7 Cool, Easy Tips for Taking Digital Pictures for Associated Content

If you write for Associated Content, you know you are always faced with the opportunity to upload a picture to accompany your article. Although there are libraries with copyright-free photos available, it is far easier and far faster to just take your own original pictures. Now having to stop and take a picture every time you write an article also can interrupt your writing flow or require more time and steps than you are motivated to take. After all, to go set up one picture and then upload it to your computer, and name it, crop it etc, is not as efficient as having hundreds of potential photos at your disposal that you have taken and saved for such a specific use. Here are 7 tips for approaching and creating your own Associated Content photo library to have your own great and fresh original pictures readily available.

1. When you are out doing errands take your digital camera with you. Naturally have plenty of rechargeable batteries so you aren't limited by how many photos you can take. Look at everything around you. Everything you see is a potential article one day. Take pictures of cars, of wildlife, of events, of statues, of buildings, of street signs, of gas stations, etc etc. If you are in a grocery store take pictures of products and food. You never know when one of those images will be perfect for one of your submitted articles!

2. At home, designate an hour or 2 to just completely load up on pictures. This not only gets your own personal photo library stocked up, it will also give you additional ideas to write about for future articles! One session like this could provide you months of photographs for your articles! For example, go looking through your kitchen cabinets. I bet you see appliances that can have product reviews written about them! Look in your pantry. I bet there are potential pictures there for a recipe you have written, or a food item review, or a product comparison, or a future article that just might go hand in hand with one of those pictures you take! Start opening your drawers and cabinets and closets and see what would make interesting pictures, from shoes, to pencils, to office supplies, to dollar bills and coins, to computer equipment and other electronics. Take pictures of books and newspapers and beauty products and jewelry and games and furniture! Sooner or later these pictures will naturally work well with one of your article themes! Take pictures of your tools, your garden equipment, your yard, the snow or the sunset! Picture possibilities are as endless as article ideas! And if you ever make any kind of craft or cook any special meal, make a POINT of taking some pictures of the finished product! IT WILL come in handy one day!

3. If you have pets, take pictures of them!Chances are your experience, as a pet owner will be incorporated into one of your future articles, one way or another. Even if it is just a metaphor! Having pictures of your pets ready will enhance your article!

4. Create a regular space for your indoor photo taking. You don't need to be a professional photographer to take great pictures. To avoid glare, use lighting such as a tree lamp behind you and point not directly on the object but slightly to the side of it.

5. Bracket your pictures. That means if you really want a picture don't just take one. Take 2 or 3 or 4 or even 5! This way if one of the pictures comes out blurry or your hand shakes, you are guaranteed to still have a great picture to choose from in the batch.

6. Take your pictures using a very high resolution. This is beneficial for 3 reasons. First, it allows you to crop the picture to a specific section or item to fit with your submitted article. Second, it allows a picture to become multiple pictures. For example, let's say you take a picture of a skate board park, and in that picture is a tree, a fire hydrant, a car and a dog. Well, if you take the picture on high resolution that one great picture can be cropped and used many ways as completely new pictures. Perhaps you just want a picture of a skateboard? Just take the section of the photograph that shows the close up of the skateboard wheels! Or perhaps you are writing an article about fire safety, now you have a fire hydrant picture you can crop from that same original picture. Or maybe you are writing an opinion piece about your pet peeves about people who don't clean up after their dogs and the picture shows a dog taking a dump! Or suppose you are writing an environmental article? That tree picture might go perfectly with that! You just got 5 pictures out of one! Talk about double duty! And this leads to suggestion # 7, the THIRD reason to take your pictures at high resolution:

7. ALWAYS keep your original picture at original size BEFORE you ever make changes. This way, regardless of how many times or ways you experiment with your picture in cropping, or brightening, or changing color, or reducing size, etc--- you will ALWAYS have the original to fall back on in case you screw up. Additionally, keeping the original size photo gives you the potential to use another section of that picture you didn't know you wanted to use at the time.

So, in summary, the best way to take pictures for submitting with your articles on Associated Content is to take batches of pictures. Have fun with your picture taking and don't judge what you need pictures of, just snap away! It's like creating your own pantry of pictures, gathering your staple items, and each of those pictures will work like a recipe ingredient in one of your future articles!