All About Photography: Let’s Chat!

All About Photography: Let’s Chat!

These are Ultimate Photo Tips’ all-about-photography forums. What’s the biggest disaster you’ve had while on a shoot? What do you think about legislation that keeps cropping up to keep photographers from photographing in public? New topics are posted regularly, so bookmark this page, and visit us again. Have your say, and share your stories and opinions!

Speech Balloons

Got something on your mind? Contact us and let us know what topic you’d like to see discussed.

Burning Questions!

Click on a link below to view or reply to the question, and see the responses of others:


Are you shy? How do you overcome your fear of taking photos of people?


If you had an entire week to devote just to shooting, what photography project ideas would you come up with?


 

More topics all about photography are posted regularly!

Got something on your mind? Contact us and let us know what topic you’d like to see discussed.

 

 

Beginner Photography:

Friendly & Constructive Photography Critique Videos

Learn beginner photography techniques through friendly and constructive photography critique videos!

It’s hard to improve your photography without getting some outside feedback. In this set of videos, I’ll be taking reader submitted photos and offering my thoughts on what works, what doesn’t, and how the images might be improved. I’m not the final authority on what makes the best photograph, so these videos are just my opinions. I do hope, however, that you will find my thoughts of some value, and can use the ideas to improve your own photos.

This is a brand new series of videos that I’m experimenting with. Feel free to leave me some feedback in the Facebook commenting section at the bottom to let me know if you enjoy them, or want to see something different. Do come back and visit often, as I’ll be adding a new photography critique each month. Enjoy!

Critique #4: Wolf Trail, Gatineau Park NEW!

 

Julie gives a beginner photography critique

Thank you to Caje Rodriguez for sharing his lovely, moody image for evaluation.

Watch the video to learn about the importance of having a center of interest in your image.

Critique #3: Untitled

 

Julie gives a beginner photography critique

Thank you to Paddy Howes for sharing her beautiful flower image for evaluation.

Discover some cropping options, and some tips for subduing an overwhelming background.

Watch the photography critique video.

Critique #2: Untitled

 

Julie gives a beginner photography critique

Thank you to Kimberly Pettit for sharing her lovely image for evaluation.

Find out how to check whether color or form is causing your image to be too busy. Learn to simplify by cropping to leave only the key elements.

Watch the photography critique video.

Critique #1: “Carmel Evening”

 

Julie gives a beginner photography critique

Thank you to Ron Kelman for sharing his beautiful HDR image “Carmel Evening” for evaluation.

Learn about where to focus to maximize your depth of field. Also learn to simplify your image through cropping.

Watch the photography critique video.

 

More beginner photography critique to come! Stay tuned…

Next, you may want to watch check out our collection of videos covering all kinds of digital photography technique.

 

Photo Challenges

Note: After ore than three years straight of monthly challenges, photo challenges are on hold for a while!

Past challenges stretched boundaries, and exercised creativity. Make sure you take a look through the past challenges and enjoy the winning images!

Enjoying photography

Rules

Please submit only one image per person in any given month.

You must be the creator of any image you upload.

The photographer retains copyright to any image(s) submitted through the photo challenge. The image(s) will be displayed only on this website, and Ultimate Photo Tips will not receive any commercial gain from them.

Manipulated images are welcome, but the original source material must be a photograph, or photographs, and made by you.

The images you upload must be no larger than 800×600 pixels.

We encourage submission of new work to the photo challenges, rather than delving into your archives for something to submit. After all, this is about stretching your creative muscles, and that takes practice!

Visitors to the site will vote for their favorite image using a star rating system. The winning images will be chosen from among the top-rated images by photographer Julie Waterhouse. Julie is the voice behind Ultimate Photo Tips, and an accredited judge with her local camera club association, the Greater Toronto Council of Camera Clubs.

Prizes? It’s all for the glory! The winning image will be featured on the Ultimate Photo Tips homepage for all of the following month.

The challenge closes at the end of the month, and images must be submitted no later than midnight Eastern Standard Time on the last day of the month.

Creativity

Creativity defined…

the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination.

–dictionary.com

These challenges are intended to encourage creativity. Topics will be chosen to push you a little bit out of your comfort zone.

Take the opportunity to push yourself. You might be surprised what you come up with! I’ve learned that if you keep on shooting past the point where you think you’ve taken “every possible” photograph of a subject, you will then start to discover your true creativity. Read more about my experience with creativity.