Show people involved in activities - talking, singing and laughing. Photograph your family and friends while they are swimming, riding on rides and playing games. With the fast, self-focusing new cameras, you can take great pics of your kids in motion - swinging, sliding or jumping.
Proper handling of the camera itself can reduce the number of retakes, helping to make your day easier by decreasing the number of times you need to repeat the dreaded "hold on, I need to take one more". Taking better quality pictures means taking fewer pictures overall since you’re taking fewer bad shot...s due to bad mechanics.
Think to yourself, "What am I taking a picture of?" and keep that in mind. Identifying the subject of interest and avoiding distracting backgrounds will help to keep the picture clear. Zoom in to clear out irrelevant parts of the scene and capture just what you're looking for, avoiding objects like signs..., buildings or people that take the viewer's eye away from the point of focus.
Practice shooting with different apertures to learn how depth-of-field affects your photo. A smaller depth-of-field (and smaller f-stop #) focuses all the attention upon your subject. Likewise, you will find that a greater depth-of-field (bigger f-stop number) will make everything from here to eternity a...ppear in focus. This will help make those landscapes fascinating and lovely.
When shooting angles, walk around your subject to ensure that you get an interesting angle. Aside from the regular eye-level shots, experiment with low and high vantage points. Placing your subject off-center instead of dead center often adds interest to photos.
Keep a camera handy at all times. If you do, you will have many more chances to take great photos. The more you focus on the idea of creating great pictures, the more your mind will find subjects to photograph.
Early morning and late evening are the best times for shooting landscapes. This is because the low angle of the Sun picks out shadows and reveals textures.
If shooting in a low light situation where flash is not allowed, indoor sports for example, try this. Shoot RAW and increase the ISO but also underexpose by adjusting the "exposure compensation" down by 2 stops (-2). This will give you 2 extra stops of critical shutter speed. Then simply re-adjust the e...xposure back up by 2 stops in your RAW editing program.
For those times you can’t carry your camera around, keep a small notebook to write down places you’d like to come back and photograph. Make sure to note any important details, like the lighting, so you can come back at the same time of day or when the weather’s right.
