Shooting outside presents amateur photographers with a host of problems, but one of the biggest issues has to be the sun. However, when you learn to work around it, it can actually become your friend.

Each time of day presents its own problems with shooting in the sunlight. For instance, shooting in the mornings or late afternoons you deal with a squinting subject if they face the sun, and if you face the sun you are going to deal with glare. If you shoot in the middle of the day, the direct sunlight can cause a host of severe shadows that will block some of the finer details of your subject.

The best options for shooting is morning or afternoon so long as you keep the sun to the side for both you and your subject, but even then you can deal with shadows you may not want. The simplest solution is actually use a flash during the day to help fill in some of those shadows.

If you plan on taking a lot of daylight photos, you may want to invest in a reflective disc to help even out the lighting.  The issue with this is you usually need another person to hold it so that you can have them move around as need be to get the best solutions to your problems.

The key thing to remember is that the sun isn’t your enemy, but instead take advantage of some of the benefits you can get only when you shoot out in the great outdoors with the ultimate light source.

Shelton Muller’s new video “Playing with Time” looks at how to use aperture, shutter speed, and  flash to “play with time” when taking photographs. Understanding your shutter is your key to understanding how time can be altered in a single frame.

Any time you see a professional photo shoot of a model or actor, have you noticed how there may be things in the background, but at all times the person is the focus of the image. If it’s an ad for lipstick, then the lips are the focus. Pictures of flowers in a field? In general it doesn’t matter what the subject of the photo is, but the whole point is that you want to reduce the distractions as much as possible.

While some distractions can be removed through cropping the image once you get it on your computer, the less items you start with in the background the better. Of course this isn’t always going to be possible as the everyday world is filled with all sorts of little things to distract in the background.

In the picture below, I took a quick shot of one of my dogs one day, and it never fails that people inevitably ask me about one aspect of it.

It never fails, but every person I have ever show this picture to has asked me about the phone the window ledge.  (it was there because at the time it was the only place in my house it could get a signal)  This is a perfect example of a bad photograph as the dog should have been the focus, but in my defense it was an off-the-cuff, oh he looks cute, photo opportunity.

If I had had the time, I would have removed the phone and sat at a different angle to get less of the table on the right edge of the shot, and that is even after editing.

This is a perfect example of how shooting the photo with as few distractions as possible is always the better option than trying to correct things in editing because some things simply can’t be fixed.  Always try to remember what the true subject of your photo is and make that the focus of the image you take.

When buying a camera, most people concentrate on the actual camera, and they don’t take into account the accessories. If there is any one piece of equipment that every photographer, no matter what their skill level, should have, it’s a tripod.

No matter how steady you think your hand is, there is always going to be at least few images that you are going to want to shoot that would benefit from the use of a tripod.  From shooting landscapes to family reunion group shots, and especially anything shot at night, a tripod is going to help you greatly with keeping the camera steady while taking the picture.

While most people are familiar with the traditional telescoping tripods that take up a lot of physical space when extended, there are a lot more options now like the Joby Gorillapods (pictured to the right) that are perfect for tabletops, and even feature flexible legs that you can wrap around other items such as poles if you are shooting on location.  And of course one of the biggest benefits of these smaller style setups is that they will easily fit in a camera bag, backpack or shoulder bag.

If you find yourself without a tripod, remember there are several things you can do to steady yourself a bit more.  Leaning against a wall, tree or other sturdy object will remove some shaking.  Failing anything to lean against you can go down on one knee to use your other knee as a makeshift surface to prop your elbows on.  If you must stand, then if you take of a bit of a wider stance you will be able to balance yourself easier.

No one likes blurry pictures, and depending on your shooting environment these tips can make all the difference.

This video shows you how you can capture travel photos that have meaning to you and that show your own unique vision of the places you visit. Our newest team member Photographer Helen Bradley explains how to pare down your camera kit to just the basics and shares some ways to capture images that are unique and creative by understanding what captures your eye in the scene you are viewing.

Back in the days when we shot pictures onto film (yes, we know some of you still do), you would have to make a decision as to what speed you wanted.  Commonly you would see on the film boxes “100″, “400″, “1000″ and so on.  While that part of the decision making process has gone away, setting your ISO to get the best image is still essential.

First off, we wish we could tell you that ISO stands for something incredibly sexy, but, alas, it stands for “International Organization for Standardization”.  Besides its boring name, this can be one of the most important determining factors to whether or not your pictures will turn out well as it determines how fast your shutter opens and closes to capture the image.

The lower the number, i.e. 100 or 200, the faster the shutter operates.  This is the optimal setting for when you are out in bright, sunlit days as it won’t take long for the camera to capture the subject in that lighting condition.  As you are get into darker lighting conditions, that is when it can become tricky.

In theory you should bump your ISO settings to the higher numbers for the darker the setting, but the problem with this is that allows for more “digital artifacts” to appear in the pictures.  This will appear as grainy borders on faces, hands and so on, making it rougher to get a good edit when you are later processing the image.

Optimally you want to use a flash for these settings so you can continue to keep the settings around 100 or 200, but if that isn’t possible, you’re probably going to be better off setting the camera to auto and letting it decide what is best for the environment you are shooting in.  Just remember, if you attempt to shoot at those lower ISO settings without a flash, you’re going to probably need a tripod for how long the shutter will stay open to compensate.

Don’t be scared of the ISO settings, they can actually be your friends!

One of the most misleading things about digital cameras is the stated number of megapixels.  These numbers have been going up and up with each passing year, but that isn’t always the best thing for the quality of your photos, especially if you’re buying a point and shoot compact camera.

We’ve all seen cameras that boast about the number of megapixels it has, but what exactly is that number, and what does it mean?  The simplest explanation is that the company took the largest size it can save a photo at, and then they multiply the number of pixels width wise by the number of pixels height wise.  So if a camera says it shoots at 10 megapixels, it means that the largest image it can shoot is usually going to be around 3648 x 2736.

While this sounds like a lot, and it is, if your camera doesn’t have a large enough sensor you will end up with a lot of potential “noise” and “artifacts” in the shot.  These can potentially make the photo look grainy, blurred or any other number of potential problems.  So while your first instinct may be to select the supposed highest resolution the camera offers, you actually may be better off going with a lower setting so that you can increase the clarity.

It is also a matter of what format your camera saves the images to.  The smaller the file size, the more compression the format uses and that could lead to even more image quality problems.

One of the final factors to consider is where you will be using the image.  If you plan on making a print of it, then yes, you do want to go with the higher file size and as little compression as possible.  If you are only going to be using it on a blog, showing it to friends on a screen and so on, then you are fine with higher compression rates and lower resolutions.

Picking a camera isn’t that difficult really, it just seems like it some days.