Hot Competitions Blog

Great photos come with experience, but there are a few tips and tricks you can learn from the experience of others to help you improve your photographing experience. Listed below are eleven of them:

1. Use the tripod and self-timer of your digital camera. These two things will give you better chances to take sharper and clearer photos.

2. Keep the background tidy and clean. Before taking the photo, remove all things that you don’t want to include in it from the area. This will also help you focus on the subject without having your eyes distracted by the surroundings.

3. Place the camera as close as you can. Look into the screen of the camera and make sure that the things you want in the photo almost fill it. Using the macro function can really help. Look into the manufacturer’s manual to see how to use it and which distances are appropriate.

4. Make sure that the subject of the photo is in focus. A de-focused picture is unpleasant to look at and almost impossible to improve afterwards. If your photo is not focused, take a new one.

5. Stay away from dark shadows. Indirect sunlight and flash are much better for photographing than artificial or direct sunlight.

6. Take some time to think about what you want to photograph before setting up the camera equipment.

7. Improve the final result by rotating, cropping, resizing, sharpening and compressing if necessary. However, take your photo in such a way as to reduce the amount of necessary editing to a minimum. For example, removing unwanted objects from the picture is not something you should need to do.

8. Read the manufacturer’s manual to get to know all the features your camera has and be able to use them. Some of the most important things to learn about the camera before starting to use it are the self-timer, how to take pictures using the macro and manual focus settings, how to set the white balance and exposure levels, how to zoom in and out from the subject you want to photograph and how to adjust the resolution for your photos.

9. Don’t be shy to try experimenting. Try to put the techniques you read about into practice to see for yourself how they work. Change the angle of the photo, rotate the object you are focusing on, use different lighting, try out various background colors and exposure levels. You may be surprised of how much a certain technique can improve your photo.

10. Set your expectations right. You shouldn’t expect to get the perfect photo from the first shot. This rarely happens. Two or three shots are not enough either, you generally need at least five before deciding you couldn’t have done it any better.

11. If you are using the camera’s built-in flash for craft and jewelry photography, you should also use the power cord which comes along with the camera to generate as much light as possible out of the flash unit for each photo. As you are using the camera, even if you don’t use flash, the batteries will discharge and the output from the flash unit will also decrease. If you are using all of these tips you should see an instant improvement in your photographing. You may have them printed if you want and refer to them any time you are taking a new photo.

source:Fast Cash Photograph

Popularity: 13% [?]

Hello Contestants! With less than a week to go, the final countdown is on.
It’s Halloween time! The Day of the year that’s absolutely freakish and screamingly fun. A time when the line between the world of the living and the world of the dead is so thin and you’re sure to feel the freak and scare with ghosts, goblins, witches and werewolves prowling all around. Hallowe’en is an occasion to let loose the naughtier sides in you – playing pranks, sprucing up in freaky costumes and scaring the wits out of your folks. The chill of rib-tickling thrill, a nip of spine-chilling jitters and a good fare of full-blooded scare is at the heart of Halloween celebrations.
So this is the year to go all out with your decorating and to host a super Halloween party, make your awesome photos and share them on http://hotcompetitions.com to win some cash!

Popularity: 24% [?]

A Fun Way to Watch Your Little One Grow

Step 1: Have a baby or find someone who does and is willing for you to harass them with your camera

Step 2: Pick a fun stuffed animal that will be easy to take places

Step 3: Take a photo once a week for the first month, then once a month for the first year, then yearly until they move out and won’t come home/spend their birthday with you

Step 4: Every now and then get the photos printed, either as a collage, prints, or in a photo book

I may have mentioned this type of project before since we started doing this when Aya was born but I thought it’d be fun to post it as a “Tips & Tricks”, I’m hoping to add this as a category and share things that may be useful to others.

This is a fun way to see how your kid grows. It’s great to see how they start to interact with the stuff animal at different stages as well. This has also been fun for me to see how I’ve grown as a photographer!

And of course, here is a true to life example of this project… Amara’s first two weeks of photos and Aya’s first year and second year photos!

Popularity: 4% [?]

CONGRATULATIONS to the Winners of the contest “Miss September”!!! We would like you to please contact us at support@hotcompetitions.com in order to get more details on the prizes payment. According to our terms and conditions each winner will get the prize within 40 days after the end of the contest. If you don’t contact us 60 days after the end of the contest you loose the prize.

Position: 1- $50	Position: 2 – $30	Position: 3 – $20
too good to be true	me	mishoche
by Gabriela Chobanova	by Teodora Mikinska	by Михаела Михайлова

Popularity: 2% [?]