Slow Sync with Flash

I was at Universal Studios Hollywood this past week a friend of mine wondered how to take more interesting night photos. The problem, he said, was that all of his backgrounds where really dark and boring, even though the background is actually a lot of bright colorful lights. I showed him how to use his slow sync flash setting. Some cameras require you to be on the manual setting, some require you to be on other settings, go through your camera until you find the setting that lets you choose "slow sync" for your flash. What this setting does is fire your flash at the end of a slow shutter speed, therefore letting more light in for ambient light. Don't worry about what that last sentence means, just try it out on your camera, I think you will like it. This is a great setting for those pictures where you want to be in front of some cool lights or backgrounds. Make sure you hold the camera as still as possible and make sure your subjects don't move much. The more your subjects move, the more "ghosting" will happen. Ghosting is basically see through parts of a picture, you will see what I mean when you use "slow sync".

Take A Lot Of Shots

I am not talking about alcohol shots, although I agree with that idea as well.  Taking a lot of pictures is the best way of assuring a great portfolio.  Your photography portfolio is going to be the single most important asset when it comes to starting a photography business, if you ever want to do so.  A lot of people would say that taking a lot of shots is cheating, its not.  As a beginner in photography you will soon learn that you cannot make every shot emotional and great, it just doesn't work like that.  If you blurt out something really funny and get them laughing and you get a good shot of them not looking like wild animals laughing so hard, you got lucky.  As you perfect your knowledge and technique of using the camera, you will start taking better, more interesting photographs.  The nice thing about learning photography is that you never will forget it, just like riding a bike.  The possibilities of the different shots are endless, just changing your view a slight amount sometimes will make a picture look totally different.  I don't recommend taking a lot of pictures from the same angle and in the same light, I say play around with the camera settings, and move around.  Again, take a lot of pictures!  

SEE Your Surroundings

Look up, look down, look all around, no we are not dancing the hokey pokey, we are talking about photography. This beginner photography tip will help you out a lot of situations, first of all it will help you gain that "photographer eye". By looking all around at your surroundings you will begin to realize that there is a lot more there that can be taken advantage of. What most people do when it comes to photography is have their eye on the prize, that one shot, but that is wrong, that is like going on a sight seeing tour and looking out the front window the entire time. A lot of time you can spot a better shot just by actually looking around, don't get stressed about it, just enjoy yourself and find the best shot! Lets say you are walking through a forest and just want to capture all the trunks of the trees because of all the beautiful lines, look up, you will see (depending on the time of day) a beautiful light coming through the tree tops, zoom all the way out and shoot, you won't be disappointed. There are so many ways to shoot any certain subject, you could spend all day in a plain 10 foot by 10 foot room, keep that in mind.

Create Depth and Dimension

Its funny how similar the human eye is with the camera, this is one way in which our eyes are not similar to a camera, dimension. We as humans see in 3 dimensions, our cameras only can see 2 dimensions so it is up to you, the photographer, to create that 3rd dimension in your photos. An easy way of doing this is to place something in the foreground. An example of doing this would be a coastline, instead of shooting it from eye level, drop down to your knees or even lower and shoot it from that angle. Fill up part of the bottom part frame with the ground and let the top part of the image show the rest of the scene. This photography tip can be used in most of your pictures. Lets say that you are taking a picture of your kid in his hockey gear, place a hockey stick a couple feet in front of him/her and make the stick take up some of the frame. Better yet, take the picture through the goal netting so it adds a nice texture to the image. What it comes down to if you are an amateur, (I hope you are if you are reading this photography tips for the average Joe blog) is that most of your pictures could use help, using depth and dimension in your pictures will do this.