Most of us know blurring the background helps achieve the dream result in portrait. However, I’m talking about blurring your foreground today. Your camera is very close to something between you and your subject so that the foreground is blurry. There are at least 3 good reasons.

A big mistake many of us make is to include too many things in the background of a photo. They distract your audience’s attention from your main subject and story telling. An easy solution is to put your subject in front of a clean background.

It is totally OK to make the person out of focus in a travel photo when your main subject is something else than the person. You want the person to be in the same frame, to create an order of magnitude, a contrast of color, or simply be part of the story telling.

There are many ways to capture your travel story. It’s hard to say which is the best, but sure thing among the worst is to only capture the “cheese” facing the camera. Over and over again! I’m sure when you narrate your stories with family and friends, you have something far juicier than just the fake smiles.

If you have trouble organizing your photos, picking your favorite photos, edit your photos fast with consistent quality, or simply forget about your photos because you don’t want to deal with a messy hard drive of photo files, then it’s time for you to adopt or improve your workflow.

If I have to share a toddler pose tip, it’s the running exercise. This is what I have learned from photographing my own kids and hundreds of other families and kids in the past.

Shout out to all the parents out there, you know you can't stop your kids, and they seem to never run out of energy. Next time you are in the desert, or beach, or even in a sand playground, try to use sand as the prop.

I’ve been talking about capturing that split second of a quick action. It’s quick and easy, for both you and your children. All you need is to use high shutter speed to capture a series of action shots within a few seconds. Here are a list of props you can use.

2020 was certainly a special year. I took more selfies than usual, when we did not travel. So here is some of my little wisdom about taking candid shots of yourself without having to pose.

Once you have mastered the basic photography skills, ie. knowing how to use manual mode comfortably; how to adjust settings; how to find the right light you need; how to select the appropriate photo subject based on the light condition you are given; you will have a much better sense whether you need to upgrade equipment.