Taking photos from an airplane can be easily done, but there are a few things to keep in mind to get better shots.

You’ll have to take the photos out of the plane’s window. However, a plane can often be unsteady and it usually vibrates.

If you place the camera against the window there’s a good chance your camera will be unsteady, so try and hold it steady and don’t place it directly up against the window.

Make sure your flash is turned off since it won’t be of any use anyway and it can cause reflections in the window. If you’d like to cut down on any natural glare or reflections you can use a lens hood if your camera lens allows for one.

If you can’t fit a hood on it, then you can cup your hand around the lens to cut down on the sun and reflections.

You might want to take the shots as early in the flight as possible in case the windows become cloudy or condensed from the outside weather. You should also use manual focus as the auto feature may not work as well since it might not know what you’re trying to focus on.

If you know the route your plane is taking you’ll have a good idea of what you’ll be flying over and approximately when. You can get some excellent views when the aircraft is turning or banking as well as when it just takes off and is landing.

Keep your eyes open for the unexpected. You may be able to capture some amazing cloud formations, bolts of lightning, the setting or rising sun, other airplanes, and dramatic changes in landscapes etc.

Seeing the world from above can provide you with some amazing sights and it’s well worth taking your camera with you on your next flight.

As well as being a good opportunity to practice, you can also add the photos to your portfolio for exposure and you could also present the happily married couple with the images as a gift, especially if they’re pretty creative.

The best way to do this is to make a plan and figure out where you’re going to be shooting from and what type of photos you’d like to take.

You have a lot of freedom here because the couple will also have an official photographer taking photos. This means you can let your imagination run a little wild.

Scouting out the wedding venue and the location of after-wedding shots and the reception area is definitely a good idea. This will help you prepare for the event as you’ll have a feel for the lighting conditions.

You can ask the couple if you can be seated near the front at both the ceremony and reception to get some images without the need of a zoom lens.

When it comes to the reception, it’s a good idea to be one of the first to arrive and take photos of people as they enter. When the lights do down later on, you could use a low-light zoom lens to take photos from your table.

Make sure you place your camera in a safe place if you plan on enjoying the part after you’ve taken your shots. Just because you’re taking shots of the wedding doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy yourself too.

Of course, if you have a date for the wedding, you may want to let them know that you plan on taking photos during the day and part of the night. However, you can still get the shots you need and enjoy the company of your date at the same time.

This helps you align the pictures so you know how to overlay them. Setting the camera for only one exposure so that it does not change between the pictures you take is a good idea. This helps you create a special kind of luminosity inside your pictures which will allow you to post-process them easily in case you don’t want to use a specific post-processing software feature.

The overlay is one of the most important aspects of panoramic photos. A single overlay mistake can destroy the whole photo taken from a wide angle.

Nobody wants a picture of the Grand Canyon with a white line in the middle caused by the absence of a correct overlay. The correct overlay for this type of picture is 30% but most of the professional photographers use the average 15%.

The right way to go is to experiment with your camera until you find the right overexposure spot. Increasing its value can diminish a too high color intensity the camera software will be forced to create in order to cover all the sides and corners of the picture.

Keeping the same level in all the shots becomes extremely important as you combine several images. You must not stress on this if you have only 4 or 5 photos to work with. However, if the number of photos increases to 40, keeping the level constant is a very important factor. Consider that the camera lens, no matter how performing, is made of curved glass and if you keep the level constant you will obtain exactly the same angle.

If you direct the camera 45 degrees lower, in the photo will appear distant objects like the mountains from the background which will be captured from a narrower angle than the main subject of the photo.

When taking only one shot it will not be a problem. But in the case of a panoramic picture this will create an effect impossible to repair. This happens because as you capture the scene from left to right you no longer have a wide exposure. Even more you may get distortional curved images created by the angle the light used to enter the digital camera.

Most of the digital cameras, except compact cameras, the “point and shoot” types, offer two types of files for storage: JPEG and RAW. Keeping in mind that the photographer is the one behind the final look of the picture, it is important to know what format to choose.

The most common and of course the most used file format in digital imaging is JPEG. The first aspect to be noticed about it is that JPEG offers a good balance between the quality of the image and its dimensions. This is why JPEG has become a standard in image story fulfilling the purpose it was created for.

This format uses a mathematical algorithm to compress the image achieving this with the minimum loss of image quality. Here is how this compression is done.

The compression algorithm proposed by Joint photographic Expert Group is based firstly on the sensibility of the human eye, which grows at the small variations of light and color. The compression algorithm offers a higher influence to the fine modifications of light in comparison with the modification of color.

How big is the image compression depends mostly on its content, meaning that the images with a lot of details or a lot of noise will be less compressed than the images with a simpler texture without the necessary details. A useful aspect of the JPEG algorithm is its capacity to have a variable compression rate that the user can manipulate freely.

It is good to know that a successive post processing of a JPEG image will reduce significantly the quality of that image. The first compression step when the image is transferred from the way the camera has stored it and transformed into the JPEG format you want to keep as memory, will not affect the quality. However, if you process the shot in question using Adobe Photoshop or any other photo editor software and save the result as JPEG, you lose an impressive amount of quality.

JPEG is good for pictures you want to take and send via email, especially if you need to send them in a smaller format. This is why this particular format is the favorite of news photography.

There are a few things you can try when hoping to get good shots. If you do capture that one magnificent photo, remember, it’ll be hard to print off in high quality if your camera’s settings are in low resolution.

True, you’ll be able to take more shots on the memory card, but you’ll have fewer options if you want to print them.

If you just plan on emailing the photos or posting them online then low resolution is fine. However, if you want to print them off, you should be using high resolution (bigger files and more memory used). This will give you more flexibility when cropping, and enlarging the images.

You don’t have to take just one shot at a time. If the camera allows you to take continuous photos you should take advantage of the option. This will give you better odds of capturing a perfect photo.

You should try and clear off old photos whenever possible. If you realistically know you’re never going to use the shot for anything, there’s not really any reason to keep it. If you keep everything you shoot, you’ll have an awful backlog and will need a lot of digital memory to keep them. It’s a good idea to load the images often to your computer screen to see which ones are worth keeping. It’s very hard to tell just by looking at the images on the camera’s screen.

Take the time to read your user’s manual and practice taking photos in different scenarios and lighting conditions. If you do this you may be able to turn a good photograph into a great one.

The background is very important for this type of shot. The rainbows are not solid so they will have to be captured on a background that will enhance their appearance.

Ideal for this purpose would be a blurry background filled with dark colors (dark clouds, mountains, rocks). There are situations in which you cannot change the background but you can modify the angle from which you take the shot, focusing it on the part of the rainbow visible on the best background.

The composition of this type of picture will require a lot of attention. The rainbow is a spectacular phenomenon but the surroundings can enhance its beauty.

As positioning goes, it is very important to accurately frame the rainbow and the scenery inside your picture. Consider the main attraction points and keep in mind the rules of the composition.

The space limits of the rainbow – the places where the rainbow reaches the earth and the sky – are very important and you must capture them inside the photo.

Lenses used for such a photo can be very different. You can experiment using several types so you can see which one gives the best result. The wide angle lenses can offer you very impressive images but also the focalization on a certain point. The focus must be placed on the points where the rainbow intersects different composition elements.

You must offer a lot of attention to the subject. The background is underlining it but capturing the rainbow in a flawless picture will draw attention on certain elements from the background creating an even more interesting picture.

Multiple rainbows are a rare event. If you happen to come across one or to meet a rainbow that has an extra layer, make sure you capture both and your picture will become even more spectacular.

If you own a polarizing filter, try and experiment with it and see what kind of effects you get. In the picture will appear different color saturations, reflections or contrast levels which can influence the image and underline the rainbow.

You should know that some apertures can have a small impact on the rainbow. If you choose a small aperture, the image will have a larger depth bringing the subject even more in the center of attention.

When shooting the landscape, the camera must be steady and this is even more important when you capture a rainbow. So remember to take a tripod with you when you go hunting for rainbows.

If you leave your primary subject out of focus, or even the whole image for that matter, you can often produce some very interesting and dreamy photos. It’s not hard to do and you might be surprised at how effective some of these photos might turn out to be.

If you want to focus on something that seems unimportant in the scene you can open the camera’s aperture setting wide and this will produce a narrow depth of field. It’s a good idea to focus on an object or a person that’s behind or in front of your primary subject.

This will leave your main subject out of focus while a different part of the image will be in focus.

If you’d like to make the whole photo out of focus, you can focus on something that’s well in front of or beyond the main subject.

Using a wide aperture for this method is also recommended and it’s a good idea to use the camera’s manual focus mode. If you use the auto focus, the camera will try to find something to focus and lock in on.

You’ll have to experiment a bit if you want the whole image to be blurry. If the image is too far out of focus you probably won’t be able to recognize what your subject is. The key to taking an out-of-focus photo is to still be able to recognize what’s in the image, but it’s blurry enough to create a dreamlike effect and mood.

It takes its time to load in the exposures but it does more than makeup for that time thanks to the excellent results that it produces.

Even the default images that the HDR Express comes up with (when you command it to merge and edit chosen images) are excellent and require just a little tweaking. In fact the results are so good that one needs to spend minimum time tweaking the images in Photoshop.

The software works in 32 color bit and has a fantastic balance of color and the white balance is nearly perfect too.

If one is not completely satisfied with the images thrown up by the HDR Express, one needs to adjust 10 sliders that help modify histogram, brightness, highlights, shadows, black point, contrast, saturation, white balance, warmth and tint. Usually very minor adjustments need to be made to get the perfect image.

As the software website claims, HDR Express is a sure game changer that demystifies HDR Photography.

Just about any time of the year is good for capturing good shots of bird. It really depends on where you live and what the migration habits of the birds are. But you can often find just as many in the winter as you can in the summer.

As the saying goes, “The early bird catches the worm.” This means the best time of the day to get some good photos could be pretty early in the morning when most birds are pretty active.

This is also a good time for lighting as the sun isn’t at its strongest, making for pretty even light. A couple of hours before sunset can also be a good time.

If the birds are in your backyard you don’t really need any special lenses. Zooming in a little bit will often help get better photos though. Unless you’ve got really steady hands you should probably be using a tripod to keep the camera stabilized.

You might also want to set the camera up close to a feeder and use a remote control to set off the shutter.

If you’re focusing on one area, such as a feeder or a birdbath, you can pre-focus the camera at that location. If you’re holding the camera then manual focusing is a good option.

If you shoot in the aperture priority mode you’ll be able to control the depth of field. If you’re taking photos of birds in flight then the manual focus is definitely the best and you should set the shutter speed.

As long as you have a good view you can even get some great shots of visiting birds from inside the house. You may want to set up a feeder close to a window to attract some feathered friends. You shouldn’t have a problem as long as the glass is clean and you don’t use a flash. Using a polarizer may help could down on any glare.

Generally, if your whole photo image is blurry then it’s usually the result of camera shake. This means the subject, foreground, and background are all out of focus. There will likely be no sharp points in the image.

If you see a ghost, or a double image, then the chances are good that the photo suffered from camera shake when you pressed the shutter down. You might not see two complete images that are the same, but you might notice the edge of the subject has been produced twice.

If there is motion blur in the photo, which means it looks like your subject is moving, then it’s also a good bet that the camera was moving during the exposure period. If your subject or topic was a still-life one and it appears to have motion, then you’ll know the camera moved for sure.

The best way to solve camera shake is to stabilize the camera as much as possible. Some digital cameras have a stabilizing option on them. You may also want to use a tripod or learn how to hold the camera as steady as possible.

When your photos suffer from poor focusing, you’ll usually notice that your subject is out of focus and another part of the image is in focus. Look closely and if you find this is the case, it means you’ve focused on the wrong thing. The best way to solve this is with practice. You may also want to use the manual focus option just in case the auto focus is locking in on the wrong part of the image.