I believe a picture when done properly is worth a thousand words. Capturing a place, a moment and memory forever. With all the digital camera options out there today the possibilities to capture those moments are endless. But what makes the difference of a photo that you pass over quickly in your slide slow vs. one you want to frame and put out on display? Sure equipment definitely makes the difference but there are a few things no matter what camera you have that can change a photo from Meh to Wow.
Use lighting to your advantage, you’ll hear many photographers say the best time to shoot is during the “magic hour” which is one hour before sunset or after sunrise. It doesn’t matter if you have a full frame SLR or point and shoot, lighting can drastically change the tone and quality of a photo.
Photo Courtesy of Evan Faris Photography
Consider horizon placement in your photo. Try not to center the landscape and if it is a continuous subject (such as this mountain range), try to feature more sky or more ground in the shot versus trying to have everything perfectly centered.
Want to grab some photos of the stars or capture a low light shot? Most digital camera’s are capable of taking these low light photos as you’ll see a fireworks or night-time button on your point and shoot. The trick to making these work? You’ll need a tri-pod. It doesn’t have to be an expensive, professional grade tri-pod but to take these cool shots the camera shutter has to stay open longer in these low light situations. The shakiness of trying to take these photos by hand (no matter how slight) causes the photo to look blurry. For example, the photo above was taken with a tri-pod and the shutter was left open for 30 seconds. Taking long exposure images at night can be perfected with practice and by learning to recognize the lighting conditions and how to adjust your camera to meet those conditions.
Really great advice – particularly about the night time shots and using a tripod. I thought my hands were just extra shaky and that’s why I could never get a non blurry one.
You can even buy small tripods call gorilla pods, they have flexible arms that can be set up in a variety of ways and are fairly inexpensive.