5 Simple Techniques for Leading the Viewer’s Eye in Your Images

As photographers, it’s easy for us to make conscious composition choices that allow us to balance our photographs or to create harmony within them. It’s is more difficult however to try and lead viewers through your photographs. We rarely consider how to influence the viewers of our photographs. When composing images, we don’t think about the different elements in our images and the order by which we want viewers to see those elements.

This is a common tactic in classic painting, but not used readily by photographers. The reality is it’s hard to influence viewers and to dictate the ways in which they view our photographs.

The lines of the creek lead the viewer’s eye through and into the image.

9 Tips to Get Sharp Focus at Night

Autofocus is so good on modern cameras that most photographers use it all the time. It seemingly never lets you down. But, let’s say it’s nighttime and you are going to do some shooting. You find a good spot. You set up your tripod. You go to focus your camera using the autofocus. You can feel the camera’s focus ring twisting back and forth, trying to focus. But it never gets there. The camera keeps hunting for a focus spot but never finds one.
Uh-oh. What are you going to do now?



Actually, this problem doesn’t arise only at night. Your camera will typically have trouble focusing in any really dark scene. So here are some tips for dealing with that situation and focusing your camera when it is dark

1. Aim for the bright spot
Sometimes you can still use your autofocus. Even though it is dark, most night scenes will have a bright spot or two. They might be streetlights, or a lit-up building, or even the moon. That bright spot can be used to set your autofocus.

Best camera focus techniques: 10 surefire ways to get sharp photos

One of the first rules of photography is that the subject should be sharp. Most modern digital cameras offer a number of ways of achieving sharp photos, and in this post we’re going to look at the most important digital camera focus techniques and the best settings to use. We’ll look at how to select the AF point and which focus mode to use.

Manual focus

Although nearly all modern digital cameras can focus the lens automatically (the Leica M9, Leica M9-P and Leica Monochrom being notable exceptions) they also allow you to focus manually instead.

Manual focus is a particularly good option with macro photography because many cameras struggle to lock onto very close subjects and the lens ends up hunting (moving in and out of focus) every time the shutter release button is depressed.

It’s far less frustrating to switch the camera (or the lens) to manual focus and do the job yourself.

What’s more, Live View technology makes manual focusing very easy because it is usually possible to enlarge the image on the screen so that you can see the precise spot that you are interested in, and then adjust the focus until it is perfectly sharp.

Master your camera’s autofocus: which AF points to use and when to use them

Using autofocus correctly can solve a great number of the common photography problems you face on a daily basis. But easier said than done, right? Behold the bible on AF points!

In this tutorial we’ll show you everything you need to know to take control of your AF points and nail focus every time you shoot.

Focusing has never been so simple. Use any of the Basic Zone shooting modes – Full Auto, Portrait or Landscape – and your camera does all the work for you. It’s almost too easy.

A light press on the shutter button is all you need and, 99 times out of a 100, the camera will focus in a split-second and you’re ready to fire.

Hyperfocal focusing: how to calculate the best distance to focus at

Knowing how to calculate hyperfocal distance isn’t actually as complex as its technical name implies, but mastering this important photography technique can make all the difference to your photography. Here we answer all of the common questions photographers have about hyperfocal focusing

Hyperfocal focusing? Sounds a bit ‘new age‘…

It’s actually an old-school technique that helps you maximise sharpness in a photo. A camera lens can only focus to a single distance at any one time, but there’s an area that extends from that point, both towards the camera and towards the horizon, where things still look sharp. This area is known as the depth of field.

9 Tips to Help you get Sharp Focus at Night

Autofocus is so good on modern cameras that most photographers use it all the time. It seemingly never lets you down. But, let’s say it’s nighttime and you are going to do some shooting. You find a good spot. You set up your tripod. You go to focus your camera using the autofocus. You can feel the camera’s focus ring twisting back and forth, trying to focus. But it never gets there. The camera keeps hunting for a focus spot but never finds one.

Uh-oh.  What are you going to do now?