Whether you take one picture every few years or take dozens a day, you may be wondering how you can make your pictures more impressive. Here, we’ll give you a handful of suggestions to make your pictures stand out more, be more clear and capture exactly what you’re seeing and want to capture on film.
Keep your pictures relatively simple. A good image should be straightforward and easy to interpret and appreciate. It is important to take meaningful pictures, but in most cases your pictures will say more if you focus on a detail rather than put together a complex composition that might not strike people as much.
If you can’t use a tripod while taking photos for some reason, you should always brace your upper body on a solid surface. Hold your breath if you can while taking the shot. This will minimize shake during the exposure, resulting in clearer pictures. A tripod is always best, however.
The “S” stands for shutter speed. Use low shutter speed to get sharp pictures when capturing moving objects. Set the shutter speed to higher speeds for creating a more experimental picture. This is a cool feature to use when getting photos of fireworks or tail lights on a car. It is an easy way to get artistic features in your photos.
Learn how to use aperture on your camera. It indicates how much of the stuff that is seen in your view finder will be in focus. Low aperture means that only the foreground will be in focus and the background will be more blurred. High aperture means that everything will equally be in focus.
A good photography tip is to always trust your instincts. If you suddenly have the urge to get a shot of something, go for it! Don’t let doubt get in your way. You might look back at your work and decide that spontaneous shot you took represents you.
Photography needs to be enjoyable. Your photos should be a capsule of a particular time and place in your life. You should be able to look at these photos and instantly remember where you were and what you were thinking when you shot them. If you allow yourself to have fun and experiment during the learning process, you are more likely to continue actively learning new techniques.
The best way to ruin a photograph is to move the camera while shooting. Keep your camera steady, and give it some support when pressing the shutter button. When talking with professionals, they will tell you to always use a tripod. Sometimes a tripod is just not a practical solution. Use whatever is available like propping the camera against a wall or on top of a fence to take a great shot.
With these suggestions in hand, start looking at your most recent photographs and see if these tips would have made the pictures even better. If you start noticing that there is a suggestion or two that would greatly improve a few of the photographs you’ve already taken, try finding a way to incorporate that suggestion into every photograph you take from now on.
