Ten Easy Steps To Taking Better Digital
Pictures
By: Christopher Anderson
 With
its ability to generate nearly perfect images, a
digital camera can be fantastic and flexible tool.
However, understanding a digital camera can take
time. Novice users will often limit themselves to
the typical "pose-and-click" brand of photography
used by amateurs for decades. This is,
unfortunately, a great injustice to a camera that
can be put to better use. To avoid condemning such
an elegant and versatile machine to a life of
drudgery a prospective photographer need but follow
the ten shooting tips given below:
1. Use the camera as often as possible.
Practice, practice, and then more practice is the
key to improvement.
2. Never depend on PhotoShop or any similar
photo-editing tool to digitally enhance the quality
of a photograph or fix mistakes. This is the first
vow anyone who wants to be a good photographer must
take and then follow. While these editing tools are
excellent ways to make little changes and
corrections, a good photographer seeks to take the
picture that minimizes or even eliminates the need
for such alterations. The more an image is changed,
the less of the photographer's skill is left within
it.
3. The camera's focus must be on the subject,
not on people or objects around the subject. This
reduces the "noise level" in the photograph as well
as improving clarity and sharpness in the image.
4. Learn to look at and respect
underexposure-warning lights. These lights are
particularly useful for beginners, allowing them to
experiment with the exposure settings until the
blinking warning lights disappear. Once the
photographer gains experience they can start using
their own insights in tinkering with the exposure
levels.
5. Avoid underexposure at all costs. An
underexposed image will lack color quality. It
causes the camera's sensors to fail to read the
colors coming into the lens, resulting in an image
that lacks the naturalness and vibrancy that it
should have. Not only does this "deaden" the
resultant picture, but also it is among the more
difficult to realistically correct problems for
digital editing tools.
6. Remember that each sensor is designed to
capture a specific range of tones. If the full light
available is not allowed to reach the sensor the
camera will not receive the information it requires
to build a good image. Most of the pixels will be
unable to capture the tonal range in their full
scope and vibrancy. This will result in lower
picture quality.
 7.
Where underexposure makes a picture toneless and
dark, overexposure makes colors too rich, bestowing
an artificial hue to the picture or even causing it
to look "washed out". Overexposures overpowers the
interplay of light and dark effects and over
saturates the subtle tones that are essential for
giving an image a natural look.
8. When the human mind decides the parameters
under which a photograph is taken, the best
potential for quality will result. Automation helps
guard against bad photographs, but will never manage
to take great pictures. A novice photographer should
gradually move away from automated functions and
start taking over these tasks when it comes to
exposure, color, noise, and so on. A gradual, but
unmistakable, improvement in the quality of
photographs is sure to follow.
9. Always remember to compose a picture. The
art of focusing on the subject using frames,
movement, lights, and other available tools,
composition is the art of photography that takes
place outside the camera. Composition techniques can
be learned from either a senior photographer or from
a book. Once the lessons have been learned
superficially in this way, they must be practiced
just as the art of photography itself is. An almost
automatic improvement in the quality of photographs
will be seen.
10. The final and most important step is for
every photographer to learn to critically examine
each image that they shoot. Study it to discover the
weaknesses of the photograph. Re-shoot the
photograph, endeavoring to remove the weaknesses.
Continue to hone the craft until fully satisfied
with the results.
About the Author
Christopher Anderson is a writer for several popular
online magazines, on
products tips and
shopping guide subjects.
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