Taking a picture is as easy as pushing a button, but taking a beautiful photograph is a work of art. You can take great photos with a simple, point-and-shoot camera or get lousy shots with the most expensive, top-of-the-line camera. It is not the camera that produces wonderful images, it is the photographer. To help you take great photographs, here are some helpful tips.
Play with the aperture settings. Take a number of photos of the same subject with different settings to see how it affects the look of the final photo. Bigger f-stops allow you to get an entire landscape in focus, while a smaller f-stop will draw attention only to the center of your frame.
Try using a tripod to take your photos. This will reduce or completely remove your movement’s influence. It’s incredibly frustrating to have lined up a perfect shot only to discover that your hands were shaking a bit and completely blurred the photo. This is especially important if you know you don’t have extremely steady hands.
Be creative when composing your shots. Photography is all about the visual effect of your shots. If it’s a mundane item in a cluttered background, chances are good that no one will care to look at your photo. Learn how to create a good photo, and then take those skills and apply them to your own creative ideas.
The number one lighting to avoid in photography is the use of your built in camera flash. Using the flash setting in your camera actually creates the dreaded red eyes and makes your subjects appear featureless shadow blobs. Only use this setting in the case of an emergency if you are left with no other choice.
Now that you have some helpful tips, you will be able to start taking more great pictures. With this knowledge and some willingness to make some easy adjustments to your shooting techniques and your camera, you can get some pretty amazing shots from any camera that you are using.