5 Tips to Getting Awesome Photographs with a Digital Camera

Before I get started with the tips, I wanted to tell you about my experience. I'm an amateur photographer, who enjoys talking photographs of the great outdoors, local attractions, flowers in general and close ups of individual flowers. You can see examples of work by looking at the photographs that accompany this article. To see more of my photographs visit www.flickr.com/geniewalker.

1. Take Many Photographs
It's a digital camera so you aren't penalized in any way when you take 15 shots of the same flower, building, or landscape. When you download your photographs you can delete the shots that just don't do it for you. No one needs to know that it took 15 tries to get that one right and perfect shot. Just take their phrase for doing a great job; they really don't need to know how hard you worked for it.

2. Look Behind Your Subject
You can take the world's best photograph of a flower, but it could be the worst photograph you ever took because in the background is a decomposing pile of rubbish from a local fast food restaurant that some litterbug has decided to leave behind. So take the time to pay attention to details now it will save you from heartache later.

3. Know Where Your Shadow Is
It is frustrating to get home and download your photographs and find that your shadow is lying in the middle of the best shot you took that day. Unless you are looking to have a dark outline of yourself to be artistic, then adjust your position until your shadow gets out of your shot.

4. Point of View
The same subject can be taken from several perspectives. If there isn't a cliff or something like it on one side of your subject, it should have four sides. Walk around it, pay attention to the background and your shadow and take multiple shots of it. Take so many that you are tired of it, and then take three more. Check out the subject at different eye levels: worm's eye view, your eye level, and bird's eye view. In other words put your camera at ground level or as close to the ground you can get, waist level, shoulder level and eye level, and put the camera above your head. What does the view look like? Take a shot of it. It's a digital camera so you aren't wasting film.

5. Hold Your Breath
If you are having trouble with having blurry shots of everything there are several solutions. You may be shaking your camera slightly as you take your shot. First, try holding your breath as you are snapping the photograph. If that doesn't work, you may be too close to the subject. So second, take a step or two back (only after you have made sure that there is room to step back or you aren't backing into a mess of poison ivy). That didn't help? Okay, third use a tripod. I have three different sizes in tripods: the biggest can take photographs from about two feet from the ground to a foot over my head; then I have a small tripod that takes photographs from about eight inches from the group; then I have my bottle cap tripod - it screws onto a 20 ounce water bottle or a 2 liter coke bottle. A tripod used properly should take care of the blurry shots problem assuming that you can focus your camera properly. If using a tripod didn't help, choose the auto option on your camera and try again and again.

Okay, now go forth and make multiple photographs that are totally awesome.

To watch videos I made from my photographs click on one of the following titles:
Mums in Genie Walker's Yard
Roses in Genie Walker's Yard
Zinnias in Genie Walker's Yard

To read my article on "How to Create a Video for Associated Content Using Still Photographs" click on the title.