Welcome to Valerie Hayken Photography & Design (VHPD):
a collection of landscape
photography, fine art nature and underwater photography.
This is a collection of nature photos — from New Zealand fjords to Curacao sea horses,
including mountains, valleys, waterfalls, seascapes, desert landscapes, coral, creatures and fish faces.
Perfect for making an office / waiting room feel welcoming and just as suited for making your home bright and sophisticated.
Hang an underwater photograph in your family room to create a conversation piece, or display a fine art nature photograph in
your bedroom where you can dream of exotic locations and amazing adventures.
Photographs are available for sale in the Gallery. Visit the Photo-Blog
for photo tips on everything from Compositional Design Elements to How to Take Better Photos of Your Pets.
The links at the top of the page will take you throughout the various Fine Art Nature Photographs,
Underwater Photographs and Slot Canyon Photography by Valerie Hayken.
Learn how to bracket exposures to ensure getting the best photograph.
Horseshoe Bend is a fantastic site for great landscape photography. The challenge is fitting the entire scene in the camera frame.
When you’re on a long trip and taking a lot of photos, storage becomes important. One option is a portable data storage device – think external hard drive meets card reader.
Three popular methods for readying a photograph to hang.
When composing a photograph, it’s important to know what elements are in focus and what aren’t.
While it's best to nail your composition in camera, sometimes it’s necessary to crop a photograph in post production.
Graduation is a big event for everyone in the family. There is a lot of pressure on the family photographer to capture it right. Here are some tips to...
A Giclee (pronounced zhee-clay) is a fine art ink jet print.
The Narrows is beautiful place for landscape photographers. It’s a challenging hike and a challenging place to photograph. Here are some tips for photographing The Narrows.
Guidelines and a chart for determining what megapixel camera will best fit your needs.
An image sensor is a flat piece of silicone with photosites (light sensitive diodes) that capture light in the form of photons.
The first part of a series about digital photography terminology deals with bits, pixels, bit depth camera resolution and megapixels.
On Sale November 1st!
6 quick and easy tips to consider when photographing in the outdoors. Take your photography to the next level!
Incorporating a secondary subject into the foreground of a photograph will add depth, interest and movement.
5 Quick Tips for using your camera tripod properly to prevent motion blur.
The Noise Reduction filter is generally used to reduce noise from a digital photograph, or grain from a scanned film photograph. It works just as well in cleaning up dust, dirt and mold in old scanned prints.
A step by step restoration of a 1932 photograph using content aware fill, the clone / rubber stamp tool and the healing brush.
The Clone Tool (also called the Rubber Stamp Tool) copies (or clones) a selected area of the photo and pastes it over another area.
Pushing Film is when you underexpose and overdevelop.
Without color, other elements become much more important in an image. Recognizing those elements and learning to incorporate them into a composition is key to photographing great black and white images.
Cloudy skies create a diffused light, great for capturing detail in the shadow and highlight areas of your photograph. Here are some reasons to go shooting in the rain.
Learn the differences in the types of meters on your camera and how to use them to get the perfect exposure.
When you're shooting nature photography, you have to constantly be aware of the salad bowl effect.
Each part of the canyon wall that curves, juts or cuts in a different direction will capture a different tone of light. That’s why it’s possible to get deep purples...
These compositional tips are helpful in making the subject stand out.
Here's how to import an image from your camera to your computer for editing in Photoshop CS5 (in a Windows machine).
No matter the reason for the portfolio, following certain guidelines will help you assemble the strongest representation of your work.
The next Lunar Eclipse will be Dec 20 – 21, 2010; here are some exposure tips to help you photograph it!
Buying a new camera can be overwhelming. There are so many different models and options. Here's some information to help you choose the camera that is right for you.
Here are some tips for capturing great portraits during the holiday season.
Here are some tips for photographing fall and making your images stand apart from the crowd.
Ham it up; fill your frame; jack-o-lanterns, how to photograph ghosts ... and much more!
Many cameras give us the option of shooting in RAW, JPEG/JPG or both. There are Pro’s and Con’s for each format. I’m not going to tell you what you should be shooting...
One of the questions that I’m asked most often is, “what do the modes on my camera do?” Most digital point and shoots and SLR’s have the following modes:
A change in ISO from 400 to 200, halves the sensitivity. To balance that, the Shutter Speed or the Aperture must be also be adjusted.
If you want your foreground, middle ground and background to all be in focus, then you should choose a smaller aperture (f/16, f/22) . . .
ISO is a measurement of how sensitive the film or digital sensor is to light. It's not just for your film cameras. Although you're not loading a digital camera with a specific speed of film, setting the ISO is just as important.
Shutter speed determines the amount of time that the shutter is open. It's measured in fractions of seconds. As with Aperture, from one shutter speed to the next, the time is halved or doubled.
When shooting in lower light, you need a larger aperture setting on your camera. When shooting in brighter light, you need a smaller aperture . . .
Polarizing and Neutral Density filters work similarly in both color and black and white photography. Polarizers will deepen blue skies, increase color saturation, remove / reduce glare and reflections in...
In black and white photography, filters are used to adjust shades of gray. The human eye can see about 200 different shades of gray. The eye perceives light differently than film or digital sensors. By using filters, photographers control shades of gray in order to reproduce a scene, photographically, the way it's seen with the eye.
Use a Tripod. I can’t stress how important this is. Fireworks are best shoot with a slow shutter speed, and as a result, the camera will be sensitive to any movement.
Framing is a powerful compositional element. Not to be confused with the frame you put around your printed photo before hanging it on the wall. This is the type of framing that you do when you take the photograph.
Often times, a small change in composition can make the difference between a photograph that's just okay and a photograph that's really great. One of the simplest ways of doing that is to just Change Your Perspective.
Another way to add depth is by including textures in your photographic composition. In addition to creating depth, textures will add detail and a tactile sense to an image.
Whether you're shooting film or digital, these tips will help you identify the cause in your blurry photographs.
How many times have you looked through your vacation photos and picture after picture is of a person standing in the middle of the photo (blocking the background so you can’t tell where it was taken) . .
Shoot at your pet’s eye level . . Anticipate your pet’s next action . . . When taking action shots, compose for active space in the frame . .
When you’re composing a photograph, don’t be afraid to get close to what you’re shooting. Fill your frame with the subject by getting closer to it, not by zooming into it.
Lines are perhaps the most important element of visual design in photography. Utilized properly, they are a powerful tool for creating moods in photographs.
Learning the Rule of Thirds will change the way you look through your viewfinder and compose your photograph. The concept dates back to Euclid, the Greek mathematician, around 300 BC.
At its simplest, Depth of Field (DOF) is the area that’s in focus in a photograph, from near ground to background. There are several ways to control your DOF.
