A lot of people ask me how I take such fantastic pictures. I usually tell them I’m just really talented and obviously have an innate gift for “The Arts”. But because I don’t want to come off as vain, I put this emoticon “:p” at the end. :p

To be honest, I still consider myself quite new to photography and always feel humbled whenever I log into flickr and see the incredible photos people are taking. It seems that order to be a good photographer, you have to constantly learn things, some of them difficult, and be, like, creative all the time. Harsh, I know.

So here I am to help push you to be a better photographer with a super helpful photo tip every week until your photos are awesome, or I get bored of teaching you :p

Here Photo Tip #1: Learn How to Use Your Camera!

1. Read your camera manual!

I know it’s boring. I didn’t want to read it either, but knowing how to move around your camera insides and outsides is really important. Nothing is more frustrating than fumbling around on your camera in the field. Where is that darn exposure button? How do I delete all pictures? Crud. How do I display the histogram? What are all these numbers and letters on the screen. Ack!

So get a good cuppa tea or coffee (if you prefer that vile stuff) and sit down with your camera and its manual. Go through all the menus and buttons with your camera. Don’t just read it passively, but actively go through every menu setting and button, camera in hand, taking test shots as you go.

I also recommend carrying it in your camera bag if you are a beginner. If you get stuck on something, look it up. Warning: This process may actually lead to learning how to use your camera as more than just an expensive and weighty electronic necklace.

This brings me to my next point…

2. Never use auto settings. Ever.

I know this is a drastic statement, but trust me on this one, your photos will always look kinda crappy if you use auto settings. That includes the “face” one, the “running man” one, the “mountain” one, the “flower” one, even the “nighttime” or “fireworks” one! Any setting represented by a little cute picture is off limits!

I know that this is a difficult habit to break if you are new to photography. Like most people, I started taking photos on auto settings. After a while, I realized that I had no creative control and I noticed that basic things like focus, exposure, and white balance were all out of wack. Basically, my photos looked subpar and amateur. So I committed a lot of time and effort, and actually learnt stuff about aperture, shutter speed, etc. I know. Crazy.

So repeat after me, “I promise to not use my camera’s default auto setting as a crutch and take control of my photos!”

3. Always set your White Balance

Nothing looks crappier than photos with incorrect white balance (WB). Your best friend will not appreciate looking like a member of the blue man group on her wedding day. Trust me.

The first thing i do before i take a picture is set the WB. I look around, take a few shots and figure out what the kind of colour temperature I’m dealing with ie. overhead tungsten lights, blinding fluorescents, daylight through a window, etc. and then set the white balance to best match what I see.

If you don’t know what to set the WB to when you are out in the field, then test it using that big screen on the back of your camera that lets you preview photos! Take a few snaps using different WB settings, and decide which best matches the colour of light you see. This may seem tricky, but dicerning between cloudy and sunny isn’t really that tough. And with some practice, you’ll quickly be able to identify trickier things tungsten bulbs and candlelight and mixed light… oh boy.

When you are dealing with a mixed light situation ie., florecent overhead lights, daylight coming in through a big window, use your judgement. What looks the best? Get into the habit of analyzing colour and light and experiment with different WB settings in camera. It’s a really easy thing to do, and will save you a lot of hassle colour correcting in post especially if you haven’t mastered Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, or “computers” in general.

To learn more, read this article.

That concludes my lecture for today. Give your camera some extra love this week and take a stack of awesome photos celebrating this last week of summer. If you live in Vancouver or England, remember to bring your umbrella!

Thoughts and comments?

Come say Hi on Flickr & stay tuned for next week’s awesome tip!

Photo by Tony Wang | Molly, Lisa, Justine, Sarah, Amber & Leo.

I had the pleasure of meeting some amazing and talented ladies at last week’s New Media Expo. It was weird how we just all happened to wander on TWiT Live at the same time. I think we were lured there by the heaps of tasty brain toniq, TWiT tees & Leo’s mega-watt smile.

Photo by PHP Princess

Amber MacArthur, Sarah Austin, Molly Lynn & I had a great discussion on women in media, edited vs. unedited content & live streaming, trolls, and something I call the “blogging bikini factor”. Shameless? Yes. Quadruples your daily uniques? Definitely. But I wouldn’t know anything about that. At. All.

Photo by PHP Princess

If you missed the media babe exponanza on TWiT live, you should download #63 net@night podcast with Amber MacArthur. There are also other fantastic interviews with the uber Felicia Day and Scobleizer.

Illustration by Pasquale

You know I love Twitter and would never leave our happy Fail Whale friend for another other mo-blogging site. But lately, I’m worried that with so much Fail, even the most dedicated Twitterers may abandon ship soon.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the game of life, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. It’s all about what kind of stakes are involved. You could lose, like, $5 or your, like, your kidney, both are a tough pill to swallow. …I wonder what kind of steak & kidney pie I could get for $5? Probably not a very good one… It’s kind of weird when the title of a dish of food mentions the animal organ it comes from… Ahh… I digress.

One hour before NME in Las Vegas was brought to a close I thought to myself, “What is the best way to wrap up this extravaganza of media madness?” After approximately 5 minutes of deep thinking, I came up with dive bombing random people with DIY wooden airplane.”

Thanks YouSendIt for this wonderfully fun bit of schwag, I hope you don’t mind dealing with a few teeny tiny injury and dismemberment lawsuits. I’m sure they are just after a money grab. The propeller barely grazed… ahem *severed* the tendon. What?

Thanks to Doug for filming me and perhaps aiding in the building somewhat of an aviation expert.

I’m gonna take you riiight into the DANGER ZONE!!!

What’s your fav schwag?

I defy you to beat the awesome factor of this schwag. If you can provide an adequate photo or description, I may be impressed.

Lisa & VB.

Just an average day for me. Pimped out my very own Mostly Lisa Tees with the awesome crew at Viddler. Met Veronica Belmont, Amber Macarthur, Leo Laporte (ZOMG), Sarah Austin and hung out on Twit live… Then filmed a few episodes of MacBreak with Alex Lindsay… Streamed live for the first time thanks to the good people at Qik… I still don’t know if it’s for me, but hey, I’m in Vegas. Gotta just break out of my shell a leedle bit…

Now, I’m off for steak … yum … with the Cache Fly troupe and then straight to a Revision 3 party… I know. It’s basically how I spend most of my Fridays… minus the tub o’ ice cream and all the celebrities and the actually talking with people in real life.

Ok. I have approx. 10 mins to get ready to hit the town. It is ridiculously hot. My mum emailed me saying, “I could only find 1 place in the world that was hotter than Vegas (42 C) today and that was Bhagdad at 49 C.” Yikes.

Catch me on Qik later, I’ll be live streaming. I’ll let you know when on my twitter feed.

(Lisa & Justine rockin’ our Viddler Tees).

I’ll hyperlink later!

Tomorrow, I will be heading off to Las Vegas with Team Viddler for the New Media Expo. I’m really excited about hanging out with Viddler, the cool people that created my favourite video platform, and meeting loads of uber media people.

I need to catch some serious zzzs tonight as I will need my stamina during the shenanigans iJustine, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Sarah of Pop17 will inevitably get up to.

Follow me on twitter, viddler, flickr and the official NME site.

Is anyone else going to the New Media Expo? Hope to see you there!

PS If you know some awesome/cool/fun amazing things I should do whilst in Vegas, gimme a shout below.

I’m sorry for the lack of posts, but my horrible computer over-use neck injury is taking it’s darn sweet time to heal. Apparently, these muscle-tendon injuries need longer than a day to heal. I know! What’s with that? And if you continue to work in anti-ergonomic conditions for 18+ hours a day, the injury comes back! Harsh.

It has been agony cutting out all computer activities for the last week, but I’ve been so good and not blogged at all for a whole week. But, I miss you all so much I just thought I’d throw up a cool picture that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy about the world, that I took with the Canon 70-200mm IS f/2.8 lens I love so much. This was the first image that I edited and adjusted in Adobe Lightroom 2. So far so good. I’ll write a full review when I’m a bit better.

I’ve been photographing Jessie Farrell and her band for almost 2 years now. Taking pictures of Jessie was how I first got into photography. I started taking pictures at gigs, her first music video (in which I made a brief cameo as a pink hatted fiddler), her big CD release, and all the moments in between & that time we went to Jamaica (that was weird that we went there).

I was so tentative and unsure of my ability at first because I didn’t know anything about photography or dSLRs in general, let alone the technical skills required to take that money shot. When I look at my old shots, I’m so embarrassed at the settings I used. But that’s how I learnt, by experimenting with settings, taking thousands of shots, and basically falling in love with the process of taking photographs. That’s what I love. Just hanging back behind the scenes and capturing subtle candid moments of people, animals, even nature. I rarely, if ever, leave my apartment without my camera. It’s basically a part of me. Gosh, this is beginning to sound sappy. Uh. Brief pause… and resume…

I almost never get to see Jessie Farrell et al. perform live, because they are on the road so much in far off Canadian places, so I was really excited to catch their performance at Festival 150 in Victoria, BC. This might be the reason I took 1000 or so photos. Eek, I know. My Air is gasping for… well.. air.

Kylee Epp.

I also blame the Canon 70-200mm IS f/2.8 lens I rented again. It has such a delicious sweet spot that makes me swoon when I hit it. Wait. That sounded bad. I’m not sexualizing photography… Ever. Stop. I’m blushing. Actually, I’m just super sunburnt because I literally have the skin tone of a sickly vampire who spends all day & night on a computer like IMing and pirating shizz.

Anyway, I supposed to be taking a little break from my blog and the computer this week, as I’ve totally done in my neck. My computer over-use injury is back with a vengence.

Ok. Ok. I’m getting off the computer now… Don’t be mad.

Jessie was recently nominated for 7 Canadian Country Music Awards, including Best Female Artist, Album, Song, Songwriter of the Year & Best Selling Album. She is also nominated for Fan’s Choice award so if you are a fan, Vote for Jessie here. Additionally, 3 of her band members were nominated for the best performers in their categories: Ryland Haggis for Bass Player of the Year; Jesse Tucker for guitar player of the year; and Jesse Godin for drummer of the year.

Ryland Haggis.

Jessie Godin.

L-R: Jesse Tucker, Kylee Epp, Jessie Farrell, Jesse Godin, Ryland Haggis.

I’m currently in negotiations with them to start my throw-back 80s, futurist/emo/punk/rock/folk/singer/songwriter band. It’s a real mix of genres, but I’m covering them all to please that fickle, yet predictable the Gen “i”.

1-2-3-4, I’m seeing Feist tomorrow! Who’s coming?

And my question to photographers and blossoming photogs:

How did you get into photography? What or who was your muse?

If you listen to TWIP, you’ll know about Fredrick Van & Scott Bourne’s on-going Adobe’s Lightroom vs Apple’s Aperture debate. Scott swears by Aperture and at Lightroom & Fred’s sweet on LR2.

It’s quite childish really, considering Scott just abandoned Canon for the Nikon D3. hmph! Plus, who starts arguments over technogeeky topics? No one that I know personally, as in not being that person directly. Huh? Exactly. I’ve discombobulated you have I?

When I was down in SF visiting the TWIP team, I was put in the hot seat and forced to pick a side. But, the truth was, I had never used either Aperture or Lightroom. And so a challenge began between Scott & Fred to see which of these two powerful photo editing and management tools would win my little n00b heart.

I’m installing LR2 this very moment and am really pumped about the new features Adobe is offering in this latest update. For more info, check out Fred’s LR2 post. I’m also excited about starting to shoot more in RAW. I think it is the only way of getting the quality, sharpness, and perfect lighting I want in my photos.

My only concern with Lightroom is how it will work with iPhoto as we all know iPhoto and Adobe aren’t the greatest of pals and the interface doesn’t look as clean and apple-icious as Aperture. But, beyond that, I have no leanings towards either, so I am coming into this challenge completely unbiased. Though Fred is pulling out all the stops with his traffic-stopping smile!

If you want to check out Adobe Lightroom 2, you can download a 30 day trial here.

Have your say on the Aperture vs Lightroom debate. What do you use? And why?