1. Be Prepared
Bring plenty of film with you and pack it in your hand baggage. If you put it in your main luggage the powerful X-ray machines at airports will ruin it.
2. What’s Your Story?
Every good photograph conveys a message. You don’t just want a snapshot. You want to tell convey a message. A good story doesn’t reveal it’s ending right away. Don’t put whatever you’re shooting bang in the middle of the frame. Let the viewer’s eyes wander and then ‘discover’ what you are drawing attention to.
3. The Rule of Thirds
If you are photographing a portrait ensure their eyes are a third of the way down from the top. Life is given to a photo when the subject is placed on an imaginary line that splits a photo into one third and two third sections. Following the rule of thirds will ensure your photographs are better.
4. Engage Both Your Subject and Viewer
People always give more life to photos. Include them as much as you can. When take people photos, shoot them in action doing whatever they are doing naturally. To avoid group photos looking posed and cheesy ask they to all turn their backs to you and then spin around. This almost always results in natural smiles on everyone’s face.
5. Symmetry
Symmetry is great to incorporate when you want to draw the viewer’s attention to the subject in the middle. It also can exaggerate a feature of the photo.
6. Experiment With Your Point of View
Especially if you are photographing people, you don’t need to be pointing the camera directly in their face. Go high and look down. Or go low and look up at your subject – particularly if you want to capture your subject as being larger than life.
7. Natural Framing
Look at surrounding objects you can frame the subject with. Perhaps a building, hill or person. At tree is good for landscape shots. Position yourself and arrange your camera so that the branches spread themselves over the sky to frame your picture at the top.
8. Lighting
Lighting is everything. Photography has been described as painting with light. Broadly speaking early morning and late afternoon light is best for landscapes (remember to have the sun behind you).
However, harsh midday sun can accentuate stark contrasts making for a strong graphic image. If it’s foggy or rainy, a filter may help, but even without one, the lack of contrast may actually be perfect for certain subjects such as woods, small lakes or an abandoned house.
9. Scale
People are great to use for purposes of scale to demonstrate how majestic those mountains are or how huge those cathedral doors are in Europe.
10. Look for Patterns & Strong Lines
Landscape photos will give us many patterns and interesting lines if we look closely. Patterns and strong lines enhance an image, making it more interesting. Lines that lead in or out of your photo are good for drawing the viewer’s attention into a photo.
