I’m a terrible photographer. I have a pretty good camera, at least as far as small digitals go, but I really don’t know what I’m doing beyond point and shoot. I’m also not a particularly steady hand, so I have a tendency to blur photographs (although fortunately my camera corrects for shaky hands to some extent — that setting I’ve figured out!). My picture taking strategy as a result amounts to take lots of photos. I don’t take just one picture of anything, I take several, on the assumption that some of them may not turn out and I really want to be sure that at least one does. Since digital memory is so cheap, I use pretty substantial memory cards, and I can just keep snapping phtoos at almost no marginal cost (ok, a few extra seconds of my time).
Beyond that I have little advice to offer, but that one overriding strategy seems to work well for me. Still, I read with great interest 21 Ways to Shoot Better Photographs. It’s a blog post from about 10 months back, but I hadn’t seen it before, and there’s some useful advice for photography neophytes like me who know little more than point and shoot.
(Hat tip to Marginal Revolution.
Gary –
I’m an avid reader of your blog, and also a partner in a company that teaches photography. We run programs like the Nikon School of Digital Photography, among others.
I’ve also noticed that your pictures are terrific subject-wise but not always the best technically, and I’d like to throw in a couple more tips that I think can help you.
1. Learn to use your white balance control – this is what tells the camera what sort of light you’re in an makes the colors come out correctly. It will avoid your pictures looking too orange, blue or green. If you email me what sort of camera you use, I can walk you through exactly how to do it.
2. Invest in a small, portable tripod. The Gorillapod from http://www.joby.com is a great one that’s very portable. Having a steady camera can make all the difference in your pictures. If you don’t want to use a tripod, I’d recommend sitting the camera on a steady surface or pinning one end of it against a wall and using the self-timer to fire off the shot.
You can also see a series of other photo tips we created for Best Buy at this link:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site//olspage.jsp?type=category&id=pcmcat132700050016
Alex Stevens
Blue Pixel