It all looks to be ok now, and I hope no one was trying to book a place on the photo course during the downtime.

There are plenty of spaces left, by the way, so please book your place if you wish to attend.

I’m looking forwards to the day, even if it does rain, and hopefully there will be around 15-20 photographers turning up for it.

I’ll be tweeting throughout the walk and will try and post a few pictures taken with my phone too.

So, 2.5 hours to go, the clouds are lifting a bit and it’s not raining yet. Stay tuned.

You can find all the info, and register for it here: http://worldwidephotowalk.com/oldham-en-uk/

Please don’t try and register through this site, you have to go to the official page at the address above.

It’s totally free and will be a good afternoon of photography for beginners and experienced photographers with a range of photo opportunities, from industrial remains to wildlife.

I hope you can join us for it.

I’ll be publishing mroe details once I have them, but I hope you will be able to join me as it should be an enjoyable afternoon of photography and socialising with other photographers from the surrounding areas.

So we are now into 2009. Hopefully you were on Santa’s ‘has been good list’ and you might have got a new camera or a new lens or maybe an accessory or two.

Have you tried them yet?

Well now is the time to set yourself some (belated) photography resolutions for 2009. Here are a few that I’ve made:

1. Perhaps the most important one is to regularly update this site. I am aiming for a new post each week.
2. I want to sell some of my images, whether it is as a framed print, or in electronic format as stock photography.
3. Learn how to use my flash gun properly.
4. Write a handbook to use with the photography courses I will be running.
5. Carry my Canon G9 around with me a lot more.

Some of these may be a bit more of a challenge than others, but those are the targets I am setting myself.

But for those of you just starting out in photography, these might be some good suggestions:

1. Dedicate a few hours a week to learning how to use your camera and it’s various features.
2. Pick a particular area of photography, like portraits or landscapes and concentrate on that area until you are more confident in it. Then move onto another area.
3. Join a camera club. They aren’t for everyone but it won’t hurt to give it a try. Most clubs will allow you to visit a couple of times before joining up so you can see what you think.
4. Join a web site like Flickr.com and share your images. It’s a great way to get constructive comments on your images and a great way to get inspiration.
5. Print some of your pictures, frame them and hang them on the wall.  Images take on a whole new look when you put them on the wall instead of look at them on the computer screen.

So there’s a few to get you going, but also remember to keep taking pictures. Try and take your camera with you a lot more and learn to see photo opportunities. With your camera with you, you can make the most of them.

I had the chance recently to take pictures of a football match between two teams from work. I wanted to use the opportunity to not only gain experience in this area, but also see if I could capture some images that my colleagues a work would be pleased with.

The first thing about sports photography is that you need to have reliable equipment. Spare batteries (fully charged) and plenty of space on several memory cards. Due to the fast pace of sports you are likely to take lots of pictures.

Equipment wise, well the press photographers you see at sporting events have big lenses for a reason. You need a fast lens. By fast I mean a wide aperture allowing you to use fast shutter speeds to freeze the action.  The other good thing about using a wide aperture is that you can use a narrow depth of field which makes sure any distracting backgrounds, like advertising boards, are blurred out as much as possible while keeping the subject of the shot sharp.

Other important equipment features would be a camera body that has a fast continuous shooting speed. Several frames a second will allow you to fire off rapid bursts of 4 or 5 frames giving you more chance of capturing that magic moment like a goal (as above) or another event that people may want to see again.

Another important bit of kit is warm clothes. In the winter at open grounds like football pitches the wind and the cold can soon make your hands go numb which makes taking pictures and adjusting settings all the more difficult. So wrap up warm!

So, you have the equipment, but it’s not just a case of pointing and firing off lots of shots. The key to producing great sports photos is to be able to read the action so you can better predict what is about to happen and be ready for it. Just like wildlife photography, where knowing your subjects behaviour gives you a much better chance of a great photo opportunity, knowing at least the basics of the rules of the sport you are watching, knowing which are the players who are more likely to provide you with the action shots and knowing what position on the pitch, track, court etc will give you the best opportunity to get a good shot.

For instance on a bright day, part of the football pitch might be over shadowed by the stands, making it darker. This means you might not be able to use as fast a shutter speed to freeze the action when the action is going on on that side of the pitch.

If there are crowds watching, there is a good chance they might be wearing the teams colours which will mean the players might blend in more with the background, so maybe a slightly higher view point for you pictures will help minimise that.

If your lens has a limited zoom range, you may not be able to get clear shots in certain places. Whether the action is too close or too far away, it might mean you have to accept you might miss some shots. So position yourself to reduce this as much as possible and give yourself the most coverage you can.

The good thing about sports photography, depending on what the sport is of course, is that you are likely to gets lots of opportunities during the game to take pictures. This gives you lots of practise to help perfect your technique. I really would advise you to go along to a local match and see what sort of shots you come back with. You never know, the players may even want to buy a print or two off you if you’ve captured their goal!

I have only just realised there was a problem and it looked like the site was gone. All fixed now and sorry about the balls up!

So, I thought I’d post a few links to some other web sites that not only have great images, but also have a great approach to photography.

The first is a site called sisters by a Photographer called Jason Lee. I saw a post about his work over on Strobist (another excellent site) and was impressed by the images of his two young daughters, who are not only cute kids, but seem very willing to pose for their dad in all sorts of fancy dress and other get ups. The images are great, lighting is superb as is the approach and theme of the collection. I wonder how happy they will be when their dear old dad brings out these pictures on their 18th birthdays in front of all their friends!

Next comes the site of Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir and in particular her self portraits. Not only are they great photos, but to be the person taking the picture too (obviously done by remote trigger or self timer) and setting up the shot takes a lot of skill.

My final link is to The Manipulator. No it’s not some freakish robot sent back from the future to alter the human race, it’s to the excellent work of Jill Greenberg who uses the digital darkroom (the computer) to produce fantastic images. This is top end commercial work and you can tell by the people she has got to photograph and the commercial work she has done that she is definitely a talent.

So there are three inspirational sites for you to look at. Hopefully you too will be inspired by them. I’d like to hear about photos that have inspired you recently, maybe we can build a little ‘inspiration’ section of this site.

Could you please share some info regarding the different lenses.

Now, lenses cover a huge area and can be quite technical when it comes to saying why one lens might be better than another. Plus there are lots of manufacturers of lenses, some will be available for some makes of cameras, others won’t so that adds extra complications.

If you want to find out how a camera lens is made, then I found this page which explains it.

So to start with, what are the different types of lenses. Well the two main types are prime or zoom lenses.

Prime Lenses

These are a fixed focal length, so there’s no zooming in and out with these. They are often a better quality lens optically than a zoom of similar length, and can quite often be expensive to buy due to the higher quality.

So why would you want a fixed focal length lens? Doesn’t that make it more restrictive?

Well, yes, it is more restrictive as you have to physically move to frame your picture, but the improvements in image quality and the reduced weight (usually) of a prime lens over a zoom make it worth while.

Zoom Lenses

These are lenses that give you a range of focal lengths. The term zoom lens doesn’t always mean you will be able to magnify the image, as you can get wide angle zooms with very short focal lengths, only a telephoto zoom will allow you ‘bring the subject closer’. So I guess that could be a third type, telephoto.

f numbers

A lens will have an f number. For a prime lens you will get a single f number, whereas a zoom lens may give you a range of f numbers, but it can still have a single f number. This f number is the maximum aperture you can use, as in the widest hole you can set of light to get in. When you buy your camera you may get a kit lens with it, usually a zoom lens. Let’s say with your shiny new DSLR you get an 18-75mm zoom lens. This means that the lens will go from 18mm to 75mm which is a good range for starters.  On this lens you may see it has something like f3.5-5.6 on it too. This is the aperture range that lens has and means that when the focal length is set to 18mm you will be able to use a maximum aperture (f number) of 3.5 but when you use the 75mm focal length you will only be able to use a maximum aperture of 5.6.

So what makes a lens a good one?

There are various factors which make lenses thought of as good. First off, and most importantly, will be optical quality. As the glass used in a lens is not flat, all sorts of problems can occur such as distortion when light passes through it.

This is when the image gets distorted in an unnatural way. Or certain portions of the image appear more distorted than others, usually nearer the edges. I won’t bore you with all the technical details of distortion (mainly because I don’t know them), but the better lenses have less distortion present, resulting in a better image. Better quality glass also produces better colour in your images, and will reduce the chance of getting a nasty lens flare in your image.

A better lens will be one that is able to focus on the subject quickly. At the cheaper end of the scale, lenses can take a while to focus on a subject and will often ‘hunt’ to find a focal point. Hunting is the term used when you see the lens going backwards a forwards several times until it finds something to lock onto. With the higher spec lenses, you usually get a wider aperture (smaller f number) which allows more light into the lens while it’s focussing and therefore helps the lens focus quicker. That is why you see all these sports photographers or nature photographers using these big expensive lenses. They need to be big to help get that wide aperture so they focus on the subject quickly, very important for the sports or wildlife.

So should I buy the cheapest lens I can find or save my pennies?

Well, for lenses, the saying ‘you get what you pay for’ is certainly applicable. You may think that buying a cheap lens that gives you a nice long focal length to get things nice and close is a good idea. I’m not saying don’t buy the cheap ones, you just need to know the limitations of that lens. If it’s all you can afford then that is what you’ll have to get. It may be very slow to use, as in slow to find it’s focal point, it may be made of cheap materials and may not stand up to knocks or the internals may prove problematic after some time, or the optical quality may be poor.

If you think about it, you tend to change your lenses less than you change the camera body, so it pays to save up and buy the absolute best lens you can afford. If you are getting a new camera and a lens, consider getting a slightly less expensive camera and spend more on a better quality lens, the rewards of having good glass are much more than having all the latest gadgets on the camera body.

Now the subject of lenses is a big one. I will try and sort some images out that explains some of the good and bad points about lenses so you can see for yourself what the differences maybe.

If you are considering buying a new lens to add to your kit lens to give more range or more flexibility then do your research. Try the second hand market to get a better lens for your money or ask other photographers what they use and look at their images so you can compare them.

Remember that your camera will require a specific fitting. Each brand will have it’s own fitting so make sure any lenses you try or buy are made for your fitting otherwise you may damage both the lens and the camera.

I hope that helps a bit Shani, but no doubt this will generate more questions which I will do my best to answer.

Would you like more ‘How I got the shot’ posts, or maybe some more technical information on camera functions. Maybe you’d like me to cover a particular area of photography, maybe macro or landscapes.

Maybe you would even like to share some of your own knowledge that may help other beginners learn.

I would prefer not to get into particular camera models as it may not benefit everyone, but anything to do with the fundamentals, technique, resources or anything that would be of use to anyone starting out in photography.

It’s your chance to ask me a question really. If I can answer it, I will write about it. If I don’t know the answer, it gives me a damn good excuse to learn about it myself and pass on what I learn.

So either ask a question by commenting, or using the contact form on this site. If you would like to contribute an article then please contact me via the contact form and we can sort it out.

I look forward to hearing from you….