How to Take a Great Photo

Photography these days is cheap and easy to do, and there's pretty much no excuse not to do so. The only problem is making a great shot. Even though any person can pretty much go out, buy a camera, take a photo, it's difficult to take just one great picture of something.

On choosing your camera, never settle for the middle. You should either get your camera really cheap, or really expensive. The cheaper cameras offer you a wild side of film that gives you over-saturated colors, extreme vignetting, and the "cool" type of blurriness. On the other hand, the expensive DSLR (Digital Single Reflex Lens) cameras have a wide range of features along with the ability to change lenses. So, with DSLRs, you can take photos from far away or up close, make everybody look like tiny ants or give a wide-angle fisheye perspective, and either capture the wings of a hummingbird or make a stylish motion blur. The problem with the middle-land point-and-shoot cameras is that they are too well-built to offer the wackiness of the cheap Lomo-style cameras, and that they don't feature the customizable abilities of the DSLR cameras. Therefore, if you take the compromise, you'll have less of a chance of taking a great photo.

Once you have your camera in hand, go somewhere. It doesn't really matter where you're going, as long as it's someplace unfamiliar. Be risky with your shots, take a picture from outside your car's window when your driving, shoot from the hip, and get up close (physically, or with a long lens on the DSLR). These shots are some of the best, because it shows a different perspective from what everybody is used to, and have wonderfully unexpected angles.

In my opinion, the best "fun" lens to use with a DSLR is the aptly-named fisheye. The fisheye is an ultra-wide lens, that means you can pretty much get everything that you see in a picture, the only "problem" is that stuff gets distorted in the picture. Now, I put the word "problem" in quotation marks for a reason, it really isn't a problem. Although distortion in lenses can be troublesome at times, fisheyes were used to specifically get that extreme distortion to use in photos. The fisheye is great for taking pictures of people, just because of the laughs you'll get out of the funny faces and shapes you can make.

To take interesting pictures on any kind of camera, try to shoot at an angle. For people, it's unnatural to see the world at a different angle that they are used to, so make your picture tilt to a side and have fun with it.

For kids, the lower the camera is, the better. Take a photo of children at an adult high level is OK, but pictures are more fun and memorable if you shoot them at eye-level of the kids or even lower for the younger children. Also remember to let kids be kids! Don't bother to have your children pose for an informal family picture, let them be who they are. It just makes those memories more memorable. In fact, you should give your kids the camera sometimes, for those extra-special photos.

Remember, that the closer you are to the subject, it's usually better. Although sometimes you might want to capture the grand vista that a person is in front of, most of the times, the person is more interesting. A person gives, well, personality to a photo, and that's why getting near that person's face is the best way to spice up that shot. Even better, use a fisheye while taking pictures up close, it'll lead to many conversation starters.

While you take your awesome shots, always remember that above all, in order to get a great photograph you need to have fun doing it. Whether you decide to get a cheap throw-away film camera, or a luxurious pro-DSLR, you're bound to take a great picture with these guidelines.