On photo-taking

Well April has gone past, and so has the 30 days macro challenge. Thank you so much to everyone who commented on my photos or gave me feedback. I really appreciate it!

As expected I didn’t get to post every day of the month, and I didn’t end up with 30 macro photos, but I’m very happy with what I managed to do. I first joined in the challenge just for fun, but as it progressed I started to get more and more into it. I started bringing my camera with me everywhere I go, and started to pay attention to things that I didn’t even notice before. Like how fallen leaves can look rather pretty, or how knitting needles can look like artwork, or how some things look even better in black and white.

It seems that I’m drawn towards nature shots. I guess the good thing with nature shots is that I don’t have to pose them, I just have to find a good angle 🙂 Plus it tied in quite well with Project Spectrum‘s “earth” theme.

The other day I was digging up some of my bookmarked photography links, and I thought I’d put them up here.

• Product photo tips — A good bunch of tips on good photo taking, like lighting, background, etc. This tutorial is aimed at making product shots for selling on etsy/ebay, but I think they’re very relevant as well for us who take photos of our knitting/craft projects for our blogs.
• 21 ways to shoot better photos — Some good tips on how to make your photos more interesting, something I’m still learning!
• Pink Chalk Studio’s Photography 101 — Great description on how to process your photos after you shoot them, like adjusting colours and contrast. Kathy’s way of doing it is pretty much the same as how I process my photos, except that she explains it much better than I could. I use Photoshop Elements (sort of a “lite” version of Photoshop) to process my photos, which is more than enough for what I need. Another one that I’ve had the pleasure of trying out recently is Picnik, which is an online photo editor, does cool things and can be linked to your flickr account as well.

Well I hope some of you find these useful!

Happy Mothers Day to all the mums, hope you have a lovely weekend!