Tips to up your Photography Game
Everyone loves to take photographs, but taking interesting and captivating pictures can be a challenge. Here are five tips to help improve your photography skills immediately:
- Angles
- Shooting Through
- Think opposite
- Lighting
- Framing
Take your time to consider how a certain shot might look from different angles. Uncritically snapping a picture won’t necessarily get the attention of a possible audience. Move around, take photos from all over the subject, allowing for the details of the subject to really jump out in your photographs.
Shooting through allows your picture to have out of focus elements, meaning that there is something that is out of focus in the foreground. For example, if you were doing a portrait in the woods, take a step back and allow some of the branches to “bleed” into the edges of the photo. If you are doing an object photo of a coffee cup, try shooting though the handle of the mug. This will add more dimensions to your photo.
When it comes to landscape shots, pretty much everything that is worth capturing has already been captured. It’s up to you to make these pictures different, to separate your photography from what everyone else is doing. Take the photos from different angles, try to get a new perspective, something that people normally wouldn't think to do. Creativity is a virtue in photography.
Good lighting is crucial in all photography. If you’re shooting in your home, move around the house to try to find where the lighting is the most natural. This can be usually found near windows, which allow for “soft” light to come through, complementing your pictures without taking away detail. If you’re taking a landscape picture, don’t be afraid to wait for the lighting to get better, or come back another day if that's possible. Waiting for “golden hour”, a time near sunset with gorgeous natural lighting, is the best way to get some stunning shots. I use the following site to let me know when “golden hour” is going to be on any given day.;
http://www.golden-hour.com/
By adding other things into your frame you allow for new elements to come into play. For example, if you were taking a photo of a deck of cards, it may be lackluster to the audience, however, if you had other items “bleeding” into the corners of the picture it could make the photo more interesting. The important thing to remember with this is to make sure these new items are not the focal point. Keep the main object centered, while not fully including the other items.
-- article by Griffin D.
