Tips To Improve Photographs
We see a lot of photos coming through our photobook business. Most photos we see are very good, cameras these days generally do a very good job of automatically adjusting settings to get things right in order to get the shot printing correctly.
We do see some photos that come through that could be amazing photos, but they've fallen prey to some easily fixable and very common mistakes
With that in mind, we thought we'd put together some tips that rectify the most common mistakes that we see in Photos.
Check the background
Original Photo Angle Shift
So often people are focusing on the thing they are taking the photo of, that they don't see everything that the camera is going to capture.
People get tunnel vision when focusing on something, so you are only concentrating on the subject. The camera lens, however, has no such tunnel vision and captures everything. It's usually not until you look at the photo and you say 'Oh why is that there?'
In our examples to the right, our subject has a tree growing out of her head, a simple change of angle stops this from happening.
So have a look around your subject in the view finder before you hit the shutter button.
Sometimes a simple move of the angle you're taking the photo on can make all the difference
Use Fill Flash
Use what now? Fill flash is the industry jargon for using the flash to minimise shadows cast by the sun outdoors.
Without Fill Flash With Fill Flash
Simply put, just because it's sunny outside doesn't mean you don't need to use the flash. If someone is wearing a hat outside, standing in a shadow under a tree on a bright day, or has the sun behind them, this will cast a shadow on their face.
What modern cameras do is look at the whole image to determine how bright it. It
uses the average of the whole scene, and picks the appropriate settings to take the picture to get exposure correct.
Now if you have a bright background and shadow
on the face of the subject, as we see in our example to the left, the camera is
setting itself to get the bright background right. This however leaves the face
dark or 'underexposed'. Turning the flash on, lights the dark face up, and gives
us a much better result.
Don't Look Down
 This isn't a good look
Try to avoid looking down at a camera or making people look down at a camera.
This is known as the 'Jabba Effect', looking down pulls your chin in towards your body, heavily accentuates skin folds under the chin, which gives the apperance of
an extra 5kgs.
Looking Down Looking Up
Even the slimmest of people gain at least an extra chin when looking down. You should always aim to elongate the neck.
As you can see in our example to the left, the photographer has crouched down to
get the shot in the first photo, in the second photo the photographer is standing
in order to have the subject looking slightly upwards towards the camera, and the
result is significantly improved
Another tip in the same vein for babies, take photos at the head of the crib, not the foot, then you're bundle of joy will have to look up to see you, and look adorable. Most photos of babies taken from the foot of the crib leave the baby looking down.
I suppose there is a reason that when you see someone looking sad or upset the phrase 'Wow they were looking down' is used.
Take two
The First Shot
Taken One Second Later
Unlike the good old days of film, it doesn't actually cost you to take the photo, so snap two photos. You don't have to wait until film is developed to see if the
shot is good.
Taking photos of wildlife is a really great example of this, because you can't tell
an animal what to look up a bit more. So one second can be the difference between
a good and a great shot.
This is also true of group portrait shots, you can almost guarantee that there will be on person in the group who isn't smiling/looking/has a finger up their nose (true story).
So hit the button at least twice, you double your chances of getting a great shot.
Always have a camera.
What is worse than a bad photo of an event? No photo at all.
I'd rather look at a photo and say 'I wish I had seen that tree', or 'I should have used the flash' than be saying 'I wish I'd taken a photo of that'. Any record of the event or person is better than no record at all.
With digital cameras being so very affordable and photo editing software getting more sophistcated, what can be recovered from bad
is staggering. We do get a number of books where people have had to use very low
resolution images, or unrelated images because 'No one has a decent photo of that',
and that is heart breaking.
We hope you find this article helpful, let us know your thoughts in the comments
section.
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