Usually we put down our cameras after dark. Night photographs (like at discos, streets, restaurants) are usually blurry images that we keep only to remember the occasion.

But with a little effort, you can get premium concepts that look sophisticated.
Use the night lights to your advantage to get some great night light urban photos.

Tips:

• Choose a location where there are lots of light rays moving around (For e.g., a street where lots of vehicles are moving around with lights switched on).
• Set a longer exposure time (half-a-second or above).
• Use a slow shutter speed.
• Use a tripod to avoid camera shake.

Here are some examples to inspire you:

Photographer: Nrbelex

Photographer: Bob McCaffrey

Photographer: jim crossley

Photographer: Ingo Meironke

Photographer: Craigyc

Photographer: jim crossley

Photographer: jim crossley

Photographer: auburnxc

Photographer: Robert S. Donovan

Photographer: Paul Sapiano

Photographer: bhav.bhav

Photographer: Luke Andrew Scowen Photography

Photographer: rangebrompton

Photographer: moqla2010

Photographer: williamcho

Macro photography is the art of taking close-up photos that will convert a small object into a gigantic version of itself. Macro shots reveal the finest details of the subject photographed, even the features that are not visible to the naked eye.

There are popular topics within Macro photography like flowers, insects etc.. But a close up of any material or object can end up in interesting photos.

In keeping with the photo theme, Macro photos are best appreciated as large print size canvas or poster prints.

Some quick tips:

• For point and shoot cameras, switch to the “macro” mode (most cameras have this mode)
• For SLR cameras , use a close-up lens (or diopter) to focus closer. The image will appear larger in the frame. Use a small aperture (large F value) to maximize depth of field.
• If you use flash, it needs to be diffused (e.g., a tissue) or bounced (e.g., off a white card or reflector).

We have provided a pick of some popular themes for macro photos. Here it is:

Photographer: Muffet

Photographer: Aussiegall

Photographer: Salman Al-Salman

Photographer: Emi Yañez

Photographer: William Cho

Photographer: Andrea

Photographer: Mark Watson

Photographer: Ruurmo

Photographer: Bill Harrison

Photographer: Neal Fowler

Photographer: Ruurmo

Photographer: Luc Viatour

Photographer: Emran Kassim

Photographer: Geir Yngve Tro

Photographer: Dino Quinzani

Whether it’s just a few clouds on a clear summer sky or even a cloudy one, you can find these to be very easy backdrops to some great snaps.

Here are some tips and examples:

1. Unusual patterns
Although we say ‘unusual’, clouds often provide you with interesting shapes and patterns. We just need to take a look! Using water bodies or buildings to reflect these patterns adds to the composition of the photo.

2. Unusual angle
When you are in a position to take a photo from a different angle, make best use of it. Whether it’s from your flight window, or the top of a skyscraper, or on a mountain. Photos from tall locations are great for inspirational posters. It can also be used to add a sense of space to a room, particularly in a large size.

3. Silhouette
The sky can be an excellent background to silhouette a subject. A flock of birds, trees or even human beings are great subjects for a silhouette against the bright sky. These subjects can be used to depict different themes like thought, memories, emotions, mystery etc. Use such topics to lend fine art quality to your photos.

4. Smoke technique for fun photos
Find cloud patterns that appear like smoke. Look for potential subjects in the vicinity that can look like the source of the smoke. Works best if you have a friend as a subject! These are easy to take with even a simple camera. They make for great fun posters.

Photographer: Tia Bragg

Photographer: Ρanayotis

Photographer: Naama ym

Photographer: *sean

Photographer: Sharafat Khan

Photographer: EricBartholemew

Photographer: abbamouse

Photographer: far closer

Photographer: Horia Varlan

Photographer: John Carleton

Photographer: tasteful_tn

Photographer: timlewisnm

Photographer: danny chu

You can look like you are hundreds or meters tall, or lifting objects that weigh tons - isn’t this much more fun than a regular photo?

Vacation and summer is when we get to go around or even visit new places. It’s also a good time to get some unique photos than just the usual holiday snaps.

Here are some great photo ideas: They work great with tourist locations as there will be some building or monument you can use. Works even on a trip to the park or beach!

Find a tall structure - It can be anything - the pyramids, the leaning tower, a skyscraper or any other big building in the neighbourhood.

Position yourself at a point from where the whole structure is visible.

Strike a pose to make it look like you are pushing / lifting / kicking the structure.

Even cars and human beings can be great subjects for such shots. But you need to make them look like tiny objects / creatures by striking the right pose.

Note: A small aperture and a wide angle lens help you get a large depth of field, which is often very essential in most forced perspective photos. For example: a photo taken with 18mm focal length and f/16 aperture will have a higher depth of field compared to the same photo taken with 35mm focal length and f/5.6 aperture.

Photographer: bobu

Photographer: Ruth L

Photographer: Endlisnis

Photographer: Christine und David Schmitt

Photographer: Duilio Camarlingi

Photographer: Ace Armstrong

Photographer: Ace Armstrong

Photographer: Ellen Munro

Photographer: Ben Smith

Photographer: Iuri Guerra

Photographer: gfpeck

Photographer: hydropeek

Photographer: Steve & Jem Copley

Photographer: Jimmy Harris

Photographer: Jimmy Harris

Photographer: pputz2001

We usually look at moving lighted objects as an irritation in our photos, but in fact, they can be used for some special photo effects with just a bit of work!

The Halo: Choose a location with moving lights in the background (get someone to help if its easier). Click a photo with a longer exposure (half-a-second or above).
This will bring a ‘halo’ effect behind the subject of the photo- perfect for the angel-ic look!

The magic wand: For the ‘wizard’ effect just ask your subject to rotate a lighted object - say a candle or a torch. Again, make sure you set a longer exposure than usual.

Makes for great party snaps and poster prints!

Note: As you are using a slow shutter speed, use a tripod to avoid camera shake, and ask your subject to stand still. This experiment should be done in low light and requires some trials to get good results.

Photographer: Thomas Müller

Photographer: satanoid

Photographer: Kyrill Poole

Photographer: Rob Walker

Photographer: cotarobar

Photographer: ngernelle

Photographer: Tracy Ann C. Ball

Photographer: Kr. B.

Photographer: Duncan Rawlinson

Photographer: daMongMan

Children get excited while taking photos. They like showing off their own photos that are out of the ordinary. Here is an idea to make a standout photo of your child:

Ask your kid to jump in the air. Click when s/he is on top of the jump. Click at the right time, so it should look like s/he is flying or standing on air.

Photographer: Daniel Wehner

Capturing too early or too late would mean the jumping part would be visible. There should also be no trails to indicate motion.

Photographer: Divine in the Daily

It would be great if the child could be smiling or looking at you. Use your camera’s multi-shot facility to take multiple photos during the jump. One of them is bound to be taken just right. Even a photo of the child walking up the stairs can be a great subject, provided you click on time!

Photographer: Yogendra174

Photographer: Mark Sebastian

Children would love to have a full size poster of the photo to hang on their wall to show off to their friends! It’s not just restricted to kids! Even adults and animals can be great subjects for jump shots! Here are some funny jump shots of adults!

Photographer: R’eyes

Photographer: AlPie

Photographer: DieselDemon

Photographer: Michael E. Lee

Photographer: vauvau

Find 12 thematic backgrounds on FastLab to match photos taken on memorable occasions like weddings and birthdays.

Our range also covers themes for photo books on children, personal portfolios, fashion, industry, holiday, sports, parties and cities!

Here’re the themes. Find out which one suits your photos!

Beige Blossom

Beige is an elegant colour that complements sepia (or black and white) photos regularly used for a classic look in weddings and anniversaries. It highlights colourful photos, but is subtle enough to fill up space for layouts with just a few selected photos.

If it’s an anniversary, you can add a few old photos and the colour will suit the theme perfectly. It also blends with the traditional mix of formal wear, jewelery and materials like satin and lace associated with weddings.

The photo realistic background is reflected in the final print quality, and contains textures similar to lace with a finely spaced embossed pattern. This adds dimension to your photos as they look like they are placed on a real surface. The choice of pattern and material is representative of luxury, vintage and classy themes.

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FastLab International
FastLab UK

Birthday Bash

Birthdays are meant to be celebrated, and you know that no celebration is complete without photos. This theme is suitable for photo books of birthday celebrations of your loved ones.

You can now showcase your party photos in a stylish manner using our specially designed party backgrounds. Colourful party backgrounds with attractive design elements like balloons, gift packs, confetti, etc.

convey the mood of your celebration. There are plenty of backgrounds with different layouts and party colours. You can pick matching backgrounds for all your party photos.

Bubbles

Bubbles is a cute theme that is suitable for creating beautiful baby photo books. Main elements of this theme are subtle colours, soft round shapes, unique patterns and smooth backgrounds that will give a delicate, dreamy feel to your baby book.

The base colours are bright and lively, but have been toned down to make them light. The colours used in this theme are light green, pink, light blue and beige. With our customisable frames and layouts, you can create professional-like baby photo books easily.

Classic

Want to make a special photo book that will stand out from the crowd? Classic theme is just for you. Be it a wedding photo book or your personal portfolio book, your photos will look great in this theme. This black background is suitable for a variety of subjects like wedding, portfolio, fashion, industry, hobbies, etc.

The main advantage of this theme is, the user’s attention is drawn to the photos easily without the distraction of flashy backgrounds, which makes it the right theme for creating photo books of formal or serious subjects.

Classic White

This theme is best suited for creating wedding photo books that have a luxurious look and feel. The white background helps you enhance the colour of the picture, and draws focus towards the main subject of the photo.

The pure white theme is elegant, and thematically matches the black and white dress code of formal weddings. This theme also gives you a lot of room to make the book more creative by using black and white and sepia tone photos that blend well with the white background.

Also, the carefully-designed layouts and white background creates an aura of simplicity, and adds a professional touch to each wedding photo book you create.

Fairytale

Fairytale is a children’s theme designed with your junior’s pictures in mind. This is a background-rich theme featuring a gamut of designs and colours. The theme is entirely kid-oriented with design elements that almost weave a story.

The colours used are soft, and are many. Its storybook-like feel would be perfect to paint a story with your child’s photos, to recreate your teenager’s childhood, to feature those casual baby photos you took at home or just to jazz up the birthday party photos.

The sole black background with twinkling smileys is the jack-in-the-box and would be a great complement to your little one’s nighty-night pictures.

Mystique

Make an impact with our portfolio theme, Mystique. It has a deep purple shade in varying tones that runs as a common thread throughout. It’s been designed to showcase large pictures, something you’d definitely want in a portfolio.

This theme is great for both personal collection and professional presentation. The colour scheme in purple will go well with photos in dark or bright tones. With no jarring patterns or designs to take the attention away from the photos, Mystique is good choice for a portfolio.

Holidays

This is the best theme for some cool holiday photos. Specially designed backgrounds and themes help you customise the photo book and portray the real joy of your holiday trip. This theme is also suitable for photo book projects featuring sports, parties, and cities.

A few pages in this theme have full page layouts. With others, you can toss in several pictures on the same page. Needless to say, you can customise the layout whichever way you want it.

Honeybee

This theme is suitable for children’s and babies’ photo books. The Honeybee theme is named after a character-based page that forms the highlight of this theme. This theme has a classy green-blue combination in addition to the illustrated Honeybee page.

These pages are suitable for popular playtime and bedtime photos in children’s and babies’ photo books. There are also plain, coloured backgrounds with colour-matched embellishments, like page wide strips similar to a gift wrap band.

Party time

Use this theme to create photo books of celebrations and parties. Place your photos against our party-special backgrounds featuring attractive design elements like confetti, stars, balloons, wrapped gifts, etc.

The most prominent shade of this theme - brown - enhances the festive mood of your photos. There are plenty of textured backgrounds, interesting shapes and party elements. You can pick matching themes for all your party photos. Flexible layout and background editing lets you make professional-quality photo books that will stand out from the crowd.

Playmates

Kids enjoy the company of cute pets, and love playing with them. Playmates is a unique theme that features adorable little elephants and zebras as friends.

Apart from animal pictures, what makes this theme attractive are the green tone and leaves. Green is also a colour that stands for growth. We suggest you use this theme for photo books with pictures of children less than ten years.

Vibrant Vibes

Kids love colours, whether it’s their colourful clothes, the games they play or the toys they use. The Vibrant Vibes theme is specially designed to help you put together a photo book specially dedicated to your children.

The main feature of this theme is its vibrant colours, which make your photos come alive when printed. Keep an eye on the colour contrast between the theme background and photos to get the best results. For example, a picture with a reddish tone would look good against a yellow background.

Order Now!
FastLab International
FastLab UK

Three selected customers from our first batch of orders from a few weeks ago, got their photobooks for absolutely free! A surprise thank you from Fastlab for being one of the first to place orders through our brand new online interface for photobooks

Its so easy that you can now order professionally created photobooks in the same time as you take to order prints!

Try out the online photobooks interface today, you might get lucky and win a free photobook too!

Here is what our winning customers have to say after using our interface to place their photobook orders.

Manon from Holland

Hello,

Thank you for your offer, you may use my name and photobook. I am very satisfed with my book and everybody who saw the book is very enthousiatic. Its very easy to make, you can make your own lay out, in many different ways. Also, the background has many possibilities. So the next time, that will be the 40 th anneversity of my parents, I will use Fast lab.

Best regards.
Manon Buis

Catherine from Paris

Cher FastLab Team,

Tout d’abord merci pour votre offre. J’attends avec impatience de voir le résultat du livre photo. C’est la première fois que je commande un tel livre et donc la première fois que j’utilise un tel interface. Je l’ai trouvé plutôt pratique et assez simple d’utilisation.

Cependant voici quelques suggestions personnelles d’améliorations :

Il me semblerait assez pratique qu’à chaque fois qu’une photo est positionnée dans l’album, elle disparaisse alors des choix restants de photos.

Une fois le projet terminée, je n’ai pas trouvé un moyen simple et rapide de visionner le résultat en format plein écran avant de passer la commande.

Catherine Grabiner
Paris

Aurélie from Switzerland

C’est avec plaisir que j’ai lu votre e-mail m’annonçant que mon livre-photo me sera offert. Je vous en remercie!

Sachez que si j’ai utilisé votre nouvelle application c’est parce que d’habitude j’utilisais un programme téléchargé chez fastlab mais qui cette fois-ci me posait énormément de problèmes. En effet, lorsque que je voulais enregistré mon livre-photo sur mon ordinateur ça ne fonctionnait pas. Problème d’ordinateur ou de programme je n’en sais rien mais quoi qu’il en soit j’ai abandonné et me suis tournée vers votre nouvelle application qui fonctionnait mieux.

Je l’ai trouvée très facile d’utilisation et offrant de multiples possibilités. J’ai apprécié de pouvoir mettre en page librement mes photos tout en ayant des mises en page proposées. J’ai par contre trouvé qu’il fallait beaucoup de temps pour charger les photos mais là encore cela réside certainement plus de ma connexion que de votre application.

Le fait qu’un petit signe montre les photos qui ont déjà été utilisées sur la liste des photos en bas de l’écran est très pratique car il évite de se mélanger les pinceaux et de mettre plusieurs fois les mêmes photos.

Dans d’autre programmes, il y a un système qui permet d’aligner les photos entre elles grâce à des lignes qui s’affichent lorsque les photos sont alignées. (difficile d’expliquer cela par écrit) Je regrette qu’il n’y ait pas cette fonction dans votre application. Il est aussi regrettable que toutes les photos s’effacent lorsqu’on choisit une nouvelle mise en page ou un nouveau fond.

En ce qui concerne la qualité de l’impression de l’album, je ne peux pour l’instant pas me prononcer car je n’ai pas encore reçu mon album..

J’espère que mes quelques remarques seront constructives et vous permettrons d’améliorer ce service qui est déjà très satisfaisant.

Meilleures salutations
Aurélie

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