Quick Ideas to Improve Your Digital Photography

More than any other digital photography tip, this will have the most impact on your photo compositions: Get close to your subject. When you think you are close, get even closer. This will make clear what the subject of the picture is and will remove distracting background.

If you can't physically move closer, use a longer focal length, or crop after the fact.

In these examples from the cropping photos discussion, look at the different story each digital photograph tells.

This first photo may do an OK job of showing the Hawaiian dancer's dance, but with all the junk in the background, it is not very compelling as an image.

By moving closer to the subject (in this case, by cropping), the distracting background disappears and we see two new things, the concentration in her expression and the wavy effect of heat from the oil lamp in her hands.

Now, the viewer can put her attention on the dancer and be intrigued about the heat waves emanating from her lips, rather than wondering about the gray stripe on the tree behind her hands.

For more perspectives on getting close, take a look at some of these weekly digital photography compositions: Gazinia, Mercedes Spokes, Mooring Line, Weathervane and Steeple. While some of these took advantage of long focal lengths, others took advantage of cropping. Mooring Line is unique in that it was taken with a wide angle lens, but from only 8" (24 cm) away - that is "getting close".

You can imagine that when preparing to paint you would start your composition with a grid to place your key objects. Similarly, you can look at your photo compositions in an organized way before you shoot. It doesn't have to be a thirds grid, but imagine an organizational structure that will help the user see the picture the way you want.

For more perspectives on planning your photo composition,
click here.

The goal of evaluating photographs is to identify opportunities for improving an image. If you start by looking at the strengths of the picture, you can build a constructive evaluation that generates positive energy and encourages the effort required to go the next level.

While this is important in evaluating your own photos, it is doubly important when you are trying to help someone else put more punch in their work.

To learn more about approaches to critiquing photos, click here.

We all have a tendency to shoot from a standing position. Even with a tripod, we tend to put the camera at level that doesn't require too much stooping.

Try to see the world the way your dog sees it. Look for opportunities to shoot from lower angles to add a bit of Wow! factor to your images.

For an example of shadows taken from low in the snow, click here.

Also see these tools to help you go low.

By using a stable tripod, one sized to support the weight of your camera plus lens, you greatly minimize camera shake at slower shutter speeds. This is the first reason to use a tripod.

Even at high shutter speeds, tripods deliver their second advantage, which is to provide a platform for composing your photographs. Yes, using a tripod may slow you down, but it gives you the opportunity to think more deliberately about your composition. Then, once you have framed your photo, the tripod holds that framing so that you can make multiple exposures with different settings or make adjustments to the composition.

When you use a smaller aperture to increase depth of field and improve photo sharpness, you reduce the amount of light reaching the image sensor. Conversely, when you use a large aperture to bring in more light, as in the diagram above, you reduce depth of field.

For illustration of these concepts, click here.

Fine art painters have many techniques for achieving sharpness, or the illusion of sharpness, with greater flexibility than photographers.  Explore a Rembrandt painting to see what is similar to photography, and what is not.

Today's digital cameras, from point-and-shoots to DSLR's, have higher sensor sensitivity than older cameras. This is measured as an ISO number, just as for film. Today, maximum low-noise ISO ratings from 800 to 1600 and higher can be found in non-professional cameras. Each doubling of the ISO number (e.g. from 200 to 400) lets you double the shutter speed or close the aperture by one stop.

As ISO increases, so does noise in your images. I find it helpful to test each camera I use by making prints of an image photographed at each ISO setting. That way, I know how high I can set the ISO without creating excessive noise.

To see what happens when you forget to take advantage of your higher ISO settings, click here.

When striving for a golden hour warmth, be careful not to use your image-editing software's auto-exposure correction. The software will see the warm color cast as poor white balance and remove the warmth that you were after.

Check out this example of a trellis against the snow in early morning.

I was reminded of this tip after rushing home to take a picture of the full moon at twilight. After running upstairs to get my equipment, then carrying it downstairs and outside to frame the perfect shot, I discovered that I had no memory card in the camera. Bummer! Imagine if that had happened far from home - I would have been outta luck.

There's a moral here -or should I say, an important digital photography tip...

When you are done shooting for the day, make your camera ready for another shoot. This starts with resetting any adjustments that you may have made that differ from your normal or default settings. Depending upon your camera, you may have a wide range of settings, of which I included several examples, here:

• Exposure or scene mode
• ISO
• White balance
• Focus mode
• Metering mode
• Exposure compensation
• Flash compensation

And, you'll want to make sure that you have:

• an empty, formatted memory card in the camera
• a fully-charged batter in the camera
• spare empty memory cards and battery with the camera

Do this and you'll always be prepared.

Of course, it also doesn't hurt to do these checks again as a precaution before you start shooting. Good habits die hard and will make you a happier photographer.

We often think of using our long focal-length lenses to make distant objects seem closer. But, you can also use a long lens to make close objects larger - to substitute for a macro lens if you didn't bring one (or your camera doesn't have a macro mode).

While you won't achieve the same level of magnification as with a macro lens (or mode), with the high resolution of today's digital photography sensors, you will still capture an amazing amount of detail. I find that it also helps to use fill flash with close-ups. The extra light helps bring out detail. It also allows for smaller aperture to help with depth of field, which especially helps if I am hand-holding and not able to keep a precise distance from the subject

For an example applied to a wildflower, click here.

When striving for a low angle in your photographs, two items are essential:

Knee pads. We often think of coats and rain gear to protect us in inclement weather. But, we often overlook our legs, especially our knees, which can get wet and dirty when striving for that ideal low angle. Knee pads are the answer.

Right angle viewfinder. For those shots where the camera is only a foot or 30 cm off the ground, you'll be much more comfortable if you don't have to lie on the ground to compose and focus your image. A right-angle viewfinder attachment, such as one from Hoodman that attaches to your viewfinder makes it much easier to get those low shots.

Read the full tip, here.

With today's storage prices, low resolution is a false economy. You can always make your images smaller, but quality will suffer when you enlarge small images.

It is tempting to conserve memory card space and computer disk space by not using the highest pixel resolution on your digital camera. Let's say that you are only putting photos on the Web, or you are just printing your images at 4" x 6" (10 cm x 15 cm), why save an image at 12 megapixels when 3 megapixels will more than do the job? If you are 100% sure that is all you need, then that strategy works. But, what if you catch a breathtaking shot of a surfer in Honolulu's Banzai Pipeline at sunset and want to make a poster print. At 3 megapixels, you will be out of luck.

If you are capturing your images as JPEG's, not in your camera's RAW format, the highest JPEG quality setting is essential to minimize quality loss while editing and re-saving your images.

JPEG, as a compressed file format, discards a certain amount of image information. Usually, this is not noticeable and you can get very good prints from a JPEG file. But, each time you save the image, the re-compression that goes with saving removes a bit more information. After several saves, you will notice slight areas of banding or blotching as the compression algorithm effectively over-processes your image.

Starting with best possible image quality, will reduce the negative impact of re-saving your images.