Sometimes, when you decide to turn a photo into canvas, you discover that you don’t have a good enough picture and feel disappointed. To make sure this does not happen it is important to think about the canvas while taking the picture. Make your bags, take the camera, buy the tickets and think about possible locations and pictures you’d like to see hung on your walls in your house.

Know your camera. It is important you know which camera is in you hand. I’m not saying you should buy a new one, nor should it be the latest generation, I’m saying you have to know exactly how it works, especially the quality of the photos. If you have a digital one, try taking several pictures and then download it to your computer to see how it seems. Some cameras come with pre-defined settings, so take pictures to understand the difference between them.

Think before you take a picture. Don’t just imagine, view and scheme too. Sometimes we want a picture and just go and take it, and it is not always good enough. If you want to take pictures of the sea, don’t just point the camera already with the finger on the trigger. Look through the camera, see, feel and breathe before you take a picture.

Show what is important. You may not have the best camera in hand, not even the best conditions of light, but when you want to turn a picture into art it must be unique, or at least different. If you want a picture of your friend and you, capture exactly what you want to show: your friend and you. By reducing the background, you have more space to display the features of joy and friendship in your faces. Decide what you want to show and do it as much as possible.

Following these tips, remember to enjoy as much as possible and be sure to bring home unforgettable and exciting photos to turn into canvas.

Britain has never been known for having particularly great weather, in fact this little island on the side of Europe seems to get some of the most contrasting weather of any country, ranging from rain, to heavy rain, to sunny spells between rain showers. We’re now in the full swing of summer, and once again it’s raining.

With the credit crunch affecting people’s budgets too, many are choosing not to go abroad this year on their holidays, and instead spending their summer holidays inside Blighty. While this means many of those trips are spent in doors looking out at the bead weather, or running around in between sunny spells, this is great news for British photographers.

Beautiful hot weather with glaring sunshine maybe what everyone craves, but not the photographer. Our weather is dull and dreary perhaps, but when it comes to taking pictures the British climate is just about perfect. The best lighting conditions for taking outdoor pictures are overcast skies, cloudy skies and low light conditions (basically our British summer).

So don’t stay indoors wondering when it will all clear up, or jump on a plane and head off to warmer climates; no, grab your camera and utilise our photographic favourable weather conditions and take some great pictures.

Infra Red Photography isn’t something out of a science fiction film, nor is it the stuff of make believe. Infra Red Photography is a great technique that utilises an ultra sensitive film to make use of light that is visible to the naked eye, as well as light that is not such as longer length light waves. These light waves are above 700nm and include infra red radiation.

More sensitive camera films are able to pick up short light waves, for example UV rays. All of this means that the films are very sensitive and can pick out aspects of an image that regular camera films cannot. This means that they can be used for uses such as scientific discovery and analysis. For example, you could use Infra Red Photography to conduct an aerial survey of a forest.

Infra Red Photography is also used by art restoration experts to restore paintings to their former glory. One thing they are very capable of however, is creating stunning images.

It’s worth experimenting with infra red photography to see what sort of images you’re able to produce, as you’ll find you’ll take some beautiful pictures that would look great framed or printed on canvas.

One thing you should always try with your photos is using black and white. Black and white photography shouldn’t be dismissed as something old, surpassed by colour. It’s become very popular with advertising, magazines and even weddings. Gone are the days of grainy, fuzzy old images; today’s black and white pictures are sharp, clear and full of contrast.

Great black and white pictures also look great printed on canvas, making for striking canvas prints.

A few things to consider when taking black and white pictures are the choice of background, and the light and shadow areas of the composition.

Due to there being no colour tones to differentiate the background from the subject, you’ll need to be sure your background doesn’t blend in too much with the foreground. You could try switching the angle to make sure your subject and your background are separated sufficiently.

The light and dark tones of the picture are the most important aspect of a black and white photograph, so try to maximise them for the best quality pictures. If you practise with taking the same photograph at different times of the day, with different lighting conditions, you’ll be able to see what makes for the best pictures.

When choosing your photos for printing on canvas you should always try to pick the best pictures you have. You’ll want photos that are sharp and in focus, free from dirt and scratches, devoid of red-eye and well lit; these will make for the best canvas prints.

However it doesn’t matter so much if you can’t find any photos that are quite perfect. If you have a picture that looks great and you think it will look wonderful printed on canvas, don’t discard it just because it has red-eye, or there is a small hair on the picture caused from the camera lens. In these digital times one can perform minor miracles with photo editing software, and getting your pictures ready for printing on canvas is no exception.

We can edit your pictures using our photo editing software to take out any blemishes, errors or even red-eye; ensuring that you have the best quality canvas print possible.

Remember, it’s no so much the technical quality of the photo that matters, it’s the compositional quality that’s more important. A good photo is a good photo, you can always improve minor blemishes later, you can’t improve a bad photo, even if it’s technically perfect!

If you’re looking to take better photographs that will look great when printed on canvas, you could look into the latest technique in photo editing that’s currently being used in a wide variety of different mediums.

High Dynamic Range Photography (HDR) is a brand new technique for taking stunning photographs and utilising computer graphics to improve the pictures. High dynamic range imaging (HDRI) is a technique that uses a much greater range of exposures, which represents the difference between the light and the dark areas of the picture.

HDR Photography techniques have existed for the some time, and they give a better image of the real tones such as the contrast between the sunlit areas and the dark shadows.

It has existed since the 1930s and was created and developed by Charles Wyckoff. His technique was used to produce the famous photograph of a nuclear explosion in the 1940s, which was used on the cover of Life Magazine.

What was difficult to produce back then and solely the domain of the expert professional photographers is today more commonplace thanks to the popularity of digital cameras and photo editing software.

HDR is now a commonly used term within photography.

When taking portrait shots outside the temptation is to leave the lighting up to Mother Nature, as after all it’s the original and the best lighting source. However that’s not necessarily the best way to light your outdoor photos. Instead, you should use a manual flash on your camera to ‘fill’ your subject with light, ensuring that you don’t lose any features to the often-harsh natural light.

Fill flash is available on all of the best digital cameras. On some cameras it is known as the ‘mode’. It’s particularly useful when taking wedding photos outdoors so that the sun doesn’t cause you to lose detail in your pictures.

When you utilise the ‘fill flash’ the camera automatically adjusts the amount of light required for the flash to compensate for the amount of light in the background of your subject. This ensures that the natural light doesn’t silhouette your subject. The outcome is a much better balanced image, and an overall more professional effect.

One thing to note though is that generally the range of the flash is no more that around ten feet, so ensure that you are not out of effective range when taking your photos.

You may not realise it but the resolution of an image is vital to the overall quality of the finished photograph. When you look at a picture on a computer screen, you’ll notice very little difference to the quality of an image that’s as low as 72 dpi when compared to an image that’s 300 dpi.

So why does it matter when they’re printed?

Dpi stands for ‘dots per inch’ and represents the number of individual dots per inch within the picture. 72 dpi is very low quality, but is as high as the Internet will work on, so when you’re looking at pictures on websites you’re merely looking at images that are 72 dpi. They look fine on the web, but if you were to print them they’d look awful.

Instead for the printed media you’ll require a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. When you’re looking to buy images from professional photography websites, you’ll tend to find that the higher quality the images, the more expensive they are to buy.

The important thing to remember is that you can easily reduce a higher quality image, but you can’t increase the quality of a low-resolution image. Therefore if you’re looking to print a photograph, particularly for a canvas print, you’ll want to use an image that is as high a resolution as possible, with a minimum of 300 dpi.

Photography is one of the most popular hobbies around the world, largely because it’s cheap, fun, can produce great results and anyone from children to pensioners can do it. While it may be fun, and you don’t need any experience or training to take pictures, if you follow a few simple tips you’ll be able to take better photos and produce pictures that will stay with you for a lifetime; pictures that you can show your friends and family, and will even make great canvas prints.

Firstly, and perhaps the most important thing to remember, is to always carry your camera with you and have it ready to take pictures. There’s nothing worse than seeing something and saying ‘I wish I had a camera’. Those are the moments that you regret later, and if you always carry your camera with you, you can be sure not to miss those once in a lifetime pictures.

Secondly, when you’re taking photos you should always take more than one. In today’s world with digital cameras taking several shots at once is easy, and of course doesn’t cost you any more. Professional photographers always take several shots at the same time to make sure they catch the perfect moment, when the pose of their subject is just right, when they’re looking in the right place, when everything comes together.

If you just take the one picture, you could check it afterwards and realise that the perfect picture you thought you had wasn’t quite so perfect.

Finally, make sure when you take your photo that the natural light, such as the sun, is in the right place. Having the sun full on in front of your subject will bleach the colour. By the same token, having the sun behind your subject will create backlight and silhouettes. Try to position the sun so that it is to the side of your subject to emphasise the details and the tones.

Follow these tips and you’re sure to create photographs to be proud of.

Taking photos outdoors is a great way to utilise natural light and inject some energy into your pictures, but what is the best light for pictures?

As the British summer is now underway people will be heading outside with their camera and snapping away, hoping to get those perfect summer moments captured on film. Unfortunately the summer, and the strong sunlight that it brings, isn’t always the best light in which to take photos.

In fact, strong sunlight is one of the worst natural light scenarios in which to take pictures as it can wash out the colour from pictures and interfere with the lens on your camera.

Using the shade or an overcast day makes for much better pictures. If you live in the UK that’s great news then! With the softer light that an overcast day brings you’ll get far better colour and skin tones on your subjects.

You can even use a flash to highlight parts of your subject’s skin. Using the flash on a low setting outdoors is a trick of the professionals and adds great depth and character to photographs, creating ‘catch lights’ in eyes and adding life to the pictures.

If you are using the sun for your light source, try not pose your subject with the sun directly behind them, or in front of them. Having the sun as backlight with create too much light for the background and cause your subject to be too dark. By the same notion, having the light directly in your subject’s face will cause them to squint, which in turn creates wrinkles in the face.

Instead pose your subjects so that the sun is to the side of them, lighting them subtly.