Photography News

Shooting in brutal coastal wind is one of the fastest ways to learn what your gear and your plans are actually worth. When conditions fall apart mid-shoot, what you do next says more about your photography than any perfect golden-hour session ever could. 

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    We've spoken before on how lines are great tools for guiding the eye through an image but don't think these have to always be horizontal or vertical as quite often, diagonal lines can add more interest and depth, guiding the eye across the image.
  1. Where Should I Look For Them? 

Rivers, walls and cracks in the ice are just three examples of how you can create diagonals within your landscape shots. Just remember you may have to alter the angle, height or position you're working at to see these natural elements take on the shape you need.

 

2. Use Diagonal Lines As A Guide

The eye often looks at the bottom left of an image first before working across the shot to the top right corner so by having a line which follows this path, intercepting interesting elements as it goes will unknowingly guide the viewer through your shot. They're particularly useful in shots where you have lots and lots of different elements that without a 'guide' would just look chaotic and the eye wouldn't know what to look at first. Try using multiple diagonals to guide the eye to one spot in the image by intersecting them where you want the attention to fall.

 

 

3. Don't Split Your Shot Into Two

If you position your diagonal so it flows from one corner to another your shot can look like it's split in two and won't work right compositionally. Instead, try shifting the line up slightly so it starts just above the bottom corner instead.

 

4. How Many Are Too Many?

Don't get too carried away using too many diagonals as your shot will just end up looking busy and the eye won't know where to focus. However, a few repetitive lines such as those left by a tractor in a field or the shapes left in the sand by the wind can work well as abstract landscape shots. Just shoot from a higher viewpoint and use a longer focal length with a smaller aperture to maximise depth of field. At the coast, try photographing footprints left in wet sand or the patterns left by the tide as it moves down the beach.

 

You've read the technique now share your related photos for the chance to win prizes: Daily Forum Competition

 

Fish Eyes by Sophia Spurgin

 

Winner of the 2026 London Camera Exchange Photographer of the Year, Sophia Spurgin, has  today collected a Canon RF 400mm prime lens from the LCE team at their Strand, London store.  Sophia beat 14,500 entrants to take top honour in this year’s competition with her stunning image  ‘Fish Eyes’ captured on a trip to Vietnam on a Canon EOS R5 Mark II camera. 

A retired teacher from Hertfordshire, Sophia is  a keen outdoor photographer, and the Canon RF 400mm F2.8L IS USM was top of her wish list. A super-telephoto model offering a fast f/2.8 aperture, exceptional portability and optical IS, the RF 400mm is an outstanding low-light performer, perfect for wildlife, sports and action photography. The much sought after lens is rarely in stock at UK retailers and required shipping directly from Canon in Japan.

Sophia Spurgin commented, “I’ve never owned a lens of such quality and wanted to mark my win  with something significant. I had never considered prime lenses previously, but now I’ve been able  to obtain this incredible equipment thanks to LCE. I’m looking forward to testing it out during my  travels this year.” 

 

Sophia Spurgin, LCE Photographer of the Year 2026 overall winner, holds her grand prize, the Canon RF 400mm f2.8L IS USM lens. © London Camera Exchange

 

LCE POTY comprises 14 different categories including the publicly voted ‘People’s Choice’ and  ‘Emerging Talent’ dedicated to photography students. Sophia was shortlisted in three categories  and was crowned winner of both the Travel category with ‘Fish Eyes’ and Wildlife category with 

‘Fighting Foxes in the Rain’ – as well as taking first place in the overall competition. She scooped a  total of £3,500 in LCE vouchers, to spend on equipment of her choice. 

Lee Harasyn, managing director of LCE, commented, “We’re thrilled that Sophia has been able to  acquire her dream lens as a result of winning LCE Photographer of the Year 2026, and can take  the next step up in her hugely successful photographic journey. We hope she’ll inspire others to  enter the competition next year and we can’t wait to see the images she’ll capture with this  fantastic piece of kit.” 

The LCE POTY 2026 Awards were presented in a ceremony at The Photography & Video Show at  the NEC, Birmingham. A gallery showcasing the finalists’ images was located close to the show’s  entrance and many of the shortlisted images were included in a special edition commemorative  book. Winners received a share of the £10,000 prize fund and a unique trophy to take home. There  are plans to tour the images at other locations around the UK this year. 

For more information, please visit the LCE POTY website.

 

About London Camera Exchange 

Founded in Guildford in 1956, London Camera Exchange is an employee-owned business and is  celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2026. With 26 high street stores nationwide, the company  delivers award-winning service and impartial expert advice. LCE stocks an extensive range of  cameras, lenses and optical gear from top brands – and is the go-to destination for trading in or  upgrading photographic equipment. Whether visiting in-store or online, LCE’s dedicated team is  always on hand to help customers capture their next great shot.

Today, I'll have a quick look at the new Allen Smart Suction Snap Camera Mount. It's a tool designed for mounting compact mirrorless cameras, action cams, and smaller DSLRs to smooth surfaces via a suction cup that can deliver dynamic moving shots. 

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Nearly everyone has a smartphone in today's world. They have come so far, and the technology inside them is extremely impressive. When you think back 20 years ago, they had a small screen and could only be used to make calls. Now, you can use them for pretty much everything: to call people, to listen to music, use them as GPS to get around, and in a lot of cases as a camera. 

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The photography business has a strange relationship with specialization. Almost every working photographer starts as a generalist. The first few years of paid work are a scramble: weddings on weekends, headshots during the week, a real estate gig when a friend asks for a favor, some product work to pay for a lens upgrade, maybe a few corporate events when the calendar is thin. The logic is obvious and reasonable. Early in a career, any paying work is better than no paying work, and saying yes to every request builds both experience and cash flow.

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Landscape photography doesn't always end with a keeper. This video makes that case plainly, and it's one of the more honest looks at what a real shoot actually feels like from start to finish. 

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A mountain landscape that showcases the scale and texture of the Canadian Rockies has earned our Photo of the Week award.

Three Sisters by Jasper87 captures a snow-laden scene where the three peaks dominate the horizon. The tall evergreens sit in front of the mountains while the frosted branches of the trees on either side provide a fine texture throughout the scene. There is a great sense of balance in the image as the light shows the jagged surfaces of the rock and the heavy clouds gathering around the summits.

The detail in the icy branches adds a layer of depth that guides you toward the peaks. Small patches of blue sky break through the cloud cover to add variety to the palette of white and grey tones. This shot captures the quiet power of a mountain setting and serves as a wonderful example of landscape photography.

Every Photo of the Week (POTW) winner will be rewarded with a Samsung 128GB PRO Plus microSDXC memory card with SD adapter, providing top-tier storage for all your creative needs across multiple devices. But that's not all! In January 2027, we’ll crown our 2026 Photo of the Year winner, who will take home the ultimate prize of a Samsung Portable 1TB SSD T7 Shield, courtesy of Samsung. It’s time to shoot, submit, and showcase your best work for a chance to win these incredible rewards!

From Kodak's Charmera to the strange-but-interesting screenless Escura InstantSnap digital camera, 2026 is shaping up to be the year for some wild, hot takes on what makes a camera these days. 

 

Photographer and YouTuber Adam Harig of FoxTailWhipz takes a look at some of the aforementioned viral cameras that have come through his hands in the last couple of years and conveniently ranks them to help you decide whether it's worth spending your hard-earned money on these cameras.

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Choosing a single prime lens for travel forces a real trade-off, and most people default to a 35mm or a wide angle out of habit. The 50mm prime makes a compelling case that it deserves that spot instead, especially if you care about how a location actually feels in a photo rather than just how much of it you can fit in the frame. 

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Make the most of the flowers currently in bloom and have a go at a bit of creative flower photography. Below you'll find links to flower photography tutorials with advice on using macro lenses, dealing with messy backgrounds, working on a budget and for when the weather turns, tips on photographing flowers indoors. Each feature also has a picture-perfect flower shot next to it for inspiration - enjoy!  

 

1. Backlighting Flowers For Photography

 

2. Four Ways To Shoot More 'Arty' Themed Flower Images

 

3. Flowers - An Alternative Approach

 

4. Six Outdoor Flower Photography Tips Every Compact User Needs

 

5. 3 Top Tips To Improve Bluebell Photography

 

6. Abstract Flower Photography Tips

 

 

7. 10 Top Tips On Photographing Daffodils

 

8. Take Better Photos Of Public Gardens With These 5 Tips

 

 

9. Eight Techniques To Improve Your Garden Photos

 

10. 4 Essential Tips On Photographing Snowdrops

 

You've read the technique now share your related photos for the chance to win prizes: Daily Forum Competition

Shooting portraits at f/2 with a 200mm lens produces backgrounds so obliterated they barely look real. If you shoot portraits and background separation is a priority, the focal length and aperture combination you choose will define your entire look. 

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Excire’s product range comprises AI-powered photo and video management software. Excire Foto 2025 is a really powerful standalone asset management software for Mac and Windows. It doesn’t have any editing capabilities, but it can manage and organise a large photo collection very efficiently. We tested it recently and you can check out that review here.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Excire Search 2026 has a similar feature set with excellent AI-driven image management skills, but it works differently having an intimate relationship with Adobe Lightroom Classic. So, for example, perform a search in Excire and the results are shown as a Lightroom Collection, which means you can then rate, select and delete as normal. It’s also worth mentioning that the Excire apps work locally so there’s no risk when it comes to privacy.

 

The Excire Search Panel shows as a separate window when Adobe Lightroom Classic is opened. The single image on view in Search 2026 is the one active in the Lightroom’s Library module and if it needs initialising a warning note shows.

 

Quick Verdict

Excire Search 2026 at £199 / $229 is a significant investment and whether it’s worth the cash is largely dependent on what you shoot and how you like to work. You could argue that Excire’s face and people search skills plus AI culling has more potential for productive people and social photographers than scenic shooters. 

What you shoot is one thing but so is how much you shoot. Frugal shooters probably have less to gain than those who are more trigger happy.

My photography covers a diverse range of subject matter and I shoot a healthy number of frames whenever I go out which makes keeping up with tasks such as keywording and image culling a challenge. Furthermore, while my workflow is reasonably well organised, finding a particular picture can be time-consuming. 

While I am relatively new to Excire Search 2026, using it for this review, I found it to be a very useful image management solution. Excire’s face search, people search and AI keywording tools are very powerful and I particularly enjoyed its Search by Text Prompt skills. Speed is also a virtue even working with large Lightroom catalogues.

 

+ Pros

• One-time purchase
• Easy to use
• Excire runs locally
• Search by Text Prompt is clever
• Face and people search
• Auto keywording works well especially with people photos and is a huge time saver
• Keywords and aesthetic ratings can be automatically transferred to Lightroom
• AI assisted culling 
• Some search tools work with videos

- Cons

• It costs £199 / $229 but that is for a lifetime licence
• Initialisation takes a while with large image collections, but it is a one-off process
• Auto aesthetic rating has limited appeal 
• Limited to single image view
• Auto keywording is less effective with scenes and locations but it still works

 

 

For photographers relying on Adobe Lightroom Classic as their workflow mainstay, Excire Search 2026 is a fully compatible plug-in and brings several great features to the party. Notably, powerful search tools and auto keywording which Lightroom Classic lacks. If you use another editing or workflow app, the standalone Excire Foto 2025 is the app for you. The two apps use the same AI technology so both perform to a high level and have broadly similar search features.

Both apps are available for outright purchase, costing £199 / $229 each or the bundle of the two is available for £299 / $329 instead of £398 / $458. Both are available on a free 14-day trial and there’s no subscription option.

 

The Excire Search 2026 interface is very simple. Across the top are various view controls including Highlight Faces while on the right are the apps’ search and culling tools in Lightroom. During searches a progress bar shows in Lightroom and the results appear in a Lightroom Collection.

 

Excire Search 2026 Getting started

Once installed, open Adobe Lightroom Classic and you can have the Excire Search panel appear as a separate window automatically, by using the drop-down menu (Library>Plug-in Extras>Open Excire Search Panel) or use quick keys Alt+X (Windows) / Option+X (Mac).

How you work with Search 2026 and Lightroom together is a personal decision and depends on your screen set-up. For single screen users, you can have the two apps side by side with the Lightroom side panels closed to save space. This works well especially during culling where you can view and check image sequences conveniently. When you’re not using Excire, hit the up arrow in the bottom right of the panel and it’ll close to an unobtrusive floating strip. If you have a dual monitor system, you can have Excire running on one and Lightroom on the other.

In Lightroom’s Library module (Excire doesn’t work with other modules), click on an image and it will appear in the Excire Search Panel. Using the left and right arrow keys, it’s possible to advance through images with each image taking less than a second to appear, so it’s respectably fast. However, it’s not possible to rate or star images through Excire.

There’s a selection of viewing tools ranged across the top of the interface so you can magnify images and pick out faces, and on the right side are the various search and culling tools. We will dig deeper into these features later in this review.

 

On a single monitor set-up, having Lightroom and the Excire Search Panel sitting side by side is a good way of working. Here you can see the focus check feature working. The green boxes tell you focus is good with yellow and then red indicating a sharpness problem.

 

Excire Search 2026 key features

• Photo and video asset management app, no editing capabilities
• Excire Search Panel
• Only available with a lifetime licence, no subscription option
• Runs locally
• Range of search tools: Text Prompt, People, Face, Keyword, Aesthetic, Similarity, Duplicate Search
• Auto keywording
• Auto focus checking
• Recognises faces, objects, colours, emotions, abstract concept and famous landmarks
• AI-assisted culling 
• AI Aesthetic scores
• Supports Raw and JPEGs
• Available for Mac and Windows
• £199 / $229
• 14-day free trial version available
• excire.com

 

Initialisation is the process of Search 2026 analyzing images so its search functions work. Keywords and aesthetic scores are also generated, and these can be transferred automatically to Lightroom.

 

Excire Search 2026 Initialisation

Clearly, to start with, none of your images are initialised and that’s the first step. Do this in Lightroom by going to Library>Plug-in Extras>Initialise Photos. The process means images are analyzed to enable Excire’s search tools, plus images are automatically keyworded and given an aesthetic score, and you can choose to have these automatically transferred to Lightroom. Or you can do it manually afterwards.

In Excire’s Foto 2025 app, before initialisation, you have to choose where the Excire database sits. In Search 2026, there is no need for that as the database is stored in the same folder as the Lightroom catalogue.

The initialisation process takes time. For reference, a Mac Studio M2 Max with 32GB RAM running Tahoe 26.3.1 was used for this review. 

I started by initialising an existing Lightroom catalogue of 40,167 images and the whole process took just over five hours. If you’re working with larger Lightroom catalogues, it makes sense to run the process overnight and that’s what I did with my largest Lightroom catalogue, which comprises 127,232 images. While the process of initialisation takes time, you only have to do it once, so in that context it’s not an issue. 

Furthermore, once you’ve caught up and existing catalogues have been initialised, keeping the Excire database up to date is not too time-consuming. For example, a portrait shoot comprising over 3074 images - Raws and JPEGs, so 6148 files in total - took a little over 17 minutes to initialise.

 

A Search by Text Prompt using the word ‘bridges’ found bridges, details of bridges and piers. The search took around 15 seconds.

 

Excire Search 2026 Search tools

Search 2026 has an impressive line-up of search tools: Text Prompt, Duplicates, Keyword, Example Photo, Faces, People, and Aesthetics. Each has selectable parameters such as how strict or loose you want the search to be and the maximum number of images you want found. Depending on the tool, other filters such as similarity are also available.

Perhaps the most ingenious is Search by Text Prompt. In the text box, you can type in a specific subject such as bridge, insects, or trees, or a condition which might be sunset or night. But you can also use descriptions and abstract concepts so you can search for images that show happiness, tranquillity, or peaceful times, or depict a style such as psychedelic or film noir.

Searches are quick and depend on the catalogue size. In my 127,232 image catalogue, I did a search for bridges with the Restrictive/Loose slider at 50 and a maximum number of 1000 images. The search took 15 seconds and in that selection, most were bridges which included detail shots and general views but also I got other subjects including piers.

Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how Excire Search 2026 worked with locations. I searched for London and the limit of 5000 images was found in just under 30 seconds. A quick skim through the results showed that around 85% were of London, with the rest made up of shots of other cities including Venice and Newcastle. Next, I tried a search for Cambridge with the Restrictive/Loose slider at 1 and got 266 images with around 60% correct. I had not keyworded most of these images, so it was Excire’s advanced skills that did the work.

Essentially, Search by Text Prompt proved to be a very useful and effective tool and must be tried to be appreciated.

Cutting edge facial recognition technology is used by Search 2026 to find faces and people and even with large Lightroom catalogues, searches take seconds.

 

Of the search options, faces and people will probably be the most used, so I tried them next. Bring up the Search for Faces dialogue box and with its simple graphics, you can narrow down the search to the number of people in shot, their age, gender and whether they are smiling or not. My search for two smiling female adults found 655 images and I got a mix of street pictures and set-up portraits. Some shots were also of single people and I got the occasional bloke too, but again, the majority fitted the search criteria.

For the Search for People function, you need a reference photo to start with. So, with a face you’ve found using Search for Faces or a face you already have in Lightroom’s Library module, click on the reference image so it becomes active in the Excire Search Panel. Clicking on the Highlight Faces icon in the top bar brings up a focus box overlay so you can check sharpness and then clicking the Search for People icon brings up the dialogue box. Here you can set the similarity limit from Restrictive to Loose, filter by face count and keyword and use key qualities such as smiling and eyes open. Right-click on the magnifier icon and you can skip the dialogue box.

This is a very useful tool if you need to quickly find pictures for a client or of a family member. Setting the Restrictive/Loose similarity limit to a low figure helps with accuracy.

Finishing briefly with the last three search options, Search by Keyword works with Excire’s keywords and those you might have already applied in Lightroom, and it can even search for images with a dominant colour. The Duplicates and Example Photo are self-explanatory, and both have potential if you’re working with large catalogues.

Overall, Excire’s search tools proved themselves to be highly capable. They weren’t infallible but they were competent enough to save time and effort compared with manually searching through large catalogues.

 

Excire checks focus for you. The greener the box outline, the sharper the focus; with softer images, green gives way to yellow and then red. You can see here the box has a hint of yellow, so focus wasn’t spot-on; it was shot at f/1.4 so there wasn’t much depth-of-field.

 

Select the Sequences or Visual similarities culling folder in Lightroom and the Excire Search Panel Culling group view shows a single image from each folder. This also works on other culling group types, i.e., people. Click on a thumbnail and you see the contents of the folder back in Lightroom.

 

Excire Search 2026 Culling

Manually sorting out the best photos from a day’s shoot is a time-intensive process, but it must be done. Excire Search 2026 brings AI automation to the process so you can quickly funnel down thousands of shots to essential keepers for editing.

Excire’s culling tools are extensive and configurable. Hit the Start Culling Project button, and you’ll see a four-tabbed dialogue box and here you can decide what sort of images you want to end up with. 

Start with the Grouping tab, where you choose one or more grouping options and this works independently of the Smart Selection tab. People, content, visual similarity, date and sequences are the key options.

Then in the Smart Selection tab, pick the Relevant grouping in the drop-down menu and there are various attributes (People, Content, People + sequence and more) to apply to pick the best photos from each group.

Under the Rejections tab, Excire has the power to reject blurred, poorly exposed shots as well as those where the subject’s eyes are shut. 

Ultimately, what Excire’s culling process does is take a large batch of images – up to 10,000 – and breaks them down to more manageable, smaller groups to work with.

Let Search 2026 take the strain when it comes to image culling. Shown here are two of the four menus in the Start Culling Project dialogue box with the inset showing the resulting collection of folders in Lightroom.

 

I set Excire to work on 611 portraits of the same model and two minutes later, it had created, among other things, 88 sequences, two capture groups, rated five photos with five stars and rejected 103 shots. 

All the images are put into a Lightroom Collection that you can then check through, rate and process. Certainly, Excire 2026 did well and it did pick out poor exposures and eyes shut shots, but of course, it can’t appreciate what you were trying to do on a creative level, so it did reject some of my close-up profile shots that were deliberately slightly underexposed. That’s no problem, though, and checking through the Reject folder and hitting U in Lightroom to unflag those shots sorted that.

Of course, it’s important to check through Excire’s selections and groupings but even identifying the blurred shots and incorrect exposures saves time. Also, it’s no problem to run Smart Selection again with different criteria and there’s a button to do that.

 

Out of 611 shots of Dolly, Excire gave a rating of five stars to just five photos. Clicking on the Selection Collection in Lightroom means you can check the images and in Excire, you can see the green focus box if the Highlight Faces icon is clicked. Hit the thumbnail and you get a magnified view for a close check.

 

Excire Search 2026 Keywording and Aesthetic rating

Keywording is time-consuming. Excire Search 2026 has AI-powered auto keywording that’s done during initialisation. There’s the option of having keywords show in Lightroom’s Keyword and Keyword List panels and are identified as Excire 2026 and sit alongside your own keywords.

In my shoot, I had a model posing with a wine glass, so the images were keyworded with Food, Drink as well as the attributes you would expect, so Portrait, Face and Adult were also applied. Interestingly, photos of models in a long, white frilly dress were keyworded Bride.

During initialisation, every image is also given an Aesthetic score out of 100, so the higher the score the more aesthetically pleasing the image, according to Excire. The score is produced by Excire’s AI technology which has been trained by expert photographers and hundreds of thousands of images. This rating appears in Lightroom in the Metadata palette (in the All Plug-in Metadata menu), although it doesn’t appear as a Library filter. That means if you want to sort images by Excire’s Aesthetic rating in Lightroom, you need to go to Library>Plug-in Extras> Search by Aesthetics, where you can search by the most or least aesthetic rating. You can also sort by Aesthetics with Excire's culling tools (though it can only be applied to a set of grouped images).

Excire generates keywords automatically during initialisation. To give you an idea of the breadth and depth that Excire goes to, here are the keywords under the headings of Animal, Architecture, Nature and People.

 

Excire Search 2026 Verdict

Excire Search 2026 is a very capable app and for busy photographers vested in an Adobe Lightroom Classic workflow, it represents a compelling proposition. Yes, at £199 / $229 it’s not cheap, but then you are paying for an outright purchase and it does bring powerful image management features to Lightroom and the two apps complement each other nicely. It’s only with culling that there’s any function duplication, but Excire’s version has more options.

On the whole, there’s much to appreciate and enjoy in Excire Search 2026, so do try out the free 14-day trial here and see what it can do for your workflow.

 

Excire Search 2026 Pros

• One-time purchase
• Easy to use
• Excire runs locally
• Search by Text Prompt is clever
• Face and people search
• Auto keywording works well especially with people photos and is a huge time saver
• Keywords and aesthetic ratings can be automatically transferred to Lightroom
• AI assisted culling 
• Some search tools work with videos

 

Excire Search 2026 Cons

• It costs £199 / $229 but that is for a lifetime licence
• Initialisation takes a while with large image collections, but it is a one-off process
• Auto aesthetic rating has limited appeal 
• Limited to single image view
• Auto keywording is less effective with scenes and locations but it still works

 

[REVIEW_FOOTER]R_features=4.5|R_handling=4.5|R_performance=4.5|R_value=4.5|R_overall=4.5|A_level=4.5|E_id=8016[/REVIEW_FOOTER]

 If you're starting photography in 2026, the path to improvement isn't paved with better gear. Brenda Bergreen has spent years shooting weddings, adventure, landscapes, portraits, and travel, and she's mapped out exactly where beginners waste time and where they actually grow. 

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1. Pick A Strong Subject

As silhouettes don't have any detail and are, essentially, just an outline, picking a subject that has a recognisable shape and strong detail around the edge will produce shots that are more interesting. Possible subject choices include:

• Big wheels at fairgrounds or those found in cities.
• Statues which can be found in most parks and gardens.
• Trees, particularly on misty mornings.
• Tunnels or bridges make great frames for subjects when silhouetted.
• People but remember that shooting them side on will show more shape when still. 
• People in action - if they're jumping or forming an interesting frame with their legs and arms, shooting straight on can work well.

  2. Choose A Light Source 

Any subject that is surrounded by bright tones can easily appear as a silhouette. The most obvious light source to use is the sun as you can use it at the beach, in town, in your garden or even inside as long as you're working near a large window or close to a set of patio doors. But really you can use any light source, you just need to make sure it sits behind your subject.

 

3. Switch The Flash Off

When you take your camera out of its bag and use auto mode to take a shot of your subject sat against a bright background, generally the flash will fire to lighten the foreground and even out the exposure. This is usually fine but as we want to deliberately underexpose our subject, you need to make sure the flash is turned off.

 

 

4. Underexpose Your Shot When working in auto mode, most point and shoot cameras will work out the exposure and where it needs to focus when you press the shutter button halfway. So to trick it into creating a silhouette, simply point the camera at the brightest part of the scene you're photographing, press the shutter halfway down and don't let go of it. Re-frame the shot then press the shutter button the rest of the way to take your shot. This should fool the camera into giving you the exposure you want but you may have to try exposing from different parts of the image to create the silhouette you're looking for. Try using the Sunset Mode too to further enhance the silhouette you're trying to create.
  5. Check The Shot's Focus

The problem with half-pressing the shutter button to get the exposure you need is that the camera will also focus on that spot too which can mean your silhouette can lack crispness. If this happens and you can adjust the focus manually, pre-focus before you take your meter reading. You could try using Landscape mode as this will let the camera know you want to use a small aperture so your shot has front to back sharpness. If your camera features exposure compensation you'll be able to select -1 or -2 to deliberately underexpose your shot. This means you shouldn't have any problems with focusing either as you won't have to move the camera.

 

You've read the technique now share your related photos for the chance to win prizes: Daily Forum Competition

    Wonky horizons are the bane of many landscape and cityscape photographers as a horizon that's slightly off-tilt can spoil what's otherwise a perfectly good shot. Of course, there will be times when holding your camera at an angle so the horizon line is deliberately not straight but if you do want to do this, make sure it's really obvious as otherwise, it'll just look like you forgot to check your frame before hitting the shutter button.   How To Straighten Horizons    1. Line it up with the bottom or top of your frame   The easiest way to ensure you have horizontal horizons is to line it up with the bottom or top of your frame, either in your viewfinder or on the LCD screen. Some cameras also have a digital spirit level feature which will indicate to you when the camera is level  - both on the horizontal and vertical planes. It can be displayed in the viewfinder or on the back monitor when using Live View, along with all your other settings. When the marker is in the middle of the gauge and turns green, you know you're level.     2. Rule of thirds grid  If you don't have a digital spirit level, have a look in your camera's menu options to see if there's a rule of thirds grid. We know this isn't designed for this purpose but the grid will have horizontal lines on it that can be a handy guide when you're looking for a quick way to check the horizon.          3. Use a spirit level Another option is to purchase a spirit level that sits on your camera's hot shoe and to use a tripod as you're more likely to move / not hold the camera straight when you shooting hand-held.      4. Post Production  Of course, you can always straighten your images in whatever editing software you use as well but it's good practise to get it right in-camera whenever possible.    

You've read the technique now share your related photos for the chance to win prizes: Daily Forum Competition

When Olympus sold its imaging division to Japan Industrial Partners on January 1, 2021, the new company was called OM Digital Solutions. The OM SYSTEM product brand arrived later, announced in October 2021 as the name the company would put on its cameras going forward. Most of the photography press wrote the obituary in advance of either event. The division had been unprofitable for years. Olympus itself, after more than eighty years of making cameras, was exiting the business. Micro Four Thirds had lost the sensor-size argument in the public imagination to APS-C and full frame.

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APS-C cameras are quickly becoming the main choice for everyday photography. I've owned a Nikon Z50 for seven years now, and it's still my favorite everyday camera, especially for travel, street, and urban photography. But finding lenses for it has always been a problem. 

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It seems everybody is retiring their gimbals. Every time I look at social media, I hear people talking about: does anybody use a gimbal anymore? Or you'll see videos where people are talking about gear they regret buying, and a gimbal is usually on that list. 

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Shooting on a walk through a quiet English village sounds like the kind of thing you'd do when you've run out of ideas. Andrew Banner's latest video proves it's actually one of the most effective ways to sharpen your eye. 

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