Photography Tips?

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Hey Since I was born I wanted to be good at everything to compensate for my faults, and now I want to learn how to take better pictures Any tips? I only know the very basics, like centre your subject, have a nice clear background decent lighting, and sprawling landscape shots (usually) only work with something in the foreground to give it scale. I would search the photography sites but tbh I figured one aspie has ten times as much info and attention to detail as any site Thanks

If you get a digital camera with a decent memory card you can take hundreds of photos and then when you view them all you start to get a sense of what works well and what doesn't as far as composition goes. What makes a good composition is somewhat in the eye of the beholder though so it's best to just focus on what looks good to you.

Another important thing to learn is how to adjust the shutter-speed / aperture / ISO combo to get the correct brightness, contrast, and depth of field for the scene without any motion blurring or excessive graininess/saturation. I tend to use bracketing where I take several shots of the exact same scene with slightly different settings. Then I pick the one that looks best and delete the others.

I'm not a very good photographer by any stretch but one thing you said is that you always try to center your subject. A lot of the time this can lead to boring, 'snapshot' type pictures. One thing that I often hear suggested is to use the "rule of 3rds" - where you try to position the subject 1/3rd of the way across/up/down (or combination) from the edge of the frame (instead of 1/2 from both edges which is centering the subject) - I think this can help because it can take you from simply taking photographs of some subject, to taking photographs of a scene (something that is happening) that your subject happens to be part of - it involves the background (or foreground) of the shot more into the viewers perception of the photo - while still letting the intended subject stand out as the subject.

I know on some dSLR's there is an option to turn on 'gridlines' in the viewfinder, which divides the frame into 3rds to help with composition by this rule. Another interesting fact - dSLR's with more than one autofocus sensor usually have some of the extra sensors positioned by the rule of 3rds - for example my dSLR has 5 AF sensors - center, 1/3rd from the top edge, 1/3rd from the bottom, 1/3rd from the left, and 1/3rd from the right - so this helps you focus on subjects you've positioned in the frame by the rule of 3rds.

Thanks for the tips I'll try play with the apeture and shutter speed, I've seen some nice pictures that played with them settings.

Oh right I'll try that rule of thirds things, funny enough is I've always used it subconsciously when rendering in a graphics design program. I'll post results soon lol

I'm not a very good photographer, but I learned some things this March.... which is probably super obvious, but I thought it good tips:

Photography is all about capturing light. It's all about light. So your results are going to be dependent on that. How your camera captures light and what light environment you are in.

When you upload your photos to flikcr or whatever, don't make your photos too small. File size is not so important as it used to be online.

It is perfectly acceptable to edit your photos in photoshop/psp/whatever. There are many filters that can dramatically improve your photos.

Hi Ryan and other photographers,

There has already been mentioned some basic important things to think about in photography.

What is also important is your choise of camera. If you choose an simple digital cam it can simply not take the best photos out of its limitations in function. If you are really interested in this then its also worth some extra money on a good camera that gives you the opportunity to play for real with it. I personally think its a bigger sport to make "perfect photos" directly with the cam rather than doing a lot of fix and tricks in Photoshops afterwards. I do that too but only where its absolutely needed.

Another idea to make intersting photos is simply to open your truly photography eye. What is interesting to take photos of? I love to find both diffrent subjects and diffrent angles to provide something unusual and creative. A good way to start practising your sense for photography is to walk around and think what around you can make a good photo. For example a very close up on a dog looking huge with the owner looking smalll walking in the background can be a masterphoto if you just choose a cool angle, have good light conditions and have the right camera and the patience and the ambition!


When you feel ready to share you can share your photos in this new topic

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt98322.html

I would love to share some of my own photos there but it needs to wait a while as Im working very intense with videos now

again, thanks for the tip. I tried out that Rule of Thirds thing on the second picture, it worked well

I have a proper camera but I'd look a little poncy if carried it around, so the phone camera with do nicely lol. I like it's grainy effect anyway, it makes things look surreal. I think I'll stay away from PS, for me photography is a way of showing others the things I find beautiful, and if I edit them to much it defeats the point and mutes the self expression I get from it I usual take my pics from weird angles, at least my human pics (Which are pretty good, but I won't post them as it would endanger my incognito status)

Oh yeah, I put pics up in that thread

Low ISO i.e ISO 50 - Less sensitive to light, less grainy. (lets less light in, clearer picture quality)

High ISO i.e ISO 3200 - More grainy, more sensitive to light. (lets more light in, loss of picture quality)

Big Aperture i.e F1.4 creates a low depth of field. (good for portraits, close ups or low light conditions)

Smaller aperture i.e f8 down to f22 increases the depth of field. (good for landscapes, general all round pictures and conditions with more light)

Slow shutter speed i.e 1/2 of a second upto 30 seconds lets more light in. (good for motion blur, night photography or any scene with low light) You will need a tripod for these sort of shots.

Quick shutter speed i.e 1/320 of a second upto 1/1000 of a second. (good for action shots freezing the subject, or conditions with lots of light)

Obviously there is no limits here as you can use these in a combination to get what you want, but I just thought I'd try and break it down for you as I'm really into this myself.