Michelle K Wood Photography

 Many photographers think (or are told) they have to choose or define their style right out of the gate. Why is that, I wonder? It's good to define yourself and your work, but let it be an organic process to begin, don't force yourself into a box. In my opinion, the best way to define your style is to shoot for a while – six months to a year is a reasonable period of time – and then look back over your portfolio and pick out the common elements. These will show you the things you're drawn to, probably the things you like, and the things that will let you stand out and shine as a photographer. This is exactly what I did recently, and here's my short list. For starters, I'm a 'photorealism' shooter. You will see in my photos just about what I saw with my eyes when I took the photo. I am a very 'light' editor, just a little lightening (exposure compensation), brightening (contrast), sharpening, and sometimes cropping, is usually the extent of my edi

Pretty frequently, I hear photographers lamenting that they can't find anything interesting to shoot. The best advice I ever received as a tog was 'don't look for interesting things, make things look interesting." - Joel Sartore in his Fundamentals of Photography courses.  Purchase Joel Sartore's courses - especially excellent for beginners - online: Order DVD or watch online directly from The Great Courses. I do not receive a fee when you purchase directly from TGC. Fundamentals of Photography I Fundamentals of PhotographyII Sign up for The Great Courses Signature Collection, a monthly-fee video watching service. I receive a small affiliate fee on Amazon purchases. Fundamentals of Photography I Fundamentals of PhotographyII When you’re out shooting and not finding anything that jumps out at you as interesting or photo-worthy, here are a few tips to use to Make them interesting: Photos featured in this article are a few of my stock photos on Dreamstime.      Ref

It’s called the Exposure Triangle….and seems to be one of the most confusing things in photography. So, what is it anyway? The exposure triangle is three settings that go hand-in-hand that let you create amazing photos: ISO, Shutter Speed, and Aperture. Today, I’ll cover Shutter Speed. You can think of this in terms of ‘how fast can you blink’ and ‘how much can you see when you blink fast vs slow.’ Although this diagram isn't in triangle format, it clearly shows the effects of fast and slow shutter speeds. Shutter Speed is about movement and what movement or stillness you can capture by adjusting the setting. If you blink fast, things tend to stand still, to be stationary. If you blink slowly (keeping your view straight ahead as your camera does), things tend to pass through your vision quickly and often at a blur. The important principle to remember when you are changing shutter speed is that a fast shutter speed will freeze action but also lets in a lower amount of l

 Does anybody even know what ISO means? A few, maybe!   The acronym stands for International Standards Organization. It started out as an industry standard scale for measuring the sensitivity of film to light. If you’re an old-time photographer who used film cameras, you’ll recall that the films you purchased were rated: ISO 100 for bright outdoor light, ISO 200 for cloudy days, and even ISO 400 for evening and inside (but you likely still needed a flash).   Today, that ISO rating is applied to the sensor on your DSLR (digital single lens reflex) camera. If you’ve ever looked inside the body of your camera when the lens is off, you can see the sensor at the back of the body. When you push the shutter and the curtains open and pass across the sensor, it captures the light bouncing off the surfaces you are pointing at and captures the image.  You can learn more about that in your owner’s manual if interested. Basically, setting ISO tells your camera how much light you need to let in

  It’s called the Exposure Triangle….and seems to be one of the most confusing things in photography although it shouldn’t be! So, what is it anyway? The exposure triangle is three settings that go hand-in-hand that let you create amazing photos: ISO, Shutter Speed, and Aperture. Today, I’ll cover Aperture. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I shoot in Aperture Mode on my Nikon D3200 because my general area of interest is floral closeups and landscapes – talk about being on opposite ends of the spectrum! – so I do a lot with Depth of Field. Aperture is the size of the opening of your lens. I’ll not go into what all the stops mean, but aperture is measured in f-stops  It seems counter-intuitive, but low number = wide open lens, high number = very small opening in lens. Depending on your lens, it can be a very low number (wide-open) f1.4 or very high number (barely open) f32. Think of it like a cat’s eye: When the pupils of a cats eyes are wide open, they let in a lot of light tha