Before you start
some things to consider are:

type of camera (try not to buy something that you are not suited to - try to keep to your skill base and understanding).

seek qualified advice before you purchase ... ask questions until you understand ... ask to test equipment .... don't just take the sales person's word for it!

Try & be humble - don't be hard on yourself ............ the main thing is to ENJOY IT ....there will never be such a thing as a perfect photography so what is the rush??

Learn the basics. Which means understand the technical side first.

Balance between theory practical. Not all your answers will be in books. Get out there and practice!

Think before you shoot! Before you press the shutter release think about composition, lighting etc... Taking 100 shots and hoping to pick the best may be detrimental to your confidence.

Be prepared - check your memory sticks have free space, your batteries are charged .... some spares would be advisable as you never know what you will see!

ENJOY, ENJOY, ENJOY

Night Photography The same set of constraints is found during evening as daylight photography-- namely aperture, shutter speed and light sensitivity.

Night photography requires a tripod or a monopod, a digital camera which has aperture and shutter controls, and a ISO setting of approximately 400 or 800. If you are just beginning night photography, try to photograph at twilight instead of in total darkness. In night photography, metering can be complicated. Start with a F-stop of 5.6 and try exposure times of 1 second. If your photos are too bright, shorten the shutter speed. If they are too dark, lengthen the shutter speed. Most cameras have shutter speeds of up to 30 seconds.

The B on the camera stands for Bulb. You can set the shutter to "B" and expose for extended amounts of time. If you don't have a remote release, use your self timer when making the exposure. This will eliminate pushing the shutter button during the exposure, which can shake the camera.

Finally, take along a small flash light so you can read the settings on your camera. Don't forget a poncho...just in case of rain!

 Candid photography is photography that focuses on spontaneity rather than technique. Your subject's focus is not on the camera, but on their current task. So we're not talking about the photo albums full of people looking at the camera and smiling here! Your subjects are un-posed and the shots are unplanned. Candid photos are usually simple photos without a lot of technical equipment or any time taken setting up the shot. Thus they capture some wonderful slices of life!

Here are some tips for taking candid photos:
- Take your camera everywhere you go!
- Keep alert for candid situations - they can be found everywhere.
- Some examples of candid shots: A daydreaming animal; an warthog sitting beside you; commuters waiting for a train; two giraffes snuggling; a flower swaying in the wind; ; a predator after its prey; a wave about to break; a skier riding the snow with delight.
- It's rare to get a second chance with candid photography.

Focussing is fundamental to photography, a fact that has determined the development of the different broad types of camera. Focus is dependent upon a number of relationships, distance of the subject from the camera being the most important. A rangefinder is just that - a device to find the range of a given subject from the camera, that the camera, in turn, can be focussed. Rangefinder cameras fall into two separate sub categories, those in which the rangefinder is coupled to the focussing mechanism of the camera (coupled rangefinder cameras) and those in which the rangefinder is used to determine the distance only - which is then transferred to the lens manually, clearly a less convenient, but cheaper, option.

To appreciate how the rangefinder works, hold up one of your index fingers in front of your face at about 20cm. No doubt you can feel your eye muscles turning both eyes in so that a single image is formed. Still with your finger in front of your face, turn you attention to the background and refocus, now allow your attention back to the finger preventing you eyes from refocusing - you will see that there is a double image of your finger. Finally, allow the muscles to turn in again and the images will merge into one. Take a rest, that can be uncomfortable after a couple of times. It is clear that the eyes are required to "angle in" significantly when something is close to you and that there is a relationship between this angle and the distance. The rangefinder fitted to a camera uses a similar action via a system of lenses and mirrors to determine the distance.

In use, the photographer peers through the rangefinder to observe a main image onto which is superimposed a secondary image (often tinted yellow covering a small circular part in the centre of the main image). The photographer chooses the part of the image required to be in the centre of focus and moves the rangefinder control until that part of the secondary image is co-incident with the main image.

Motion Blur of the Whole Scene
If you are trying to blur everything in the photo to convey how fast everything is moving to the viewer, then you should try a slower shutter speed. Anything below 1/100th of a second should do the trick. I have used this for more artistic photos of passing motorcycles or cars as well as running animals. This technique is best used when the scene you are taking a photo of is full of bright colors. In this type of photo the subject is blurred so it is not often used, people aren't used to seeing this kind of work. And because people aren't used to this kind of work, I have seen many excellent photos like this sell for a lot of money. This type of photo also works very well with patterns in nature. Such as colorful trees waving in the breeze or flowing water with colorful reflections. This combination of blur with a lot of color can create a photo that looks more like a painting.

Diffraction - A phenomenon exhibited by a light’s wave front when passing the edge of an opaque object (one that does not allow light to pass through it). The light becomes modulated, causing a redistribution of the light’s energy within the wave front. You will see it at the edges of the object’s shadow, in the form of minute dark and light bands. The edges of the shadow have a fuzzy appearance. Think of ripples meeting a rock in a pond. They go around the rock in a new series of ripples that can be seen on the sides of the rock. Light waves behaving in a similar manner are said to be diffracted.

Lighting Photography is all about light. Our photographs are recorded light. How we control the available light and add additional light when needed is basis for all photography. There are numerous controls and methods for controlling light available to today's photographer.

Your camera's light meter is your link to understanding how your camera sees light. This device takes into account all of the settings on your camera (aperture, shutter speed, film speed, etc) and tells you what type of exposure that combination plus the available light will create on film/sensor. The first step to understanding photography lighting is to understand this tool for measuring light.

All in-camera light meters have a fundamental flaw: they can only measure reflected light.  This means the best they can do is guess how much light is actually hitting the subject.

If all objects reflected the same percentage of incident light, this would work just fine, however real-world subjects vary greatly in their reflectance.  For this reason, in-camera metering is standardized based on the luminance of light which would be reflected from an object appearing as middle gray.  If the camera is aimed directly at any object lighter or darker than middle gray, the camera's light meter will incorrectly calculate under or over-exposure, respectively.  A hand-held light meter would calculate the same exposure for any object under the same incident lighting.

Examples of times to overexpose
- Subject is very dark in comparison to background.
- Snow
- On a bright day if your subject is in shadow

Examples of times to underexpose
- Subject is very light in comparison to background
- To achieve a silhouette effect
- On a overcast day to increase color saturation.

Freezing the Motion
If you would like to freeze the motion of the subject along with the motion of the background, you should use a very high shutter speed. I would use a shutter speed of at least 1/300th of a second in order to make sure that you freeze everything. But there are other subjects you might find that will be moving unusually fast such as cars or thrown objects. If you would like to freeze a faster moving object you will probably need to use a shutter speed closer to 1/1000th of a second or faster. This shouldn't be a problem now because the new cameras are coming out with shutter speeds of up to 1/8000th of a second..

Red Eye: An image in which a subject’s irises are red instead of black. The red eye effect is caused by light from a flash traveling through the iris and illuminating the retina at the interior back of the eye–– which is red in color due to its blood vessels –– and the camera capturing that redness on film.

Reticulation: Occurs during processing when the emulsion becomes cracked or distorted. The cause is usually exaggerated temperature variance or differences in chemical activity between solutions.

Depth of Focus: A zone of focus in the camera. If an image is focused on a ground glass screen in a camera, depth of focus makes it possible to move the screen slightly backward or forward and still have the image in acceptable focus.

Exposure is the amount of light collected by the sensor in your camera during a single picture.  If the shot is exposed too long the photograph will be washed out.  If the shot is exposed too short the photograph will appear too dark.  Almost all cameras today have light meters which measure the light in the given shot and set an ideal exposure automatically.  Most people  depend on the light meter which is fine, but if  you know how to control your exposures you can get some creative and sometimes better pictures.