Best Tips we can give

I’ll start off by saying I do not consider myself a pro by any means. I do have a tip or two though. I have tried to learn from my mistakes, go through many photo forums, and read some of the best books.

So this thread is to help our newer guys and gals out! List ONE tip in this thread that you feel is very valuable, and if you have read a book that has really helped list it also.


Don’t clog the thread with BS, lets make it easy for people to just read the tips! If you have a question about a tip someone leaves, by all means PM them and ask. If the tip needs more explanation, the original poster can edit his/her thread.





J

Fresh and/or spare batteries

Use soft, diffused lighting—such as cloudy-day lighting or indirect window light—to reveal your subject's features in a flattering way.

Figure out the difference between a Photograph and a Snapshot, and try to take more photographs.


Snapshots are quick unplanned pictures that you use to preseve a memory of a point in time.

Photographs take more time, planning. Worrying about the background, foreground, aperture, rules of thirds, and overall composition.

Has anyone used this program or a program like it
MagicSplash.com Color Select Studio

Remember that everyday is "check your ISO day".

Passion!

Borrowed from Moose
In short..."Take stock in what’s in your head and in your heart when it comes to your photographs. You are the best judge, you are the only judge!"

One of the questions that were raised many times had to do with the image(s) and whether one or others liked this or that image. It raised a very important aspect of our photography I think too many take way too for granted!
When you push the shutter release, as far as I’m concerned, the ONLY person you need to please, make happy, entertain and overwhelm is yourself! Photography is not a team sport. While there is no I in photography, there’s a Y which sounds close enough for me. When we’re at the computer going through our images, who makes the decision to keep this one and delete that one? You do, right? That’s because they are YOUR images and you keep those you like and delete those you don’t. You don’t have a paneled jury saying yeah or neah, do you?

Do you really have to have a passion in photography to be successful? That’s like asking, do you have to have a Nikon or Canon to be successful? It truly comes down to the person behind the camera.
-Moose Peterson!

The only important part of a photograph is the 12 inch behind it "Your Brain".

Ansel Adams




Think ~ What do you want people to see in this image!

Composition, fill the frame with your subject, zoom in, get closer, get as much of the unnecessary stuff out of the background as you can. It’s easier to fill the frame with your subject, than to crop or edit out what you don’t want.

Great idea for a thread JBR

From one of your other threads:

jbr13 said:

Another tip about backgrounds, they steal away from your subject. take your aperture down to between 2.8. and 5.6 and it blurs the ugly background stuff out. The lower the number the blurrier it gets and the less depth of field or depth of focus your image has.

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Phyxius said:

Remember that everyday is "check your ISO day".

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Especially when you head to DC for the day to take pictures.