I'm not a pro photographer, but I do love learning about photography techniques, technicalities, and creativity. I have spent a lot of time reading up on these aspects, and figured that I should share whatever I find with the world. Below is a collecting of ideas, tips, and sample photos that I have gathered in my quest to be a better photographer.

Pretty much anybody who has used the internet knows how to find a good deal. With photography, sometimes the best deals can be found in used or refurbished gear. I bought my Canon 50D body and two lenses as refurbished, and am glad I did. In all, I saved a few hundred dollars, and got the exact same equipment with a shorter warranty. My favorite places to buy used/refurbished items from are Adorama and B&H.

Another method I use is to find good quality third party hardware. Buying Canon brand equipment gets expensive fast. The upsides are you know that the build quality is high and that it will work with your camera. But many times you can get just as good or better equipment via third parties. The main thing to watch out here is for well known brands and online reviews. If something looks too good to be true, it likely is. Good places to start looking for this equipment are Adorama, B&H, Amazon, and Meritline (very cheap, but sometimes good).

Reading about photography tips and techniques is great, but actually using them is the goal. If you are like me, you may find it hard to build some of the techniques into your photography habits. To help me remember to actually use the tips, I have created reminders (in my case I'm using iCal), so that periodically my computer automatically reminds me about what I may have forgotten. Some of the tips I currently have setup as reminders include the rule of thirds, benefits of lighting (front light for color, back light for shape, side light for texture), and tilting the camera to see the entire subject (instead of always holding it level).

If you read anything about how to take better photos, you will undoubtedly hear about the rule of thirds. Basically the rule of thirds comes down where you place your main subject in the frame. By utilizing this technique, your photos can instantly gain a huge amount of power. Suddenly, you can really tell a story with your photograph, and your viewer's eye naturally see the scene for what it really is. See some examples below.

	In this photograph, Nala is running from right to left, and she is more or less centered in the frame. It's not a bad picture, but it doesn't have a lot of life to it. 1/800 seconds, f/10, 220mm focal length, ISO 100
	In this photograph, Nala again is running from right to left, but this time she is in the right third of the frame, with the snowy field in the left two thirds of the frame. By using the rule of thirds, Nala has room to run in the photo, and your brain can easily imagine her doing just that. This photograph tells a much better story than the first. 1/800 seconds, f/10, 220mm focal length, ISO 100

A large downside to digital photography compared to 35mm photography is the size of the sensor. In point and shoot cameras, the sensors are tiny, and when millions of pixels are packed onto them, the quality often suffers. DSLRs have larger sensors, but often they are still not as large as 35mm cameras. For cameras with APS-C size sensors (like the Canon 50D), there are specially designed lenses that bring the back element as close as possible to the sensor. The main benefits to this include wider angles, smaller/lighter lenses, and lower cost. The main downsides include the inability to use with full frame (higher end) DSLRs, less compatibility with accessories (including no compatibility with teleconverters), lower quality glass, and larger f-numbers (slower lenses). You will definitely want to weight these pros and cons when you are looking at Canon EF-S, Nikon DX, Sigma DC, Tamron Di II, etc. lenses.

There are many items that you will likely add to your DSLR equipment bag, but one of them that most people doesn't think about is silica gel. Why silica gel? Because it eats moisture, and moisture can be bad for your gear. Imagine if your camera has been sitting in your bag for a while after using it in the rain. You pull it out, take a picture, and get foggy results due to moisture on the lens or sensor. Silica gel will help prevent that kind of situation. You could buy little bags of it, but I would recommend Pelican Silica Gel which can be re-used forever simply by baking it in the oven to remove the moisture it has worked to hard to suck up.

One thing that point and shoots do very well is Macro photography. My S5IS could focus on an object that was touch the front of the lens! With DSLRs, it's a little more difficult. The best method is to use a good Macro lens that lets you stay away from your subject, but still get in close. Unfortunately, those lenses cost hundreds of dollars and add a lot of weight to your bags. A great alternative is extension tubes. In short, these tubes don't have any glass in them, they just move the lens further away from the sensor. This means the lens cannot focus to infinity, but it can focus much much closer to the object. For instance, a 50mm lens with 34mm of extension can focus only a few inches away compared to 18 inches. Below you can see the results of a Canon 50mm 1.8 with the 21 and 13 mm extension tubes from this $50 set (also available for Nikon mounts).

Here is a close up of some roses I got my wife for Valentine's day. Without the extension tubes, the closest I could get is about 18 inches away. With the extension tubes, the lens was about 3 inches from the flowers. Notice how the depth of field is very small, even with a f/5 aperture. RAW file 0.4 seconds, f/5.0, 50mm focal length with 34mm of extension, ISO 125

Anyone that has taken a photo with the built-in camera flash knows what horrible things it can do. Suddenly your "let's remember this moment" turns into "what happened then?" The best thing you could do to prevent this (while still getting a good low light shot), is to purchase a hot-shoe (or handheld) flash. Unfortunately, those cost a minimum of $100 for a halfway decent flash. On the other hand, if you want to be a bit crafty, you can build a flash diffuser for your built-in flash. The diffuser will bounce around the light a bit, making your flash photos look more natural. Some good options include:

• Simple business card reflector
• Film canister diffuser
• Flash bounce diffuser - this is what I chose to build

Alternatively, there are a few commercially available options out there, but those won't be nearly as inexpensive as a do-it-yourself solution. Below you will see my results of building a diffuser. All of the images were taken via a Canon 50mm 1.8 lens from approximately 5 feet away (exposure compensation is -2/3). None of the photos have been post processed (except for converting to JPEG format). Click on the images to see larger versions.

	This photo was taken with no flash, just a lamp (compact fluorescent bulb) as a light source. The focal point for all three images is the MacBook Pro label. Notice how the long focal length of this photo causes the logo to look a little blurred. This may have been solved with a shutter release cable and mirror lock-up mode. Colors look natural, but I don't like how the glossy screen is unevenly lit. RAW File 0.8 seconds, f/4.5, 50mm focal length, ISO 200
	This photo was taken with the pop-up flash. The image is blown out, flat looking, and just plain unattractive. The fast shutter speed eliminated the blurriness of the logo, but the flash caused the glossy screen to show some reflections. RAW File 1/60 seconds, f/4.5, 50mm focal length, ISO 200
	This photo was taken with the pop-up flash, which had my home-made diffuser attached. Notice how the image is the darkest of the three. To compensate I could have turned up the flash exposure a bit, but I wanted direct comparison photos. The colors are very nice, the depth has been restored, and the logo is perfectly in focus. Also, notice how the screen is black all the way across. A little post processing to brighten this up, and you have the best photograph of the three. RAW File 1/60 seconds, f/4.5, 50mm focal length, ISO 200

If your camera supports it (every DSLR I have seen does), then I would suggest shooting in RAW format. In that format, the image file stored on your memory card is exactly what was captured by the camera, with a bit of setting information for easier processing. The main downsides to this are that you often need special software to read RAW files (web browsers cannot display them, but the latest versions of iPhoto can), and they are very large (you will fill up your memory crd much faster and it will take longer to view images on your computer). But for anyone who wants the ultimate control over the end result, RAW is the way to go. With a RAW file, you can easily make non-destructive adjustments that can bring out details, change colors, etc, and then export to JPEG with only minimal quality loss. On the other hand, shooting in JPEG means your image is compressed in camera, and when you save whatever changes you have made to the photo, it's compressed again! See below for what RAW allowed me to easily accomplish with a photo of my beautiful wife.

This photo was taken in a room where the lights were a mixture of fluorescent, tungsten, and others. The dominant light was tungsten, but because of the mixture, the camera had a hard time choosing a proper white balance (I left the camera to auto calculate white balance, since I knew that I could change it later with RAW). Also, I left the picture style (a Canon feature to change certain settings based on the type of photographs being taken) on standard. While Alicia still looks wonderful, the yellow tint makes the photo less pleasing. RAW File 1/20 seconds, f/5.6, 235mm focal length, ISO 1250

With the Canon Digital Photo Professional software (comes with the Canon DSLRs), I changed two simple settings: the white balance was changed to tungsten and the picture style was changed to portrait. The resulting image looks much more realistic and flattering. All this with no loss of original photo data, so I could spend more time and enhance the picture even further if I wish. RAW File 1/20 seconds, f/5.6, 235mm focal length, ISO 1250, modified in CDPP

This is not something I read on any photography websites, but rather learned through first hand experience. Many lenses these days have image stabilization built in. This is undoubtedly a wonderful feature, especially on telephoto focal lengths. However, if every lens you have uses this feature, you will begin to rely I on it (I sure did). This isn't the worst thing to rely on, but it does reduce your photographic effectiveness with a non-stabilized lens, and actually even with the stabilized lens. I would suggest picking up a non-stabilized lens, maybe in the 50mm range (my 50mm 1.8 was my first non stabilized lens) and start shooting. At first you may find it hard to get a sharp photo while you get used to not having the image stabilization crutch. I had a hard time getting a sharp photo at 1/100 seconds, which should be more than fast enough of a shutter on a 50mm to compensate for typical shakiness. But over the following weeks, I found my photos getting sharper. In fact, I could suddenly take sharp photos at 1/30 seconds. When switching back to my IS lenses, I can now get sharper photos at slower shutters on those too. Of course I still look for lenses with image stabilization, but now I feel confident that I don't require it to take great photographs.

The depth of field of your photographs is the area that is in focus. Depending on your lens focal length, distance to subject, and aperture, more or less of the photo will be in focus (insert link to wikipedia). By adjusting these three things, you can lead your viewers eyes to your subject, while blurring/hiding parts of the scene you may not want to remember. This can lead to some dramatic photographs, especially with portraits and pet photos. Moreover, every lens has a hyper-focal distance, which basically means the entire scene can be in focus. It's a great idea to memorize some common hyper-focal distances for your lenses (for instance, with a 50mm lens at f/5.6, focusing the image xx feet away is the hyper-focal distance) for when you are out shooting landscapes. Even better may be printing out a cheat sheet of common hyper-focal distances on the back side of a white balance paper (two uses in one!).

This might be obvious to some, but if you are taking photos to test out new equipment, settings, or techniques, you should really take time to study those photos in depth. Look at lighting, colors, depth of field, details, background, etc. Learn what you like, and what you don't like. Then try to reproduce the photo keeping those elements you like, and replacing those that you don't. Keep trying until you get that "perfect" photo, and then try some more. Each time you should study not only the photo, but also similar photos in the batch. This is how I have learned which settings work in which environments, and has allowed me to think a lot less about those settings when taking similar photographs. Remember, shooting in digital means you have the freedom to shoot unlimited photos, and delete all those you don't like.

If you are looking to take your low light photography to the next level, the best thing you can do is purchase an external flash. There are a lot of options out there, but what you will really want is something that can be aimed away from your subject. This is because you are going to want to bounce the flash from ceilings, walls, etc. to get a more natural feel to your photos. Moreover, not only can tiling the flash help with bouncing, but so can swiveling it so you get angled bounces. Combining these two movements lets you get very creative, to the point where you can provide light from almost any angle, giving you complete control over shadows and highlights. See below for some examples of what can be done with a bounced flash (in this case, a Canon 430 EX II). Also see this very in-depth article on external flash units.

	These four photos are taken of an unlit candle in a dark room. The camera is positioned about 4 feet from the candle, and set on a tripod about 3 inches taller than the camera. In this first shot, I pointed the speedlite straight at the candle. Notice how there is a lot of white reflection (overexposed), and overall the colors feel a bit unnatural. Also notice the sofa in the background is pretty dark due to the room only being lit by the flash. RAW File 1/60, f/5.6, 55mm focal length, ISO 200, Canon Speedlite 430EX II
	In this shot, I tiled the speedlite up 60 degrees, but kept is pointing straight. Here the light from the flash is bouncing off of the wight ceiling, and back down upon the candle. Instantly we see a tremendous difference. The light reflection back to the camera is minimal, the colors look much nicer, and the couch is lit up more. Plus, notice the reflection of the candle in the recently cleaned table top. This photo is very nice, but it still felt like it could have been improved. RAW File 1/60, f/5.6, 55mm focal length, ISO 200, Canon Speedlite 430EX II
	For this next shot, I tilted the head of the speedlite back down a bi, to 45 degrees, but also swiveled it to the left 75 degrees. Now, not only is the light bouncing off the ceiling, but it's also bouncing off a brown wall (giving the color a slightly warmer hue). The big differences to notice here are the way the light reflects off the glass is a more natural over-the-shoulders feel. Plus the warmer colors are slightly more pleasing. RAW File 1/60, f/5.6, 55mm focal length, ISO 200, Canon Speedlite 430EX II
	Just for illustrative purposes, I swiveled the head over to the left 75 degrees (keeping it up 45 degrees), and got this photo. It's obviously very similar to the previous photo, with the lighting and shadows swapped. Both photos are equally good, it's up to the photographer to choose which lighting scheme to keep for this particular photo. However, if the camera wasn't an equal distance from both side walls, we would see different results from bouncing the light from the left or right, so make sure to try all your options before choosing that final photograph. RAW File 1/60, f/5.6, 55mm focal length, ISO 200, Canon Speedlite 430EX II

When looking over a set of photographs (such as a weekly Digital Photography Challenge, one thing becomes very clear to me: the best photos not only have a great main subject, but the background is often what really sets them apart. I'm not just talking about a blurred background with appropriate depth of field usage (although this is often important). But rather, distractions (or lack thereof). Before you hit the shutter, make sure there aren't extra people, cars, buildings, power lines, or anything else that doesn't seem to belong. I would rather take a few extra minutes waiting for a clutter-less shot that hurry and regret the decision later. However, there are times when waiting just won't help, and in those cases, it may be best to create your own background. Some things I have used are pillows, sheets, or even a blurred printout of leaves. Anything that draws your viewers' eyes to your main subject will work. See below for some examples of how distracting a background can be, and how important it is to have the right color background.

	This is a pretty extreme example, but it gives a great idea of how distracting a background can be. The viewer's eyes don't know if they should look at the flowers or the DVD rack. 1/60, f/2.2, 50mm focal length, ISO 200, Canon Speedlite 430EX II bounced off ceiling
	I then draped a light blue blanket over the dvd rack. This produces a relatively clean background, but if you notice the flowers now look underexposed. This is a combination of having a really light background with the camera exposing the scene differently. 1/60, f/2.2, 50mm focal length, ISO 200, Canon Speedlite 430EX II bounced off ceiling
	I then switched the blue blanket for a green sleeping bag. The corrected the exposure, and produced a much more pleasing photograph over all. the main problem is the background is still a bit distracting with the lines, but that could easily be taken care of with image editing software later. 1/60, f/2.2, 50mm focal length, ISO 200, Canon Speedlite 430EX II bounced off ceiling

If you look at most people's photo albums, you'll see nearly every photo taken from eye level. While that's fine and natural, it does get a bit old after a while. A great way to change that is trying to photograph subjects at multiple angles. Taken one at eye level, one from the top, one from the ground, etc. Suddenly, you photos will be given more life and will become more intimate. For example, see how the different angles of the same flower below give it way different personalities.

	First we have a photo of the now blooming iris next to my house, from above. While not a terrible photo, it has many distractions which make it less than pleasing. The details of the ground are relatively visible, and you can see the side of the house (despite my best efforts to avoid it). MOreover, by looking down at the flower, you are given a sense of power over the flower, which somewhat removes you from the flower RAW File 1/1000, f/5.6, 50mm focal length, ISO 200
	Next is the same iris, but this time looking at it from the side. You can see how the background has suddenly become less cluttered, and you have a feeling of being more in touch with the flower. This photo really draws your eyes to the flower, instead of jumping around to look at the other elements of the photo. RAW File 1/1000, f/5.6, 50mm focal length, ISO 200
	The third perspective used is from near ground level, looking up at the iris. This can be a fun shot, as it makes the viewer seem small. Now the flower has the power as you are looking up to it. Again, the background is clean, without many distractions. I wouldn't suggest every photo in your album be from this angle, but it's a great way to change things up. RAW File 1/1000, f/5.6, 50mm focal length, ISO 200
	Finally, we see the same perspective as the previous photo, but this time in a portrait orientation. Rotating the camera 90 degrees really works well for this type of shot (especially a flower photo), as it gives the viewer more stem to look at, extending the flower even further above the viewer. RAW File 1/1250, f/5.6, 50mm focal length, ISO 200

As I mentioned above, shooting in RAW gives you the ultimate in flexibility to process your photos later. One of the things that can be hard to get a hang of is what level of sharpening to use. For me, I found that I often need to sharpen more than I think necessary, especially if I am going to convert the photo to jpeg to share on the web. My current technique is to sharpen to what looks good, then up it another level or two. Furthermore, if you are going to resize the photo for the web, be aware that some programs do a much better job of keeping the sharpness of your photo than others. My resizing tool of choice is GraphicConverter with the Lanczos 3 algorithm (I seem to get the best results from that algorithm with most photographs). If you want to learn even more about how to properly sharpen, I suggest watching this video from Jack Reznicki.

Beyond the RAW file sharpening, there are various options for sharpening your files, depending of it you are planning to display them on the web, or print them. Two nice techniques I have run across are Librodo and Adamus sharpening. Alternatively, you could come up with your own method, which will likely us the Unsharp Mask filter (sometimes a few times, on different layers with blending techniques to get it just right). When using that filter, there are often 2 adjustments (and sometimes a third). The adjustments include:

• Radius: how much you want to sharpen from the edges of the photo. A smaller radius will enhance the small details, while a large radius is more general sharpening.
• Amount or Intensity: how much contrast you would like to add to the edges.
• Threshold (not all programs offer this): what areas you want to sharpen, based on how big of an edge it is. Larger thresholds will sharpen more fine details than smaller thresholds.

I didn't really get into photography until I was out of college. Because of this I not only missed out on tons of photographic opportunities and learnings, but also I don't have an eye for composition, lighting, etc. While I likely would have more easily developed this at an earlier age, it's never too late to start. What I have done is taken almost every situation I'm in, and asked myself "How would I photograph this?" It doesn't matter if I'm looking out my office window, buying some flowers for my wife, or even driving down the road; I simply try to see everything as a photographic opportunity. This has definitely worked for me, as I look back to old photographs which are uninspired, to photos I take today which really tell a story. Moreover, I have been keeping an eye on certain websites such at DP Challenge where photographers all over the world submit entires in which I can learn from. I would highly recommend subscribing to RSS feeds for a site such as that.

I have been in various seminars (not photography related) that have talked about how successful people set goals, write them down, and then take actions to make them happen. This is a great idea for improving your photography as well. This could be as simple as taking 100 photos in a month, taking 10 photos of everyday objects, learning how to use off camera flash, etc. Even better, if you enter challenges at a website such as DPChallenge, you can setup goals for how well your images are scored by other users. this is a great way to see if your photographic style is improving.

Learning:

• Adorama Learning Center
• Canon Digtial Learning Center
• Digital Photography Challenge
• Digital Photography School
• Digital Photography Techniques
• DIY Photography Projects
• Learn SLR
• Mac Photography Tips
• Photocrati
• Photodo
• Photo Naturalist
• Phototuts
• Picture Connect

Reviews:

• Digital Photography Review
• Lens Reviews
• SD and CF card speed database
• SnapSort

Post Processing:

• GIMP Tutorials
• Photoshop Essentials
• PixelPerfect
• Tutorial9

My Photography:

• DPChallenge Profile
• MobileMe Gallery