When the I Heart Snapping team attended the BritMums Live conference a few weeks ago, it was definitely fair to say that the session we were most looking forward to was Julia Boggio‘s session on Advanced Blogging Photography. As two enthusiastic amateurs at best, we were hoping to learn some great tips from a proper professional photographer, and the session definitely didn’t disappoint as it was crammed full of useful tips for improving blog photography.

Julia started by talking about the misconceptions that great cameras take great photos; they don’t, its the photographer that does that. Now how many times have you heard those exact words here? She described a photographer as someone who paints with light and that it is light that makes a great photo and gives images interest. She explained that there are three different types of light that you are dealing with when taking photographs, and that how you use these affects the final photograph that you take and the effect it has.

First there is ‘key’ light which is the main and strongest light upon your subject. There is ‘fill’ light which is what lifts shadows and can be created by bouncing ambient light from a reflective surface. And finally there is ‘hair’ light which is an accent or back light which separates a subject from its surrounds and gives an image depth. These different light sources can be differently located for different photos or subjects. Being aware of them and how you use them can be the difference between a great shot, an okay shot and a rubbish shot.

If you’ve been reading the photography posts here on I Heart Snapping then you will have heard us banging on about how photography is generally most attractive in natural sunlight. Sunlight can be your ‘key’ light if if is in front of your subject (and behind you) or your ‘hair’ light if it is behind them (and you are shooting towards the sun). The sun’s rays travel in straight lines, so you do have to be careful about the effect that shadow can have on your photos and Julia suggested that when photographing people in natural light that it’s a good idea to get them to move their face around to make sure you avoid shadows. It can also be a good idea to use a reflector to bounce sunlight so that it also becomes your fill light.

She gave the simple tip of taking a piece of white paper outside using it to gage where the best light is; which is something I’ve tried out since and have found really useful just to bring my attention back to thinking about the best light and best angle for my photo. I definitely take more notice of how shadows affect my photography now and I have found myself repositioning things and using white cushions as reflectors to manipulate the light when I shoot.

Julia showed how she made a simple lighting box or tent using tracing paper, foam board and a ceiling tile, and how she had used it to photograph some garlic. She demonstrated how excluding light and using compact mirrors and carrier bags as diffusers can create a still life full of texture. If you take a lot of still life type photos she also said told us that having your key light come from the side creates far better texture. She also showed us how the position of light in portraiture can completely change the final look; ‘narrow’ shooting means the light comes from the side and you shoot into the shadowed side of the face, whereas with ‘broad’ shooting the light comes from the same direction as the camera and you shoot the lit part of the face. The key with portraits is that ‘narrow’ shooting is far more slimming and flattering on the face. So that’s something to remember next time you have your picture taken; make sure the light is to one side.

The whole talk was crammed full of examples of how to use everyday items like lamps, white cushions and a black dress to play with the light and create different looks with the overriding theme being that you have to play around to find what works. Add light, take it away, move it, bounce it around; it will all affect the resulting photo is different ways and you can’t learn quite how it will unless you try. Oh and demonstrating her opening point perfectly, every single image that Julia had taken and shown us had been taken on her iPhone. I think it would be fair to say that this left everyone feeling pretty impressed and also confident that it really isn’t the kit when it comes to great blog images, but what you do with it that counts.

Another week is nearly done and it’s time for another weekend.I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the sun might come out for this weekend, but I won’t hold my breath. But that’s enough of the very British talk about the weather, lets crack on with some lovely links.

If you use Blogger then you might be interested to know that they are rolling out some changes and if you can’t already then you will very soon be able to create your own permalinks. You can read all about it in this post from Tots100 which explains exactly what permalinks are and why you should use them. It also explains how you can access it if it hasn’t been rolled out to your account yet.

There is another new photo linky on the block which is all about fun. Pop over to The Crumby Mummy and you can link up any photograph which is fun, whether it was fun to take, be in or edit.

One of our readers is sporting the lovely glittery social media buttons we offered up as freebies a couple of weeks back. They definitely look very pretty in pink on Bubba Babble‘s sidebar.

When we were at BritMums Live, Mammasaurus let on about a free photo editing gem she had discovered called Photoscape. I’ve only just downloaded and am starting to play around. But she’s written a great tutorial on using it to make really pretty collages.

You’ve got to smile at these great photos from one very creative photographer dad. I’ve seen this link a few times now and it never fails to raise a giggle and to make me think outside the box for photos a bit.

 So all that’s left to do is open up the I Heart My Snap linky so you can share the pictures you love.Any pictures. Everyone is welcome. Just make sure you link back. And feel free to use the badge if you wish.

It was while ago now that we first talked to you about a new feature we were planning on starting called I Heart My Edit. But today we are here with the first ever I Heart My Edit; a feature which we hope will see some of our lovely readers getting involved and showing off what they can do.

So what is I Heart My Edit? It is basically a chance to learn about how people have managed to achieve certain affects with their photo editing. We are providing an original photograph and then asking people to edit it however they would like and simply let us know what they did.

This week, it’s our first time. So the I Heart Snapping team are editing this time. But next time it could be you. We were really impressed with all the people offering to take part when we first mentioned I Heart My Edit, rest assured your details are all safely in a spreadsheet and we WILL be getting in contact.

So without further ado, there is the first I Heart My Edit…

Original Image

A daisy photo taken on a Nikon D5000 with an 18-55 lens with macro filter.

Katie’s Edit

I basically used idarkroom app and added the cross process filter.  This made it really green so I wanted to dull it down a little.  I used the Photoshop Express App to slightly adjust the contrast (to make it look more dream like).  Finally I added a white border to bring out the vibrant colour of the petals.

Lucy’s Edit

I used Camera+ first of all to crop the image so that it obeyed the rule of thirds a bit more, and I applied the clarity scene filter. I then used BeFunky to edit it further, by using the vibrance filter and I added the grunge1 border to it to frame it and finish it off.

We both went for phone apps to edit with, just to prove that you don’t need fancy expensive editing software to make your images look lovely.

If you haven’t already been in touch with us and you want to be involved, then let us know.

On the Friday and Saturday we just had, the I Heart Snapping team were at the BritMums Live conference in London. It was a great opportunity for us to get together and also to meet up with other lovely bloggers, hear great speakers, take part in inspiring workshops and generally feel glad to be part of the world that is blogging.

We picked up so many little tips and ideas to share with you all and just like when we went to Cybher last month, we want to give you the lowdown on what we heard.

It all opened up on Friday afternoon with a keynote speech from Ruby Wax and then we were straight into the business of workshops.

We chose a workshop on writing about parenting for our first session, as we both do this on our personal blogs. There was a lot of discussion about parenting blogs that are either too positive, too negative or too preachy, but the overall feeling was that if you are authentic and honest then people will enjoy reading it. It came back to things we have said here on I Heart Snapping before; which is that your voice IS your blog, so be true to yourself and don’t try to be something you’re not, people see straight through it and would always rather read a ‘real’ post from the ‘real’ you.

The evening was all about the BiB awards, which celebrated bloggers doing great things across a variety of categories. Go and check out the winners if you get time, you are bound to come away feeling inspired.

Saturday was a day cram-packed with sessions which were varied and fantastic. The choices of workshop session available were really great and there seemed to be something for everyone. We attended a quite frankly awesome workshop by Julia Boggio on photography, which I will write up separately in a different post as there was so much she said that we want to share with you.

We went to a Pinterest session too which was really fab and informative, I know for a fact that I’m not using Pinterest to its full potential so expect a post with more information on Pinterest to come your way very soon.

We also attended a discussion session on blogging for happiness. I think the strongest message to come away from this session was that blogging can and has changed people’s lives through the opportunities it has given them and the community it puts them in touch with. There was some great advice from the panel and from the people attending the discussion on how to keep it real,  but one of the best was to go back and read people’s first posts so that you can see why they started and what they are all about. And also not to over think blog posts that you write, but to stick with being honest and being yourself. A recurring theme it would seem.

In between the sessions there was plenty of time for networking, chatting and eating lots of cake. It was lovely to meet so many I Heart Snapping readers and to hear so many of you saying great things about how helpful this site is and how much you love it. We really hope this site will go from strength to strength and we don’t see ourselves running out of ideas any time soon. And you can always comment, tweet or email us if you’d like us to look at something in particular. We don’t know it all and we don’t pretend to but if we can help then we will.

Anyway, back to BritMums Live. The weekend finished with a keynote speech from Cherry Healey who had some really interesting things to say about how blogging has an increasing impact on her work as a tv journalist and presenter. It seems like we’re on the cusp of something quite big in the UK with regards to blogging and we’re really excited to see where it leads.

The conference ended with the Bloggers Keynote speech which was a definite favourite with a lot of the delegates. It made such a nice ending to the conference to bring it all back to why we were there; the blogging, the writing and the community. Blog posts can often be emotive when you read them, but there is something about hearing posts read aloud by their writer which is extremely powerful and the thirteen posts selected took everyone through an emotional roller coaster. There were tears, smiles, joy, laughter. It was a definite high point to end on, even if a lot of people’s mascara was looking the worse for wear.

BritMums founders, Jen and Susanna

BritMums Live was a brilliant weekend. It was inspiring and informative as well as giving us a great chance to meet blogger friends new and old. We’ll be putting it in the diaries for next year.

You’ve got your camera. You want to take good photographs. You want to learn about what your camera can do. You want to be good at getting a great shot. You have absolutely no idea where to start.

Who nodded along? I know I did. And they are statements that we hear a lot.

I have always said that I’m nothing more than an enthusiastic amateur, but I do like to think that I am getting better all the time. I am learning about my camera. I’m getting good photographs that I love more and more. But the great thing is that there is always something new to learn.

Here are some tips for absolute beginners, to get you started on the road to taking photos which make you proud.

Use what you’ve got

It can be really easy to get suckered into spending a lot of money thinking that it will take better pictures. It won’t. YOU are the thing driving that camera and it’s you that matters. Yes, a fancy camera will give you more control over certain elements of your photo. But I’d you are starting out using any camera will be good enough. The resolution may not be so good but it’s the art of actually taking the photograph that matters. If you never use your camera phone or your little point and shoot camera to take pictures, then what makes you think that buying a fancy camera will make you suddenly start snapping?
I have always taken lots of photos. And I used to get along very well with a little Sony Cybershot camera for a long time. In many ways it was a ton more practical than the big camera I lug around now. But by the time I got a DSLR I was already in the habit of using a camera a lot. It was when I found my point and shoot was restricting the sorts of photos I wanted to take that I bought a DSLR. I was also in a better position to buy a DSLR because I knew better what it was that I wanted.
What I’m saying is don’t spend money if you don’t need to, because an expensive camera won’t get you better pictures if you don’t know how to use it. The same goes for accessories and additional kit; don’t buy them when you’re starting out. You’ll have a much better idea of the kit that you might want once you and your camera are old friends.

Experiment and enjoy the learning process

There is a mountain of available information online to help you learn about your camera and it’s settings and it can be really overwhelming. But nothing will help you learn like actually playing around with your own camera.
If you do own a DSLR check out our post on the modes and settings on your camera. Read it, take away one or two things and then go and play. You won’t learn everything about your camera in one day, so just think about a photography opportunity you have coming up and try out one new thing with your camera. You’ll soon build up a knowledge and repertoire of things you can do.
If you are using a point and shoot then check out the pre-programmed settings and try taking the same photo with each setting. You’ll get a really good idea of each programmed setting will do simply by going through this process.
Just play and don’t be afraid to have a go. Obviously if you really want to capture a specific image that is time sensitive then that’s not the time to muck around with your camera. But when I first started out using manual on my camera, I would take a few in auto first to guarantee I had the picture I wanted, and then I’d start fiddling with settings.

Photograph random things

Just because you can! Digital photography means that it is far easier and cheaper to just have a go because you don’t have to print (or even show anyone) your little experiments. So don’t overlook everyday objects as photo opportunities, even if it’s just an excuse to experiment.

Write a photo wish list

I have one and I’m adding to it all the time. It’s basically a list of photos you would like to take. I had ‘photo in long grass’ and ‘photo with bluebells’ on my list until recently, but I recently got to tick them off the list. I want to take more pictures with bubbles and water. I want to take some pictures in silhouette.
The best place to look for inspiration is Pinterest, or you might find inspiration on blogs or in magazines. But I find it really helps me to have some plans and ideas for photos that I’d like to take. It gives you something to aim for on a boring, empty weekend too.

Take photos

It goes without saying that your photography won’t get any better while you sit and watch TV. So get your camera out, whatever camera that may be and take some pictures. Try to challenge yourself to take one every day or every week.
Setting yourself little challenges keeps you learning and practising the skills that you are learning. And blogging is a great excuse to get better. There are so many photo linkys out there which give you simple inspiration or ideas for taking more photographs.

So pick up your camera and you might just learn a thing or two.

IT’S FRIDAY!!!!! Is it just me or do the weeks seem loads longer the week after a bank holiday? But it’s finally here… the weekend and the links we love.

We love seeing people putting our tutorials to good use and will try our best to share your handiwork if you let us know about it. Lauren at Real Housewife of Suffolk County used our Picasa tutorial to make herself a new blog header. Go check it out because it looks lovely.

One of our lovely readers has been showing off some of her art work this week and talking about the creativity in her life. If you haven’t checked out Aly McLoughlin Harte’s blog yet then you should. We loved her post on doing more of what you love.

We featured the lovely Chloe Bridge this week in our first ‘Leave It To The Pros‘ post and she’s been talking work on her own personal blog. It’s great to read stories about people finding happiness in creative jobs.

The fantastic community that is BritMums have been running a fun photography hashtag on Twitter and challenging people to take a photo on a given theme everyday. You can find out more here if you’d like to take part or just search the #snaphappybritmums to see some great pictures.

And speaking of BritMums, the I Heart Snapping team are off to the BritMums Live conference next Friday and Saturday. If you’re going then too then don’t be shy and come and say hi to us. We get a bit giddy with ideas and inspiration when we are together but we won’t bite. You can find a picture of us on the About page so you know who you’re looking for (and the blonde one has a big baby bump too!). Please do say hello.

Last week we launched a fabulous competition for you all and you’ve still got a week left to enter. The lovely people at Blurb who make the most gorgeous photo books ever, are offering some of our readers a voucher towards making their own book.

If you’ve never used Blurb before then this is the competition for you because 3 of our readers will be getting a £30 voucher to spend on any product they like. You can make planners and notebooks as well as photo books of your favourite images, there are so many possibilities. There is one condition, you have to be new Blurb customer to enter.

And all you need to do to enter is subscribe to I Heart Snapping which you can do over in the sidebar).

Plus for extra entries you can like our Facebook page,

follow us on Twitter

or tweet “I want to win a Blurb voucher with @IHeartSnapping http://www.iheartsnapping.com/2012/06/08/links-love-heart-snap-competition-all/ ”.

Make sure you leave a seperate comment for each entry and we’ll let you know next week who our lucky winners are.

So all that’s left is to open up your I Heart My Snap linky. There are no rules, just link up a photo you love; old or new, in it’s own post or part of a larger one. Last weeks linky was a bumper one so get linking up your photos for this week.

Have a great weekend.

We’re all about giving you tips and pointers to improve your photography on I Heart Snapping, and we’ve loved all the great feedback to all our photography related posts and people wanting to be involved with I Heart My Edit. But we also want to showcase some real talents; so we will be introducing you to some lovely photographers and asking them to share their tips and let us all know how they go started and what they love about doing what they do.

For our first ever ‘Leave It To The Pros’ post we have Chloe Bridge. Some of you may know her from Chloe Witters where she blogs all about her life with her adorable little boy Arlo. If you haven’t already done so, then check it out. Expect lots of lovely photographs! Chloe’s photography on her blog have launched a whole new career for her, as she has recently ventured into the world of portrait photography by setting up her own business Chloe Bridge Photography. She very kindly agreed to take some time out of being a mummy and running her own photography business, to let us ask her some questions. So here she is…

First off, can you tell us a bit about you and how you started out in photography?

I am a family and lifestyle photographer based in London. I started my own photography business just a couple of months ago and I’m so pleased to be able to do what I love and, at the same time, call it a career.

I’ve always been interested in photography. I remember the excitement of getting my first film camera when I was 7. Just before my 18th birthday, I announced that I wanted to be a photographer, and so my uncle very generously gave me his old SLR as my birthday present. I learnt so much by playing around with that camera. It served me well throughout university, and I dabbled with a bit of event photography for the University newspaper.

After I gained my English degree, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in photography. I luckily landed a job at a family portrait studio and gained invaluable training and practise with posing, lighting, and working with children of all ages. After that job, I moved into the post production side of photography and worked for one of London’s leading retouching houses.

Portrait photography has always been my ‘thing’. I just love the challenge of nailing that perfect expression and capturing each person’s unique personality. I started a blog whilst on maternity leave, a place where I could share the hundreds of photos I was taking of my son. Off the back of the blog, I started getting requests from friends to photograph their families. More referrals came from friends of friends after seeing my images, and my photography business was born from there.

What is in your kit bag? What camera(s) do you use? What accessories wouldn’t you be without?

I use a Canon 40d. My favourite lenses for portraits are my 50mm 1.8 and 28mm 1.8. My not-so-secret weapons are a white noise machine for newborn shoots, and bubbles for toddlers and older babies.

What do you love most about photography?

Images play such a huge part in preserving memories. A cherished photo lasts longer than a lifetime and will be passed down through generations to come. I can’t think of a way to write this without sounding incredibly cheesy, but to play a part in creating those treasured family memories is pretty awesome.

Can you tell us how you like to edit your photographs? What software do you use? Are there any particular things that you like doing with photographs?

I use a mixture of Lightroom and Photoshop when editing. Lightroom is my absolute favourite (if I could marry a software program…), but there are some things that can only be done in Photoshop. I like to edit my images in a clean, bright style, especially with babies and families – timeless classics that won’t date with age.

Which blogs do you think use fantastic photography?

Gregarious Peach - http://www.gregariouspeach.com/

Georgia is an Australian photographer and founder of the popular Facebook group ‘Documenting Delight’ – my go-to place to see some excellent photo-a-day child photography.  Georgia is brilliant at incorporating stories and conversations alongside her images, in doing so she captures some fantastic images of her two children.

Enjoying the Small Things - http://www.kellehampton.com/

Kelle lives in Florida with her two highly photogenic daughters. I found this hugely popular blog when I was pregnant with my son and I’ve been addicted ever since. My gosh does this lady have a picture perfect life (all down to her amazing photography!)

I read Inspire Me Baby and Let the Kids Dress Themselves for great tips and inspiration for family shoots.
http://inspiremebaby.com/
http://letthekids.com/

Share your three favourite photographs and why you love them. (We appreciate that it’s hard to choose only three!!!)

My favourites change every week, so this was a really tough one!

1. This is one of my favourite shots from the photoshoot that launched my photography business. As that shoot was such a landmark for me, I think it will always hold a place in my favourites.

2. This image of a yawning six day old newborn never fails to make me smile

3. Lastly, I couldn’t help including a shot of my own boy. I took this when he was 14 months old, and it perfectly sums him up at that age – headores his trains.

What tips can you give to our readers?

One comment I hear all the time is, “I’d love to learn more about my camera, but I haven’t got a clue how to use it in manual mode”.  If that sounds like you, then this is my advice:

Read up on shutter speeds, aperture and ISO (this link provides a simple explanation: http://lifehacker.com/5814173/basics-of-photography-your-cameras-manual-settings), and then set yourself a challenge to take a photo every day for a set period of time. A week, a month, or even a year – the longer the better!

Not only will you get to know your camera very quickly, you will learn to see your home from a photographer’s perspective (where to get the best light at which times of day, etc), and manual mode will fast become second nature. Most important of all, it will get you in the habit of picking up your camera on a regular basis, and you will have some amazing photographic memories to show for it. I started a year long photo-a-day project in January (you can check it out on my blog: http://www.chloewitters.wordpress.com), and it’s been the best challenge I’ve ever set myself!

Great tips and food for thought. Get your cameras out people, because you won’t learn how to use them if they are safely in their camera bag.

Thank-you to Chloe for being involved and sharing her tips and beautiful favourite photographs. You can follow Chloe on Twitter as @khloeee so stop by and say hi there or on her blog.

It’s Friday again, although this has to have been the shortest week ever. I definitely think we need more four day weekends and three day working weeks. So the long weekend and the jubilee celebrations means that lots of people got out and about enjoying their families and their communities. And as a result blogland is full of lovely red, white and blue celebrations which is enough to make anyone very patriotic.

Kerry at Multiple Mummy and our very own Katie at Mummy Daddy and Me Makes Three shared posts of their jubilee celebrations with lots of lovely photographs.

We gave you some freebie social media buttons and Keeping Up With The Joneses is showing them off very beautifully. Let us know if you’re using them too. And we’ve got more freebies coming your way soon.

We all have blogging low times when we wonder why we do it. But Dana at The Wonderforest received a lovely email about why her blog is important to someone. So why not share a bit of blog love yourself; write a comment, send an email and let those blogs that you love know.

If you’ve never used Blurb before then this is the competition for you because 3 of our readers will be getting a £30 voucher to spend on any product they like. You can make planners and notebooks as well as photo books of your favourite images, there are so many possibilities. There is one condition, you have to be new Blurb customer to enter.

And all you need to do to enter is subscribe to I Heart Snapping which you can do over in the sidebar).

Plus for extra entries you can like our Facebook page,

follow us on Twitter

or tweet “I want to win a Blurb voucher with @IHeartSnapping http://www.iheartsnapping.com/2012/06/08/links-love-heart-snap-competition-all/ ”.

Make sure you leave a seperate comment for each entry and we’ll let you know in two weeks who our lucky winners are.

So all that’s left is to open up your I Heart My Snap linky. There are no rules, just link up a photo you love; old or new, in it’s own post or part of a larger one.

Have a great weekend.

We are absolutely loving writing I Heart Snapping for you guys. We hope you’re finding the tutorials useful, the reviews helpful and that you are generally feeling inspired to take better pictures and to make your blogs more brilliant and more gorgeous than they already were.

But now it’s your turn. We are looking for some of our lovely readers to get involved with a new Monday feature. This will be your chance to feature your skills on the pages of I Heart Snapping and show off what you can do.

Each week three different bloggers who decide to join in, will be emailed a photograph. This photograph could be of anything, but it will be unedited. The challenge for those three bloggers is to edit the photo, anyway they like, using whatever software or apps that they like. Then email back the finished article explaining how they did what they did. Every Monday we will share the original image and then the three different takes on it and how they were achieved.

You don’t need to be a photo editing whizz to take part. In fact we’d love to showcase all sorts of different people’s styles and ideas. And don’t feel like you would have to do something completely amazing and outstanding and complex. We want instructions that other people can follow, so that our readers can learn from you.

Next week your I Heart Snapping team will be doing the first ever I Heart My Edit so that we can hopefully give you an idea of what we’re after. So if you want to wait and see what it’s all about, then check back on Monday for the post.

If you would like to be involved then let us know and we’ll be in touch. You can simply leave a comment on this post and we’ll use the email address you leave to get in contact. You can DM us via twitter letting us know your email address. Or you can let us know via our Facebook page (which is very new and feeling a bit lonely so come across and like us!)

It’s a late one and a quick one for this week’s Friday post. The weather has just been too nice to stay indoors and blog so the I Heart Snapping team (and their offspring) have been hanging out on picnic blankets in the sunshine. Fingers crossed this weather hangs around because not only does it make us very happy but its much more fun for taking photographs if you can go outside and have some adventures.

So just a few fab links for you to check out this week…

Ever wanted to make one of those funky little animated picture thingies that you sometimes see around blog land? Then check out this tutorial from The Paper Mama.

The infamous photograph linky The Gallery had it’s 100th outing this week with the theme picture postcard and the entries were stunning. So if you must be online this weekend instead of enjoying the great outdoors, then pop across and check out all the pretty.

For a great post on all the different ways that you can show a bit of blog love, go and check out this post at Wonder Forest…. because it’s always nice to spread a bit of love.

And finally, give a high five to Karin at Cafe Bebe. She decided to give our photo blog banner tutorial a go and now has a lovely new look banner to show for it.

That just leaves I Heart My Snap…. So get linking up your beautiful photographs. And don’t forget to grab the badge and link back to us so your readers can find some more gorgeous pictures.