s helped my social pages grow as the links are there on the images and it’s boosted my interest from people want to have work done by me! All in all I think it’s a great place to grow and watch this space for the what the rest of this month brings if this is the start I look forward to seeing what can come from stepping away from the norm!
Give it a try yourself and let me know how you get on! Any free advertising is worth the two minutes it takes to set up and the 30 seconds to post!
Feel free to follow my Twitter Pinterest Instagram pages all can be found below or on our main page! Click the pictures to go to our pins page
Been a little time in the making or should I say in the doing!
But to end 2019 I finally put the plan into action and started selling images from locations I’ve shot!
Having posted images to a number of sites and asked the question who would buy ? And got some great feed back I hope that this will be a worth while thing
I would really love to see what people think and would be super happy to know that people want my art on their walls.
If you’re interested in buying or checking out some of the images take a look at the link below
This week we have been learning to create some ver basic video content for out YouTube channel!
We have some way to go to perfect it but content is now starting to pop up! A few new videos have gone live this week
And we have a new one coming out in 24 hours time where I edit an image using lightroom mobile to create the image you will see below !
So head over to our channel and give it a follow, would be great to have you come along as we start out on our adventure it would be great to have some likes and shares so on! And hope that you will stick with me as I learn and build my channel!
When life and business gets out of hand and you have so much to do there is very little time to get online to update everyone what we have been doing and what special offers we are currently running!
A little update while I have a few minutes.
Firstly we are running some new deals starting October 1st that will be up and running just for 14 days but I’m sure that people will love the deals and definitely will be something not to miss !
Another deal will be the “early booking deal” Book now for next month (November) and will give you double the digital images so that you can have more images to keep or use for Christmas gifts
More info coming soon or you can email us to ask for latest deals
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And to finish we have been shooting a lot of private client work lately, so we can’t post them up on our social pages or even our website
but we have some images from the last months editing room!
It was a pleasure working with Alana on a new shoot! She is definitely fun to work with and we managed to get some lovely images in our short shoot slot!
Normally we set aside a 3 hour window so that we get a number of outfits and a lot of poses in each outfit!
This shoot was a shorter shoot time of two hours so it tested us a little !
Taking into account that we had five shoots booked in so ten hours of booked shoot time and then getting ready for the next client it was a fast think on your feet day!
With Each client changing around 5 times some did more! But having lighting set up and keeping a constant flow of ideas is what made this happen !
With most shoots we plan out what’s going to happen so we know we get the shots! This shoot was a little more think on our feet ! Short notice new lighting small space!
But I think we managed it!
What do you all think here are a few of the images from the shoot definitely a mix of lovely images
Let us know what you think always welcome a comment !
I’ve been thinking the last few months where the money could be in this art of photography!
Some may say family portraits, weddings and baby photography.
I’ve looked at things the last few weeks and have seen that there are very few automotive photographers based in the UK and there is definitely a call for people wanting pictures of their pride and joy!
Not only the small business shoots in automotive but then there is the big fish working for companies shooting cars for sale or hire
Maybe even working for the main stream car companies like Ford or Mercedes who need images !
The hard part is can anyone who does photography have the ability to create pleasing automotive images that would make a client happy !
As people may know, I’m normally a portrait and boudoir photographer.. but at the weekend I set myself a small goal and took on the chance of shooting a car show !
I got some pretty good shots I think and managed to capture the beauty of a Ford Focus RS which was a beautiful car that truly captured my eye!
I think this could be something I may have to add to my list of potential shoots … With a little training I’m sure that I can get this down and give clients more than the quality work they are looking for at a great price !
Take a look at these images below and let me know what you think!
With everything in photography there is a fine line between right and wrong! and this is just my way of seeing things
Now having said that there is also a basic standard that we should work to! And once you have the basics you can then burn the rule book and get creative.
This first part of tech Thursday is going to be about stepping into the world of “auto” not a big favourite but the best place to start!
Auto setting on a Sony a7iii highlighted in green
The above image is set to p but auto would need to be selected
Setting a camera to auto will be one of the simple ways to start out in photography. This is the setting that most new photographers will look at just so they can get used to holding a camera and honestly Start playing about with taking images of everything from family cars plants and so on.
Auto is exactly that! It automatically sets the camera to give what the camera believes to be the best mix of iso, aperture and shutter speed. This is known as the exposure triangle all setting use this triangle but each setting may use it in different ways
Auto has it’s down sides though, to me this is that there isn’t any room for being too creative. With the settings like bokeh with the blurry background or low light moody shots!
This is because the camera will pick from all the light and dark points and come up with a mathematical equation this will then automatically set the iso aperture and shutter speed to give what it thinks is best! with the amount of light hitting the sensor
This can result in some good and bad results.
For example, if you are taking a picture of black car against a bright backlit skyline with a lot of white clouds the camera will add everything together over all the sensors pixels to try and get 50% grey now if there is more white than black in the shot the camera will nine out of ten times under expose the dark colours this would then result in the image of the car looking more of silhouette shot than a photo of a well exposed car and sky.
Now on the other hand, if the camera takes in the darkest points of the black car, the result will be the opposite the sky will become blown out over exposed leaving next no details of the clouds but this time the car should be pretty close to good exposure.
There is also a number of annoying factors such as the auto setting may use an iso that induces a grainy effect to the image as the higher the iso goes the more grainy an image will become! And this will lower the clarity of the finished image.
Also if there is movement in the image the camera doesn’t take this into account in auto so it may choose a shutter speed that’s slow so could result in blurry images
I’ve had images where the camera sets the aperture to f6.3 iso of 800 and a slow shutter speed this then had a grainy look but also had blurring… its okay if you want to capture a still object but not great for movement!
Upside to shooting auto is that you can get shooting right away without to much knowledge of the bigger details of the camera
This was where I worked more on Composition. Working out where in the frame to place the object or subject as this is a good thing to learn as soon as possible. I will go into the rule of thirds in a later post but just filling your frame and moving the subject left right up Down will give you a feel for what can be achieved and what looks good to you!
Also depending on the camera you’re using and the lens images and setting will be different
So go try set you camera to auto and take a few shots see how you get on!
This post is just simple outline over the next few weeks more posts and a deeper understanding of this setting will be posted
Adrian Day Photography 