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If there are colorful bluffs, harbors, or other landscape picture opportunities on your beach vacation, you want to capture them, of course. Not only that, but wouldn't it also be impressive to add some family member(s) to
shot and have people AND background in focus?
Set your F-stop for a high number (at least F-11, or at "infinity" or "landscape" setting of your camera). Position people in foreground, landscape in background. Focus on your human subject(s), while being at least 15 feet away (25 is even better, if you have a telephoto).
Adjust circular polarizer filter to obtain desired shade of blue in sky. Skip this step if you didn’t purchase a filter. Don’t worry, though. If you don’t like vividness of sky after print is developed, you can always take out a magic marker and color sky. (You didn’t hear that from me.)
Finally, gently squeeze shutter and… voila! A perfect “postcard” photograph.
5) Silhouettes
Silhouette beach vacation pictures (or, non-beach vacation pictures for that matter) produce one of most artistic and/or emotional-looking photographs possible. Most people never take silhouette photographs, and yet, they are just as easy as photographs taken during day light.
The best time to take silhouette photos is from approximately 1 hour before sunset, to ½ hour after sunset. Use evaluative or matrix metering (which is probably your default metering mode anyway), and focus on HUMAN SUBJECTS, with plenty of cloud-filled sky in background. Then compose shot, as desired.
Did I mention that sunset shots without clouds are fairly disappointing? Sort of like winning lottery and losing ticket.
The silhouette effect results from camera thinking overall scene is brighter than it is, and therefore under-exposes dark areas (human subjects).
To see sample photos and additional tips, check out http://www.best-family-photography-tips.com/beach-vacation.html .
Article courtesy of http://www.best-family-photography-tips.com , where you can see numerous sample pictures & photography tips on many subjects and events.
Copyright 2005 Robert Bezman. All rights reserved.
Robert Bezman is a professional photographer and owner of Custom Photographic Expressions. Robert has created http://www.best-family-photography-tips.com to help the digital photography users create better photographs. Robert has a blog at http://www.best-family-photography-tips.com/family-photography-news.html
