By Lee Griffin
If you're like me, you love taking pictures. There's nothing like taking a trip down memory lane by looking at some old photographs you took using your digital camera. Use these tips to take your photography skills from good to great.
1. Environmental light is your friend.
Generally, flashes don't highlight our best side. Natural light does a much better job of making subjects look great, so try and use it if possible. If it's light enough to read a book, it's light enough to take a picture without using a flash. If not, try to use light other than your flash in addition to your fill flash feature.
2. Pay attention to the background.
Sometimes the background can be distracting. You wouldn't want to take a picture of your children playing at the park with a portable toilet in the background, or a garbage truck speeding by. Try moving yourself and/or your subject a few steps to either side; it could make all the difference.
3. Remember the rule of thirds.
It's always good to place the subject a little off-center in the frame. In fact, there's something called The Rule of Thirds that gives us some pretty good guidelines for how to pull this off. Imagine a tic-tac-toe criss-cross drawn on the frame. Now align the focal point(s) of the picture with one or more of the intersections formed by the imaginary lines. This will result in a much more interesting picture.
4. Think about your shooting angle.
Get creative with your shooting angle. Sometimes standing on top of a raised surface and pointing down at your subject can make the difference between a boring portrait and a fun picture. When taking pictures of children, try getting down on their level rather than snapping shots of the tops of their heads. Have fun, and don't try to line up just perfectly for every picture.
5. Use the whole frame for your subject.
Get close enough to what you're aiming at to fill the entire frame with your subject. This will leave no doubt as to what the focus of the picture is when you look at it in the future.
Follow these tips, and the next time you walk down memory lane with your digital photographs, you'll enjoy what you were trying to capture in the first place.
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