We’ve teamed up with CEWE to bring you the 60 days of Summer competition where we want to see your best shots over summer and the most impressive entrants will win some incredible prizes.
The 60 days of Summer competition is open to all UK entrants over the age of 18, and we want to see your favourite summer shots right the way through to August 31st. We’ve put five incredible summery photo tips below that you can use as inspiration.
The winner will take home a digital subscription worth £200 including Digital Camera, NPhoto, PhotoPlus and Photography Week magazines, plus you’ll also receive a CEWE product voucher worth £100. There are also £75 and £50 CEWE product vouchers up for grabs for 2nd and 3rd place respectively.
By the way, if you submit your photos to the 60 days of Summer competition, you can also enter the CEWE Photo Award competition at the same time! The CEWE Photo Award has 10 categories: Sport, Landscape, People, Nature, Animals, Travel & Culture, Food & Cooking, Hobby & Leisure, Architecture & technology and Aerial Photos. There’s a huge €250,000 in prizes, with 1st place taking a holiday worth €15,000, €7,500 worth of photography equipment, €2500 in CEWE products and an award.
Plus, for every photo submitted, CEWE donates €0.10 to global charity SOS Children’s Villages, supporting disadvantaged families across the world. Click here for more information on the CEWE Photo Award 2023. Enter now!
Overpower the sun with HSS
Bright summer sun often requires a very fast exposure to retain detail and stop the scene blowing out, however this usually results in your subject being underexposed if they’re being backlit by the sun. The solution is to use a quick burst of flash to illuminate your subject for balanced lighting across the frame, however if you use your pop-up flash or attach a flashgun to the hotshoe you’ll notice your shutter speed changes to around 1/200 or 1/250 sec on most cameras which is too slow to block out the bright summer sun for a decent exposure.
If you go into Manual mode you’ll be able to choose a faster shutter speed but now you’ll notice the flash only lights up a narrow band of your frame, with the rest being in shadow, this is because of the flash sync speed. For summer portraits like this flash lighting and a camera with a high speed sync function can be an absolute game-changer as you’ll be able to light up your subject with flash and use a fast enough shutter speed, say 1/2000 sec, to retain detail in the bright summer sky behind.
Shoot some silhouette shots
Turning your subject into a stark silhouette on a clear summer evening is a great way to add drama to your shots and variety to your portfolio. The key is to expose for the night sky which will render detail in the sky but make your foreground subject underexposed, so you can only make out the profile of your subject.
Choose a simple subject with an easily recognisable profile such as a person, or a tree, and keep the composition uncluttered - zoom in if you need to cut out any distractions and keep the framing clean. Shoot around sunset and in the blue hour that follows to add incredible colours to your silhouetted shots. A tripod will be a help in low light, then open your aperture all the way and boost the ISO value until you have a shutter speed of around 1/200 sec.
Capture the sunset
Every photographer should have at least one sunset shot in their portfolio and the summer months provide some of the best light at dusk we see all year. Set up on a tripod so you can take your time to get the composition spot-on and arrive early so you have plenty of time to get set up and also to secure a good spot if it’s a location known to get crowded at sundown.
Use the Live View mode on your camera so you’re composing with the screen rather than looking through the viewfinder which can be dangerous looking directly at the sun if you have a camera with an optical viewfinder. Shoot in the Raw file format so you can capture as much detail as possible and underexpose your image by one to two f/-stops so that you retain detail and colour in the sky.
Only be beside the seaside if your kit can handle it
Coastal shots, whether they’re beach landscapes or family photos of your loved ones playing in the sand, can be fun to shoot and make for brilliant memories. However, it can be a tricky terrain to shoot in if sand gets inside your camera or lens, and salt water can wreak havoc on electronics and metal tripods too.
Weather-sealed mirrorless or DSLR cameras are ideal, though if you need to change lens do so with care and do it inside of your camera bag in an area shielded by the wind and put a coat around your camera if you can to make sure no sand gets inside as this can be devastating.
Wash off your tripods with tap water after they’ve been in salty sea water to avoid rust and corrosion too. Waterproof camera housings and even cheap waterproof compacts can be a good option for extra creative options at the beach where you don’t have to worry about getting your kit sandy or wet.
How to choose the right focus
Sharpness is an important aspect of your photography to finesse, especially in the modern digital world where your viewers can zoom in to inspect every pixel on the screen of a smartphone. Fortunately, it’s easy to nail your focus when you know how!
Many cameras will automatically choose the focus point for you so the first thing you want to do is come out of this auto mode and set your camera to its single AF point mode, this will give you a single AF point that you can position around the frame over the most important part of your image, on some cameras you can tap the screen to set where this AF point is positioned. This may be a lighthouse or tree in your landscape that you want to be pin-sharp, or for portraits you’ll want to ensure it’s the model’s eye closest to the camera that you focus on.
Now it's time to submit your shots!
We want you to enter your best summer shots to be in with a chance of winning a digital subscription to Digital Camera, NPhoto, PhotoPlus and Photography Week magazines, plus a CEWE product voucher worth £100. There are also £75 and £50 CEWE product vouchers up for grabs for 2nd and 3rd place.
From sunsets to silhouettes and seasides to high speed flash, we want to see your best summer photos. Enter for your chance to win some top prizes before the closing deadline 31st August 2022. Good luck! Enter now!
