Photography
Photography is more than just grabbing a camera and pressing a button. If you want to become a professional photographer you should learn how to take pictures in manual mode. Remember, even if you choose to continue using auto mode, your images will not be perfect unless they are properly edited. The ability to adjust to an environment during a photoshoot and edit images are the hallmarks of good photography.
Here you will find a collection of photos taken by me. At the bottom of this page there are some tips to help you expand your own creative skill set.
Please click each image to view it at full quality!
Downtown Roanoke, VA
JMU Pep Band
Graduation Photos
Sunsets & Landscapes
Nature & Animals
Camera Tips
Always pay close attention to your camera settings. You should adjust your settings to match your environment. Start by asking yourself a few questions: How dark is it? What type of light is on my subject? Is the subject of my photo moving or still? Here are a few camera settings that should be adjusted to increase the quality of your photos:
- Shutter speed – choose how much motion is captured in your photo
- for example, 1/1000 frame rate causes less motion and still images while a 1/15 frame rate causes more motion and blurry frames
- Aperture or f-stop – adjust how much light gets into your camera lens
- for example, f/1.4 allows more light into the lens and a brighter photo while f/16 allows less light into the lens and a darker photo
- ISO level – use a lower ISO in a brighter environment and a higher ISO in a dark environment, if ISO is set too high your photos will look grainy
- for example, set ISO to 100 in daylight, 400 indoors with flash, 800 in a dark room, and as high as possible in complete darkness
- White balance or AWB – choose a white balance setting that best matches your environment
- for example, daylight, shade, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent or flash – choose a setting based on your current light situation
Photo Editing Tips
When editing photos I would recommend using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom Classic. Here are a few things you should focus on when editing your photos:
- Color correction – colors can be easily modified in the HSL/Color panel in Adobe Lightroom
- Adjust the hue, saturation, and luminance of each specific color in your photo
- Sharpness – be sure your photo isn’t too blurry or too grainy, this can also be adjusted in Lightroom
- Spacing – photos should be cropped so there is an equal amount of spacing on all four sides of the image
- Clone stamp tool – one of my favorite tools in Photoshop, it allows you to paint over one section of the photo using another part of the photo
- Click and hold the alt key to select your source material then paste that same color in another part of the image
- Magnetic lasso tool – my second favorite Photoshop tool, it allows you to cut out shapes from other images and place them into new images
- After making your selection with this tool, click the “add vector mask” button in the layers panel to cut out your selection
If you need a photographer for your next event or photoshoot, please reach out to me on my contact page. I hope to hear from you soon!