David Bradley – David Bradley

ISO redux

There was almost no photographic light left in the sky after sunet last night, but a Barn Owl flew past and I really just had to grab a shot even though I was just about to head home. My Canon R7 set to auto-ISO jumped to 20000, which is very high so the photo was very noisy/grainy. I usually denoise my images with DxO PureRaw 4 and for this one it had to be done. PureRaw drops the ISO by about three stops, so that’s as if the camera had been shooting at ISO 2500.

Low-light Barn Owl in flight — Barn Owl, image denoised with DxO PureRaw 4 and then gently edited in PaintShopPro

For those interested in such things, ISO ain’t what it used to be as I mentioned before. For film cameras, ISO was a measure of the sensitivity of the film. You used to use a higher ISO if you were shooting in lower light conditions.

For a digital camera, there’s no way to change the sensitivity of the sensor. So, adjusting the ISO does nothing more than turn up the brightness of the image you’ve captured and this brightness control is then embedded into the photo you download from the camera.

At lower light levels, your camera needs to turn up the brightness for the same shutter speed and aperture (f-stop) to get the exposure level you want. This means the noise is turned up brighter too, commonly seen as a purple speckles throughout the darker areas of the photo, but also impinging to different degrees across the whole image.

Now, the noise in a film photo is often referred to as grain (because it’s associated with the grain size of the particles of light-sensitive silver compounds in the film itself) It’s often seen as moody, romantic, and evocative, especially in noir Hollywood photos or the celebrity portrait work of David Bailey etc et cetera. It can be pleasing, just like the crackles and pops of classic vinyl…ish.

But, for digital photos, noise is just noise. It’s not grain, it’s not really romantic, nor evocative, it detracts and distorts the detail in your photo. So anything you can do to keep the ISO as low as possible and any processing that removes the noise without removing detail is, to my eye, a good thing. There are limits, but as regular viewers will know I almost always use DxO PureRaw to do the basic pre-edit processing of my photos. It essentially turns down the digital ISO control by three “stops” but without lowering the brightness.

The Barn Owl was shot at ISO 20000, so DxO is effectively bringing that down to ISO 2500, which is still way too high for a clean photo. But, it beats the RAW image straight out of the camera.

Incidentally, all this pre-processing and processing, is basically the digital equivalent of developing the film and printing from the negative as you would do with film. Some people imagine it’s somehow cheating because there are a lot more options allowing you to adjust levels and other stuff when you process digital negatives (the camera RAW) file, but it’s worth looking at the history of film photography to see how that nothing has changed fundamentally. Photography is not reality, it has always been about capturing a moment in time and developing it in such a way as to make that moment special after the event.

Barn Owl in flight pre-PSP — This is the Barn Owl as it looked after processing the RAW file with DxO but prior to adjust levels with PSP

This is the Barn Owl as it looked before processing the RAW file with DxO

Barn Owl before and after DxO and PSP processing

Lost Tomorrows – a song

We overheard an older gent singing in the chapel in Los Gigantes (pictured on the artwork) on our February 2025 trip to Tenerife. He had a lovely voice, it was very moving, we stayed out of the chapel, not wishing to intrude. I said hola to him as he emerged and complimented him on his singing voice. He responded with a tear in his eye and told us that he had been singing to his wife in Heaven. It touched us. I had to write a song – Lost Tomorrows.

Some of the lyrics I put together while we were still in the Canaries, but I had no idea what they’d become until I got home. There was originally a line about the land of the giants, Los Gigantes, but that sounded a little incongruous so I changed that to the reference about mantras. The desert was a reference to the Sahara, the pilots the whales and the captains of the boats.

The Milkweed Queen, the Monarch butterfly

The milkweed queen is the monarch butterfly of which I saw only one on the trip. The pressure that brings the bends was an allusion to how deep the ocean is between Tenerife and its neighbouring island of La Gomera. Our denying the English winter was what we’d planned to do as a birthday treat, although it was soured by us both being ill. The tide that never turns was the title of an older song of mine that emerged from a trip to Malta’s Twin Cities many years ago.

I did all the vocals, Taylor and Martin acoustic guitar parts, and recorded the strings, cello, and mute trumpet as MIDIS sounds using an Akai keyboard.

<a href="https://davebradley.bandcamp.com/album/the-after-words-ep">The After Words EP by Dave Bradley</a>

The song is in three sections. The first (Part 1 – Lost Tomorrows) is a conventional singer-songwriter tune, which features my Taylor six-string acoustic guitar and begins with the sound of a Canary Island Chiff Chaff. That main ends at about 4’07”.

The second section (Part 2- Forever Girl) is a little different. I’d recorded a demo of the song on my phone, playing my Martin acoustic. It was very rough, but with a bit of tweaking I pulled together a lo-fi loop of the original arpeggiated intro. This section features the sound of the rolling Atlantic Ocean. I then played several keyboard parts assigned to cello, mute trumpet, and string section sounds.

At about 6’53”, section 2 intersects with the third section (Part 3 – Ubi Caritas.), which is snippet of a choral piece I attempted using some of the words from Ubi Caritas. The original text is attributed to Paulinus of Aquileia in 796 CE, so well out of copyright.

“Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor”

I added a lot of cathedral-scale reverb to this choral tailpiece as well as EQing the vocals to make them seem distant. It was meant to be a direct allusion to the old gent singing in the chapel, although he had a much sweeter voice in that setting and was solo a capella. The choral section fades in and out with the sound of an Atlantic Canary singing and, once more, those Atlantic rollers.

Intriguingly, the old man singing in the chapel was dressed largely in yellow with yellow trainers…almost a visual allusion to the local wild canaries. I wish we’d been able to have a longer chat with him, perhaps have a coffee together.

Los Gigantes as seen from the place we were staying in Los Gigantes

The line from Ubi Caritas translates from the Latin as: Where charity and love are, God is there. The love of Christ has gathered us together into one. If you’re into that sort of thing.

ISO is not ISO when it comes to digital photography

When you first learn about photography, you’re taught about the exposure triangle – shutter speed, aperture, and the ISO sensitivity of the film. Back in the day, you’d choose your film sensitivity to suit the light levels under which you’d expect to shoot. You then play aperture against shutter speed to balance the exposure of the image. You might then opt for smaller apertures (bigger f number) for longer depth of field means you need a longer shutter speed. Choosing a short shutter speed to freeze action would conversely mean you needed a bigger aperture to capture sufficient light.

In digital photography, the concept of ISO has changed. With a digital camera, you can have a different ISO for every frame you shoot if you like and so you have more options about balancing aperture and shutter speed for artistic purposes. However, it is important to note that while a different ISO value really meant a different light sensitivity of the film, you cannot change the sensitivity of a digital camera’s sensor. So, changing ISO is not changing anything physically as it would be with film.

Rather, changing ISO in a digital camera affects how the signal from the sensor is processed by the camera’s software. When you increase the ISO in a digital camera, the sensor’s raw signal is amplified. This means the image becomes brighter. The change in ISO is more akin to turning up the volume control on your stereo or headphones. And, as with a stereo turned up too loud you get distortion. For a digital image that distortion is, ironically, known as noise (random specks of colour in the image). Noise is more noticeable at higher ISO settings and in the darker areas of an image, which is why many photographers try to keep their ISO as low as possible.

The high-ISO noise effect is worse the smaller the sensor, so full-frame digital cameras tend not to be as “noisy” as cropped sensors and cameras with even smaller sensors, such as superzooms.

Of course, there are tools such as DxO’s PureRaw, Lightroom, Topaz Denoise, etc that allow you to remove the noise to some degree without distorting the image. Some work better than others, for me, PureRaw 4 seems to give me the best results.

Vegetative electron microscopy

When I was a chemistry student, a friend on the engineering course always struggled to reach the prescribed word count for his essays, so he and I would sit in his room, have a few beers, and generate word salad. We’d turn his simple and dull prose (if you could even call it that) into the most overblown and hyperbolic drivel, just to pad out his essays so he could submit them. It took him five years, instead of three, to complete his degree. I think he got a third, in the end. Went off to South East Asia to fix boilers on ships…

Anyway, in the age of machine reading and machine learning, my skill in generating artificial intelligence for him is perhaps redundant. Anyone can prompt an LLM, large language model, to produce drivel by the shipload. And, it seems, more and more academics are doing just that. Feeding their hypotheses into machines, cranking the handle, and generating content they then submit to predatory or naive journals for publication.

Discontent, more like.

The trouble with using machines to write and not having someone to hand with the skills to check what has been generated, to remove the nonsense phrases and the AI hallucinations, is that lots of journals are filling up with drivel. Retraction Watch landed on a meaningless, but scientific-sounding, phrase that seems to have been used countless times in papers over the last few years. Vegetative electron microscopy!

According to RW, the phrase seems to have come from a 1959 paper that has been assimilated into a database using an errant optical character recognition (OCR) system, one that didn’t take into account the separate text columns in the old paper. So where in the left-hand column there was the phrase “vegetative cell”, the word vegetative was at the end of a line in the column, and the phrase “electron microscopy” was adjacent to it in the right-hand column.

The image shows a screengrab of the 1959 paper about vegetative cells and the electron microscopy used to research them. I've highlighted where the problem phrase would've emerged if OCR failed to note the gap between columns. — The image shows a screengrab of the 1959 paper about vegetative cells and the electron microscopy used to research them. I’ve highlighted where the problem phrase would’ve emerged if OCR failed to note the gap between columns.

A human reader would not have made that mistake.

Now, that phrase seems to be turning up in research papers. They can’t have been written and checked by any real scientists and not by any referee or editor, surely? The research literature is becoming heavily polluted with paper-mill dross.

Ultimately, our student shenanigans did not matter to the wider world. But, in a world where scientific endeavour is being derailed by moronic politicians and their henchmen, we need a stronger science base, not one polluted with such nonsense as vegetative electron microscopy. It leads to distrust in scientists and in science, it gives those who peddle pseudoscience, disinformation, misinformation, and fake, greater leverage to shake off the facts and replace them with ill-informed, politically-driven opinion. They can call out this fakery and tell the public that they can no longer trust science.

Science relies on a solid scientific literature. Given how much publishers charge for their “editorial services” and their finished products, is it too much to ask that they actually do some editing, and edit out this kind of drivel? Apparently, some papers that had this ludicrous phrase have been retracted, others have been deemed fine by the publishers (who obviously really couldn’t care less as long as they get their money), others have had corrections published.

The presence of this fingerprint phrase is not an accident, it’s not a typo, it shows that the paper was faked. Even if the authors were simply copy-and-pasting boilerplate content that contained the fingerprint (and there are others), then that would be plagiarism, wouldn’t it? But, what is obvious is that nobody bothered reading the text before submission to a journal and nobody on the editorial team nor among their referees read it either and so these dodgy papers are sitting in the literature like so much sawdust in a dodgy loaf of bread.

Egrets, I’ve seen a few

In the 1990s, East Anglian birders seeing this species locally might have noted it as a mega because it was so rarely seen in the UK, but as with the Little Egret, and more recently the Great White Egret, this ostensibly African species, the Cattle Egret, has spread its wings and found a home here. There are other species, such as Glossy Ibis, that are doing the same to a lesser degree, but may well become as common as those African egrets, given time.

Fluffed up Cattle Egret in a field behind a horse

The latter frequents muddy fields inhabited by hooved mammals, the other two the waterways and flooded gravel pits. Part of their spread is down to habitat formation over here but also the shifts in climate that mean they found conditions acceptable as they extended their range northwards out of Africa and then the Mediterranean region.

The Cattle Egret is the archetypal avian shytkicker, it follows cattle, horses, and sheep as they munch their way around fields and picks off the invertebrate life disturbed by the hooves; just as they would’ve done among the wildebeest and zebra in their homeland. They will also eat mice and frogs given the chance. They’re often quite grubby given they’re usually pecking about the mud of livestock farms and paddocks, but as they come into mating plumage they take on some lovely peachy feather shades within their brilliant white plumage.

Two fluffed up Cattle Egret in a field behind a horse

Great White Egret has taken advantage of the crayfish in the lakes of Northern France. Having range extended to there several years ago, it’s not a big hop across La Manche to reach the Somerset Levels or East Anglian gravel pits.

Cattle Egrets bred in Somerset in 2008, according to the BTO website, with two pairs nesting there. There have been numerous breeding attempts since and the species is slowly expanding in southern Britain. The BTO statistics seem rather out of date, suggesting just 66 wintering birds in the UK. But, there were reports of a couple of hundred on the Somerset Levels and we have seen groups of a couple of dozen in the nearby village of Swavesey. Others report 30-40 in that same village and in and around Fen Drayton Lakes and other local areas. I hope the BTO will be updated soon. Certainly, BirdGuides no longer considers a Cattle Egret sighting as a mega these days.

Wild canaries, volcanoes, and whales – Tenerife 2025

Our first ever week of winter sun and we headed for Los Gigantes, Tenerife, in the shadow of El Teide. A bit of walking, some birding, whale watching, and a sampling of sangria, paella and the local piscine delicacy, cherne. Oh, and there was music and cocktails (Mai Tai* for me).

Atlantic Canary, Serinus canaria — The Atlantic, or Wild, Canary, Serinus canaria, is a finch commonly found on the Canary Islands, related to Serins and Siskins. Of course, its name comes from the islands not vice versa. The Romans named the islands “Canariae Insulae”, meaning “Islands of the Dogs” because of the abundant “sea dogs” on the beaches, these creatures were Monk Seals, *Monachus monachus*

Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus — It’s hard photographing Monarchs at the top of a palm tree

Southern Tenerife Lizard, Gallotia galloti galloti

We managed the boat trip to see dolphins and whales, not easy to get good shots from a moving boat. We were treated to Short-finned Pilot Wales (pod of 7 or 8 male Globicephala macrorhynchus, the big-nosed globe-head) that hunt for giant squid in the deep waters (600+ metres) between Tenerife and the neighbouring island of La Gomera (beyond it El Hierro). We also saw a pod of Atlantic Spotted Dolphin (Stenella frontalis, narrow-fronts). The swimming opportunity at Masca Bay was short as we’d apparently overstretched our time on the open water; neither of us felt like taking a dip, anyway, given our gastrointestinal status.

Atlantic Spotted Dolphin, Stenella frontalis

Short-finned Pilot Whale, Globicephala macrorhynchus

Red Rock Crab, Grapsus adscensionis, I prefer its other name: the East Atlantic Sally Lightfoot Crab

It was wonderful to have such long, sunny and warm days on Canary time. While sunrise was close to 8am, sunset was not until almost 7pm and the temperatures were in the low to mid-20s during daylight, so it was perfect in many ways. It’s certainly a tonic for one’s mental health to be able to bask in the sun at that time of the evening in swimming kit. Moreover, it is at a time of year just ahead of our birthdays when we might usually be braced against the Arctic northerlies on the Norfolk coast looking out for Snow Bunting and instead we were listening to Canary Island Chiffchaff and Atlantic Canary from our sun loungers while the countless Yellow-legged Gulls flew to roost among the 5-million-year old cliffs beyond the hotel.

Spectacled Warbler, Curruca conspicillata, on derelict banana plantation

Bertholet’s Pipit, Anthus berthelotii, saw on El Teide and then on derelict area along coast

(Feral) Rock Dove, Columba liva, aka Common Pigeon

Canary Islands Chiffchaff, Phylloscopus canariensis

There was always a chance of seeing either a fishing Osprey or a Sea Eagle (White-tailed Eagle) off those same cliffs, but we never did catch sight of either of those sadly rare and endangered species. I had also hoped for the iconic Blue Chaffinch among the pine glades en route to Mt. Teide, but no luck with that species either. Also failed to see Common Hoopoe on any scrubby, ant-ridden patches of bare land, but we did tick several other species and sub-species and a couple that we hadn’t seen anywhere before.

Avian sightings

Atlantic Canary, Serinus canaria (numerous)
Atlantic Yellow-legged Gull, Larus michahellis atlantis (many)
Barn Swallow, Hirundo rustica (on journey to hotel?)
Bertholet’s Pipit, Anthus berthelotii (Mt. Teide and then on derelict area along coast)
Canarian Common Kestrel, Falco tinnunculus canariensis (Mt, Teide and then several on airport return journey or maybe Lesser Kestrel sometimes, Falco naumanni)
Canary Islands Chiffchaff, Phylloscopus canariensis (lots, loud)
Eleonora’s Falcon, Falco eleonorae (to hotel and then at Playa de la Arena)
Eurasian Collared Dove, Streptopelia decaocto (loads)
Eurasian Whimbrel, Numenius phaeopus (rocks before Playa de la Arena)
European Robin, Erithacus rubeculla (cafe with pines up to Mt. Teide)Feral Rock Dove, Columba livia (plentiful)
Lesser Black-backed Gull, Larus fuscus (according to ObsId)
Little Egret, Egretta garzetta (on rocks and once flying off Los Gigantes)
Pied Avocet, Recurvirostra avosetta, a pair, twice flying up the coast
Raven, Corvus corax 1x (cafe at bottom of Mt. Teide and 2x from bus back to airport)
Ruddy Turnstone, Arenaria interpres (rocky coast)
Spectacled Warbler, Curruca conspicillata (coastal derelict site)
Spanish Sparrow, Passer hispaniolensis (plentiful around hotel etc)
Sparrowhawk, Acipiter nisus, (possibly sub-species, from return bus)
White Wagtail, Motacilla alba (heard only, over hotel)

Non-avian animals list

Atlantic Spotted Dolphin, Stenella frontalis
Short-finned Pilot Whale, Globicephala macrorhynchus
Mullet (fish)
Honey Bee feeding on palm trees
Emperor Dragonfly x2 (one at pine cafe one in Los Gigantes
Other dragonfly, brown, smaller darter type
Southern Tenerife Lizard, Gallotia galloti galloti (rocky wall after the arena and elsewhere)
Red Admiral x2 (pines cafe)
Female Canarian Cleopatra butterfly (above arena)
Small Tortoiseshell (hotel)
Some big-ish bees, honeybees, grey bees
Monarch, Danaus plexippus (Route 66 cafe near hotel)
Large White (en route back to airport)

That reference to gastrointestinal status? We’d had quite a grim start to our first ever winter sun holiday. I woke on flight day with what I assumed was food poisoning. I was pretty much over it by our first morning on Tenerife. But Mrs Sciencebase succumbed after a short walk to the harbour below the huge cliffs of Los Gigantes, so it wasn’t food poisoning, has to have been viral, whoops. We did our best with the trip, but Mrs Sb wasn’t up to much walking and had to miss out on the trip to the otherworldly volcanic peaks of El Teide.

*Mai Tai – White and dark rum, lime juice, orange liqueur, orgeat (almond syrup), Angostura bitters, ice, and a cinnamon stick.

Acemannan from aloe vera

While I was chasing the Monarch on Tenerife, I grabbed some photos of some intriguing yellow, spike-like flowers growing from a succulent. I should’ve known, they were Aloe vera flowers. Aloe vera is well known as one of those plants that have been used in topical remedies for centuries and for which modern claims have associated with them a whole host of hyperbole. Indeed, there are Aloe vera tetrahedral sales systems the world over. Mostly BS, of course.

Nevertheless, gel from the leaves of the plant is supposed to be an immunostimulant, antiviral, antineoplastic, and have gastrointestinal properties. The gel-forming polysaccharide, a mucopolysaccharide, acemannan is claimed to be the active ingredient. It’s worth noting that the plant’s leaves also contain a toxin, aloin.

Acemannan has the luxurious IUPAC name:

(2S,3S,4R,5S,6S)-6-[(2R,3R,4R,5S,6R)-6-[(2R,3S,4R,5S,6R)-5-acetamido-6-[(2R,3R,4R,5S,6R)-4-acetyloxy-6-[(2R,3R,4R,5S,6R)-4-acetyloxy-6-[(2R,3R,4R,5S,6S)-4-acetyloxy-5-hydroxy-2-(hydroxymethyl)-6-methoxyoxan-3-yl]oxy-5-hydroxy-2-(hydroxymethyl)oxan-3-yl]oxy-5-hydroxy-2-(hydroxymethyl)oxan-3-yl]oxy-4-hydroxy-2-(hydroxymethyl)oxan-3-yl]oxy-4-acetyloxy-5-hydroxy-2-(hydroxymethyl)oxan-3-yl]oxy-4-acetyloxy-3-[(2R,3S,4R,5R,6R)-4-acetyloxy-5-[(2R,3S,4R,5R,6R)-4-acetyloxy-3-hydroxy-6-(hydroxymethyl)-5-methoxyoxan-2-yl]oxy-3-hydroxy-6-(hydroxymethyl)oxan-2-yl]oxy-5-hydroxyoxane-2-carboxylate.

2D structure of the chemical acemannan from Aloe vera leaves (PubChem)

Canaries go to bed later in the winter

Having spent a week in February in Tenerife and enjoyed the much later sunsets and warmer weather than the UK, I thought I’d add a footnote to my blog post about our trip to explain those later sunsets.

There are two factors at play, first the Canary Islands are much further west than the UK but are in the same time zone (GMT at this time of year). The islands being about 1500 km west of the UK, or 15 degrees of longitude, means that as the earth rotates and the sun goes down there the islands lag behind by about an hour 60 minutes. So if sunset in London is 5pm, it will be about 6pm in the Canaries. However…

The Canary Islands are located around 28–29° N, while the UK is at a much higher latitude (around 51–59° N). The closer you are to the Equator the less difference there is between the number of daylight hours in the summer and winter. The sun essentially rises and sets at roughly the same time year-round, whereas it varies so much more in the UK. In the UK, the days are much shorter in February due to the tilt of the Earth. The difference in latitude accounts for another hour.

So, on our trip, the Tenerife sunset was a little before 7pm whereas it was about 5pm in the UK, which made for some balmy early evenings watching the Atlantic roll across the rocks and the sun go down behind La Gomera.

Bearded Reedlings showing well at RSPB Ouse Fen

This species, Panurus biarmicus, used to be known as the Bearded Tit, because of the black facial markings on the male and perhaps its resemblance to the Long-tailed Tit. But, it’s not closely related to and of the birds we call tits and is the only living (extant) species in the Panurus genus.

Male Bearded Reedling, Panurus biarmicus, feeding on seed head

It lives among the wetland reeds, feeding on their seeds and those of the reed mace/bulrushes. There are lots of them flocking about on our local converted gravel pits.

These days they’re more properly known as Bearded Reedlings, although if they’d wanted to correct the obvious error, they could’ve called them Moustached or Mutton Chop Reedlings. Either, they’re almost always known simply as Beardies among birders.

Male Bearded Reedling, Panurus biarmicus, feeding on seed head — Male Bearded Reedling on seed head, tail pointing skyward

If you’re wandering about the reed beds of our local reserves, listen out for a pinging sound, that’s the bird’s contact call. You can almost imagine it as being the sound effect for a miniature sci-fi laser gun – peww, peww, peww…

Specific site they’ve been showing well recently is the Earith side of RSPB Ouse Fen (you may recall I’ve mentioned the patch before with reference to starling murmurations and various rarities, including Purple Heron. There are lots all over the fen, but they have been particularly visible, vocal, and close on the shortcut that cuts through the centre between Lockspit’s Mere and Crane’s Fen.

The male pictured above spent a good ten minutes right in front of us shredding and feasting on this seed head and in his messy haste helping spread the plant’s seed. Most of the seed heads nearby had been ravaged by the flock.

For anyone planning a visit. There are three places to park to visit RSPB Ouse Fen. Needingworth, Over, or Earith. The Needingworth end of the reserve is a long way from the reedbeds, so not the place for the Beardies. Over is accessible via a very rough largely unmade road. There are Beardies there among the reeds in the “canal”. But, Earith, which is disconnected from the other patches is the best place to see them at the moment. The main spot I mentioned earlier is across the middle of that area, but you might hear and see Beardies anywhere among the reeds there.

Best time to visit is when it’s sunny and not too windy. Beardies will hunker down in bad weather, but if it’s calm they will flit about between patches of reeds and hop up and down the steps to feed and drink and interact.

Incidentally, a Eurasian Penduline Tit, Remiz pendulinus, was present on the site recently, this too is also not a “tit”.

Striving for something more than the half-decent record shot

Photography, as with any other visual art form, hinges on a blend of technical skill and creative vision. While perfection can be elusive and subjective, achieving a “half-decent” photo that captures attention and tells a story is almost always an attainable goal whatever your skill level and with whatever equipment you have. Remember, if you want a photo, any camera is better than no camera (we’ve all been there and done that!). Meanwhile, here are a few thoughts on how to lift the passable snapshot to the inspiring image.

You can take a look at some of my photographic work and decide whether I live up to my own standards here.

Understanding light – Light is the fundamental of photography. Whether you’re working with natural or artificial light, how you harness it can define your photo. For instance, the magical Golden Hour: Early morning just before sunrise and late afternoon just before sunset offer soft, warm light that flatters most subjects. Shadows are gentle, and the light’s directionality adds depth.

Contrast that with the serenity of Blue Hour: The moments before sunrise and those after sunset provide cool, moody tones ideal for atmospheric shots. It’s also worth adding that darkness and shadows are not the enemy of the photographer, indeed they help you create drama, texture, and contrast. Timing the shadows in a landscape or even a portrait lets you leap from flat to dynamic.

Correct exposure – A well-exposed photograph is the foundation of visual appeal. Proper exposure ensures that details in both highlights and shadows are visible without appearing bleached out or overly dark. While modern editing tools allow some latitude for correcting exposure, it’s always best to get it right in-camera. Understanding your camera’s metering modes and how they interact with the scene’s light levels is the key. Also, shoot in RAW every time if that’s an option it then gives you the chance to retrieve detail from seemingly over-exposed or under-exposed areas in your photo and balance once against the other.

Sharp focus – A blurry subject can ruin an otherwise excellent composition. Ensuring your subject is in sharp focus is non-negotiable, unless the blur is the artistic choice. Autofocus systems have become highly advanced, but their capabilities must be matched with a keen eye for detail. For portraits, focus on the eyes. For landscapes, ensure the desired depth of field is achieved. The sharpness guides the viewer’s attention to what you want them to see. Of course, depth-of-field is like any commodity. You may want a short depth of field for a portrait so that the background is blurred, but for a macro shot you may want the whole frame to be sharp. This comes at the cost of how much light reaches your sensor or film. Smaller aperture means less light getting in, but a bigger depth of field.

De-noising grainy images – Noise, especially in low-light conditions or at high ISO settings, can detract from a photo’s quality. While some genres, such as street photography or film emulation, embrace a certain level of grain for artistic purposes, overly noisy images in genres like wildlife or portraiture can feel distracting. Post-processing can sometimes help you clawback the clarity, working best with RAW files.

Artistic cropping – Cropping is a powerful tool that allows photographers to refine their composition post-capture. A thoughtful crop can eliminate distractions, emphasize the subject, and create visual harmony. Whether filling the frame with an intimate close-up or leaving negative space or background for context, the crop should complement the story you’re telling. Remember the rule of thirds but don’t be afraid to break it if the composition feels stronger with different angles and different space.

Animal photography: The leading eye – When photographing animals, the leading eye must be pin-sharp. This draws the viewer’s attention and conveys emotion and personality. The leading eye acts as a visual anchor, guiding the viewer through the frame. Shots where the animal is looking away don’t often work, unless the context justifies it. For example, a distant gaze that matches a dramatic landscape or tells a broader story about the animal’s environment.

Catchlights: Breathing life into eyes – Catchlights, the reflections of light in a subject’s eyes, add depth and vitality, particularly in animal or human portraits. Without catchlights, eyes can appear flat and lifeless. Photographers often use natural light or controlled artificial light to introduce this subtle yet critical element. Catchlights don’t just reveal the light source; they transform the image by infusing character and emotion.

Photography, like any art, is about emotion. You need patience to get that perfect light, expression, or moment, but that patience can be rewarded with the shot you’re really after rather than the record shot you’d quickly snap just to make do.

Learn the rules so you can use them to best effect when they’re needed, but also so you can break those same rules when it means a better photo. You can ditch the rule of thirds, the golden ratio, you can try unusual angles or play with unconventional perspectives. Focus on that unusual aspect of the subject, not the obvious. Observe and try to see things from a different angle to help you tell a unique story with your photos.