You may not always enjoy winter... the biting cold and the seemingly bare landscape may be deterrents in your photographic pursuits. But look closely and there’s a certain beauty that can be captured on the short cold days as well! Before that, though, it is important to know what your equipment can and cannot handle.

Simple things like fast changing temperatures can play havoc with your camera. Take a look at these essential tips to ensuring good photos.

Keep your camera cold. It may seem like the smart thing to do, but keeping your camera warm when you are going to shoot in the cold for extended periods isn’t the smartest thing to do. Warming and cooling your camera will cause condensation and the resulting water could enter the camera causing damage.

Keep your batteries warm. Your camera will work fine in very cold temperatures as long as it has functioning batteries.  The cold can quickly zap the energy out of any battery, but warming them up can restore much of their power.  If you plan to shoot for long periods, you can use a rubber band and attach an artificial warmer (like gloves) to the battery compartment. It is also important to remember that your spare batteries have to be kept warm.

Warm your camera slowly when you return home. If you walk into the house with a cold camera, it will instantly become covered with condensation (assuming the house is warmer than the outside).  Anyone who has worn glasses in the winter will know exactly how that works! Some photographers will put their camera gear in zip lock bags and while that works fine, you can also leave all the equipment in the camera bag and make not open it for an hour or so. You can take out the memory cards in advance and use a card reader to view your photos if you must!

Keep your car cold. Yes, you read that right. Don’t start warming the car if you are going to going to drive to a location. If you are on a two-wheeler, you’re all set! Apart from condensation, there is another aspect to this tip. If you are dressed warmly and the car is cold, you won’t think much of stopping and stepping out unplanned. Think about it!

Yes, these are basic tips, but a quick once-over of these can be a good starting point to great winter photos. In the next article, we will see some tips to shooting great winter-scapes!

Photo: Thilakraj Rathinaraj

In the last article, we saw the basics that would help you to compose a photo better. We now delve a little deeper into the subject and see how best to make it interesting using aspects available around you.

Foreground interest

One way of making your pictures more visually arresting is by emphasizing the foreground. This not only provides a clear entry point into the picture – the bottom is an obvious place for the eye to start – but also adds depth and scale, which are important considerations when you are capturing a three-dimensional scene on a two-dimensional scene.

All sorts of natural features can be used as foreground interest: rocks on a lake shore, a chunk of driftwood on the beach, a road, wall, fence, trees and so on. Or if you cannot find anything you can create it by asking someone to pose in the foreground.

Wide-angle lenses are ideal for emphasizing foreground interest, simply because they exaggerate distance and scale. By moving in close to a boulder with a 28 mm lens, for example, you can make it loom large in the frame so it dominates the shot and creates a powerful composition. 

The vast depth of field wide-angle lenses offer at small aperture such as f/16 also means you will not have any problems keeping everything sharp, from the immediate foreground to the distant background. 

Photo: Anamitra Chakladhar 

Using lines

Lines are one of the most powerful compositional ‘tools’ at your disposal, simply because we cannot resist following them wherever they go. If you keep your eyes peeled as you are out and about you will find lines cropping up everywhere. A road, river, wall, fence, avenue of trees, row of telegraph poles, road markings, shadows, furrows in a ploughed field and many other things crate lines that can be included in your pictures.

The best results tend to be produced when you use lines to lead the eye into the scene and towards the focal point. You could stand on the banks of a river, for instance, and use a wide-angle lens so the river fills part of the foreground before snaking off into the distance. 

The direction the line is travelling is important because it affects the strength of the composition. Horizontal lines are restful and easy to look at because they echo the horizon itself, and suggest repose. Vertical lines, on the other hand, are more active so they give a picture tension and make it more challenging to look at. 

The most powerful lines of all are diagonals – they carry the eye across the scene so more of it is taken in. Ideally the line should travel from bottom left to top right because that is the way we naturally look at things. 

Finally, do not forget about converging lines, which create a powerful feeling of distance and scale due to the way they taper off into the distance. The furrows in a ploughed field are a good example. Again, for the best results use a wide-angle lens and include the vanishing point – the point where the lines appear to meet – in the background of your shot. 

You can take a look at some of the great photos in the Fotoflock Gallery as well to get some inpiration and ideas for your shooting. 

Photography and painting may have some things in common, but there are definite differences and advantages painters enjoy over photographers. For one, photographers cannot add things that don’t exist to a scene. But painters can do this. It is therefore imperative that photographers are sure about their composition before clicking. So we provide some pointers that will help you achieve just this.

Walk a bit

Shooting from an armchair isn’t recommended. Zoom lenses may have made us lazy, but believe us the best way to get a better composition is walking around the scene and finding a better position. A majority of amateur photographers seem to be afraid to get close to their subject, but it is vital that you fill the frame, and often you will find a picture can be improved immensely by taking a few paces forward.

Composition of a photo after shooting is an option, but the joy of getting it right the first time around is something else altogether. Legwork is equally important when it comes to finding the best viewpoint. It is easy to fire away as soon as you see something interesting, but nine times out of ten you will get a far better picture if you spend subject a few minutes wandering around and looking at your subject from different angles before deciding which one to use.

Above: Just looking at a subject differently can help achieve a better photo. Photo by Tosha Chitrodia

Do not automatically assume you have to take pictures with the camera at eye-level either. Try shooting form a slightly higher position every now and then, by standing on a wall or climbing up a ladder.

Alternatively, bend down, or stretch out on your stomach so you get a worm’s eye view of the world. By doing this you can create stunning pictures of the most mundane subjects, simply because we are not used to seeing things from such an odd position. Remember, composition begins with your feet. Only when you have discovered the best viewpoint can you start making other important decisions.

The focal point

Most pictures will have or should have a main point of interest. This is the focal point, and it serves two important purposes. Firstly, it is the element in the shot that the viewer’s eye is naturally drawn to. Secondly, it adds a sense of scale to your pictures.

For example, if you photograph a farming scene and there is a tractor chugging away in the distance, that tractor automatically becomes the focal point. The same applies if you photograph a hillside and there is a person or an animal halfway up it, or a seascape with a boat bobbing on the waves.

Including a focal point is not enough to create an interesting composition, though-the way you position it in the frame is equally important. Most photographers place the focal point slap-bang in the middle of the picture, but that is the worst thing you can do because the results tend to look very static and boring. A far better place is a third of the way into the shot, which is where the rule of thirds comes in…

In the photo above, the focus is supposed to be on the sheep, but because of the beams in the way, the entire impact is lost. Photo by Tosha Chitrodia

The rule of thirds

This age-old compositional device was developed by painters to help them achieve visual harmony, but it is used just as well by photographers as well. All you do is divide your camera’s viewfinder into nine equal-sized sections using two horizontal and vertical lines, so an imaginary grid is formed. You then compose the scene so the focal point is placed on one of the four intersection points created.

The photo to the left (above) is after applying the Rule of Thirds to it where the subject is placed at one of the 'golden points'. The photo on the right shows the same image where the subject is right in the middle. And the impact is huge. Photo by Tosha Chitrodia

The rule of thirds is also useful for positioning the horizon. Instead of putting it across the middle of the frame, where it splits the scene in half and creates static, lifeless pictures, you should place it one third from the top or bottom of the scene, so you are emphasizing the landscape or sky rather than giving equal weight to both. The only exception to this is if you’re capturing the reflections in a lake, say, and the symmetry created will work in your favor.

But remember, although it is called a rule, you should use it more as a guideline. Do not force your pictures to comply with the rule of thirds. In the right situation it works well, but if you overuse it your pictures will become very predictable.

Filters have been inherent to photography since the advent of SLR cameras. Perhaps when someone cracked their lens unintentionally, a filter was born! Despite advancements that may allow digital camera users to apply filter effects through the camera itself, a filter does have its advantages. But first, know more about each of them and what they are good for!

Glass or plastic?

Whether you decide to buy glass or plastic (CR39 optical resin) filters will depend mainly upon the amount of money you can afford to spend. Glass is undoubtedly superior in terms of optical quality, and being much tougher than resin, is more resistant to scratching. However, modern resin filters are made to high optical standards and they are capable of delivering excellent results at a fraction of the price-so much so that many professionals use them. 

Making the most of your filters

Now we have got the initial details out of the way it is time to look at what different filters are capable of and how to get the best possible results from them. 

Skylight/UV

Both these filters reduce atmospheric haze and cut out the blueness found in the light at high altitudes, so they are ideal for scenic pictures taken in mountainous regions. Being clear, they can be left permanently attached to our lenses to protect the front element-it is far cheaper to replace a damaged filter than a whole lens. The skylight filter also has a very slight warm tint which enhances the light. 

Polarising filter

No photographer should be without a polarizer – it is probably the most useful filter of all. Polarisers work by reducing the amount of polarized light entering your lens, and in doing so offer three distinct advantages: blue sky is deepened, glare on non-metallic surfaces such as foliage, plastic and paintwork is reduced and specular reflections in glass and water are eliminated so you can see through windows and into rivers. 

The effect of the polarizer can be controlled by rotating it in the mount or holder while looking through your camera’s viewfinder. You will see the sky go dark, then light, then dark again, reflections come and go and colour saturation change. Once you are happy with the result just stop rotating and fire away. 

You cannot just point the filter in any direction and expect miracles, though. When suppressing glare and reflections the angle between the lens and surface you are photographing must be around 30 degrees. This position can be found by moving around and checking the effect. Similarly, when photographing blue sky you should keep the sun at right angles to the camera.  Unfortunately, polarization is uneven across the sky, so if you are using wide-angle lenses you may end up with a darker band on one side of the picture. Beware of this and change camera angle if necessary. 

Something else you need to watch is the exposure. Polarisers lose around two stops of light, so if you are using slow film and a small lens aperture the shutter speed will be slow in all but the brightest conditions. If this is the case, mount your camera on a tripod to avoid camera shake. 

Finally, there are two types of polarizing filter available – linear and circular. If you use an autofocus SLR or any SLR with spot merering you need to use a circular polarizer, otherwise your camera’s integral meter will be fooled into setting the wrong exposure. A linear polarizer can be used safely with all other camera types.

Soft-focus filters

Whether you are shooting portraits, landscapes or still lifes, soft-focus filters are perfect for injecting a touch of atmosphere and romance into your pictures. They work by bleeding the highlights (the lightest parts of the scene) into the shadows, so fine details are suppressed, colours are muted and a delicate ethereal glow is created. 

For the best results photograph subjects that are either backlit or against a dark background, such as a subject in a white dress against a shadowy entrance. You can control the level of diffusion created by using different lens apertures: the wider the aperture, the softer the results. 

You can make your own soft-focus filters using a range of household materials – try smearing a tiny amount of Petroleum Jelly or spraying hair lacquer onto an old skylight filter. Alternatively, stretch a piece of black stocking over your lens (a technique favoured by Hollywood movie-makers in the 1940s), or breathe on the lens then wait for the ‘mist’ to clear a little before tripping the stutter.