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Eight Guidelines for Good Photography

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An aspiring photographer can easily improve the quality of her photographs.

Photography is a very expressive artistic medium in which the lens of the camera acts as a substitute for the human eye. As the world of digital photography grows and expands, even a small point-and-shoot camera or an iPhone can capture high-quality images. The effective use of that equipment, however, takes some education and training.

  1. Be an Art Director

    • Kodak recommends taking charge of your subjects and your staging in order to make your pictures more creative and interesting. Instead of simply taking a picture of your friends, for example, step in and control their location and their position. This might mean moving a few hundred feet from a road to a pier along an ocean or river. This might also mean positioning the members of the group according to height or asking one to wear her Batgirl sunglasses.

    Taking Candid Shots

    • Have you ever seen a shot of a person on a street somewhere and wondered how the photographer managed to capture that moment without that person noticing? The Digital Photography School suggests a couple of methods of taking candid pictures. The first is to turn the flash off, since your subject is likely to notice the flash, ruining the moment that you want to capture. The second is to use a telephoto lens, which allows you to stand at a good distance from your subject – instead of right in his face – to capture your shot.

    Focus On Your Subject

    • Whether your subject is a person, an animal or an inanimate object, focus your viewfinder on that subject. One way to do this is to take a close-up shot; get close to your subject until there are no distracting objects in the frame. It might also mean taking a wide shot that focuses on the subject while blurring the background. If your subject is large, such as a building, you might have to adjust your position to get your subject at an angle that eliminates objects that you do not want in your shot.

    Experiment With Your Camera

    • Every camera comes with a manual explaining its features. Those are just words on a page until you go out and attempt to use them. Learn what increasing or lowering an exposure value does to your images or how changing a white balance setting influences the general hue of your shots. Experimenting with each of the features and viewing the result of those changes on your photography will help you to better make use of your camera.

    Find Your Spots

    • Find the best spots for photographing indoors. Since you may not always have a studio with lighting equipment and screens at your disposal, you need to know how to use a room’s fluorescent lights or windows to light your shots. This will take some experimenting. Shoot the same subjects in different spots and at different angles.

    The Rule of Thirds

    • The Photography Mad website recommends using the rule of thirds to guide your photography. To do this, imagine your viewfinder divided into three vertical columns and then place your subject at the first line to the left or the first line to the right. Centering a subject is very obvious, while placing that subject off-center adds an air of creativity and artistry to your shots.

    Creating Depth

    • Add artistic layers to your photographs by shooting scenes in which there are lines in both the foreground and background of the shot. This could include a series of overlapping mountains or edges of buildings.

    Use Your Instincts

    • The primary reason that people love photography is because a photographer uses the camera’s lens to express an idea, a passion or a worldview. When looking for shots, use your instincts: you know what you love and you know what you find to be beautiful. Allow that passion to determine what you shoot and how you shoot it. Your instincts will show through your pictures.

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  • Photo Credit Brand X Pictures/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images

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