Photography Tips-Turning Snaps into Great Pics!

There have been many admired photographers over the years, but what makes their works so special? What is it about photography, that is so difficult? Most people struggle with photographic composition, and it is this that turns a simple snap into a good photograph, the ability to master composition. It is important to understand how we perceive things visually.

There are several things that trigger the desire to take a photograph such as a birthday party and you obviously want to capture a memorable moment. What about your more artistic creations, say, a landscape or a scene where something catches your attention. You grab your camera, take the picture, print it off and suffer the agonising disappointment of looking at just another snapshot. This is where a little bit of understanding about perception can transform those ordinary snapshots into stunning masterpieces. Okay, I may be exaggerating about masterpieces. Let's just say, great photographs!

The visual trigger that makes you want to take a photograph is that your eye captures something of interest. Now this is the important part, the human eye is selective, and the camera lens is not. You have selectively pick out something of visual interest, but your brain is ignoring the surrounding scenery and you may inadvertently include in your shot a telegraph wire, lighting pole, someone's foot, half a head, etc. You've been there, you've done that. Haven't you? Well, we all have.

The one single piece of advice I was given as a beginning, photographer that elevated my pictures from snapshots to not necessarily masterpieces but very good photographs, was to use the viewfinder. Frame the picture, then use your eye to look around the viewfinder. This allows you to analyse the cameras non-selective viewpoint, and you will find that perhaps moving just a foot either way, a little bit, up or down, even climbing a tree to get a different viewpoint, will improve the visual impact of your photograph by eliminating troublesome elements such as the aforementioned telegraph wires etc. Just using this simple technique will improve your photography enormously. Guaranteed, or your money back!

My first introduction to the power of photographic images came from a friend, who is an avid photographer. He had a job as an international document courier and would spend several days in various exotic countries, and he wasted no time in getting out and about and taking stunning, extraordinary images. He taught me that in photography, patience is a virtue, if the conditions are not right to get that elusive shot then you just have to wait and he would sometimes spend the best part of a night just waiting for the moonlight to be in the right area, to get that perfect picture of some old tree or reflection on the water. It really is worth the effort.

When I began photography, the costs of experimentation were prohibitive, you had to buy film, you had development costs. Then I moved on to slide film, and printing my own photographs on a material called Cibachrome. Besides being very time-consuming it also cost around five dollars per print! I think the advent of digital photography was the amateur photographers best friend, your only limitation being the size of your memory card and your hard drive.

High-quality digital photography is no longer restricted to the realm of the wealthy professional photographer and a Digital SLR camera will set you back around $600 or less. Photographic manipulation software, such as photo shop has been around for many years at a fairly prohibitive cost to amateur photographers. Now there are many entry-level programs that allow you to have your own full-blown digital studio for peanuts.

Digital manipulation is frowned upon by some photographic traditionalists, but I feel personally that this allows a great deal of creative control over your photography. Whether it be simple colour correction that may enhance a photograph to full-blown manipulation to create a piece of digital artwork. Even the traditionalists would have to agree that dodging and burning (lightening and darkening certain areas) in the darkroom is photographic manipulation.

So go ahead, explore your creative photographic side, there is no such thing as a bad photographer, only bad photographs, and those you can send right to your recycle bin!