In this blog, our expert photographer Annick Paradis is sharing all her tips for honing in on your photography skills while having some summer fun in the sun. Read on to learn more about how you can incorporate panning, reverse freelens and light overlays to enhance your photography techniques and spice up your summer photos.

Your kids are out and about, and you are craving to keep growing your photography skills? These advanced tricks should challenge your head, your arms, and your camera for a while. :)

Very simple in appearance, this technique needs practice.
a) Begin with a shutter speed around 1/15s. Adjust your other settings accordingly.
b) Find a sunset with some beautiful clouds. It is the easiest to begin with.
c) Move your arms in different motions and vary the speed of your gestures.

Lensbaby Twist 60  | ISO | 100 | 1/8 | Canon 6D

Got it? Try to do it on a moving subject! It would be best if you keep your subject at the same place on your viewfinder. That means you need to move at the same pace… Not easy.

Lensbaby Twist 60  | ISO | 400 | 1/15 | Canon 6D

You don’t have a macro lens? Me neither. Remove your lens, switch it, and place it very close to where it’s supposed to attach. You now have a macro lens for free. The longer the focal lens, the “macro-er” is your lens. I like to use my Sweet 50. The bokeh is simply out of this world.

This technique required skills in composition for sure, but it is awesome to know you can shoot anytime. It is a kids’ free technique.

Lensbaby Twist 60 | ISO | 320 | 1/400 | Canon 6D

Lensbaby Sweet 50  | ISO | 100 | 1/640 | Canon 6D

It’s a simple way to add visual interest, but doing it wrong, would become a distraction or disrupt your storytelling. Dose it, use a longer focal lens and a wide aperture to blend the effect through your image et voilà.

Hunt the light and photograph it. Next time you edit your images, ask yourself if a light overlay could enhance them. If so, open Photoshop and embed your light overlay on top of your base image. Play with the blending mode to find the best one for your image (Lighten, Screen, Overlay, Soft Light, etc.). Adjust the opacity and do some masking, and that is it!

Lensbaby Sweet 50 | ISO | 100 | 1/2000 | Canon 6D

Shot on Olympus.

Once you master the four first techniques, mix and match them!

Reverse freelens + triple exposure

Lensbaby Sweet 50 | ISO | 400 | 1/250 | Canon 6D

Panning through a copper pipe.

Lensbaby Twist 60 | ISO | 100 | 1/4 | Canon 6D

Panning with a prism.

Lensbaby Twist 60 | ISO | 250 | 1/13 | Canon 6D

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