How To Take Better Photos - Pt I

A lot of us now-a-days tend to have quite good cameras, with a rising amount of people using a digital SLR. But it’s really surprising how many people have these cameras, but don’t really know how to use them, or at least don’t know how to get the best out of them.

Also, perhaps surprisingly, is that learning how to use your camera better by getting familiar with it’s settings is not that hard. I offer tuition courses for people wanting to learn about their camera and photography in general and I’m finding that one 2 hour session is all a lot of people need to start taking better photographs straight away.

I’m going to give you a few tips here for taking better photographs and hopefully they will be of use to you.

Tip 1: To flash or not to flash?
Most cameras have an automatic setting, where the camera decides if it should flash depending on the level of light. Sometimes we’re using flash when we shouldn’t and not when we should!

For example, when you see a sporting event and around the stadium you see lots of flash lights going off. What is the purpose of that? The flash on most cameras isn’t going to illuminate anything past about 20ft, when the subject we are photographing is much further away. You’ll end up illuminating the back of someone’s head in front of you, this could be distracting from the subject you’re trying to capture. So just temporarily turn the flash off and you’ll find the shot will be better for it.

Andy Newson is a local, professional photographer. For details of courses run by Andy go to http://www.ukphotocourses.co.uk/