Don’t just take a picture of what you see. There are likely a lot of distracting elements around your subject that will take away the focus of the image. Try and compose your shots in a way where you only get the things on the image that you actually want. Sometimes you’ll need to move yourself or move the subject around. Try playing with how close you are to the subject.
2. Pay attention to the lighting
Lighting can make or break an image. Always try and shoot with the light hitting your subject from where you stand. You can try and play around with the light coming from an angle for more effects, but don’t shoot with light coming from behind the subject. This will create a silhouette that’s useless, unless that’s what you wanted.
Light can also be bounced back. Try using white/reflective surfaces to bounce light back into the shadows. You can use any surface as a reflector. Pay attention that light will take the color of your reflecting surface.
3. Use daylight indoors
When you are shooting indoors, try an use daylight. Simply place whatever you are shooting close to a windows and on the inside put a white reflectinve surface. The effects will be greate.
Usually indoor lighting isn’t that pleasant, nor is it very bright. Mixing natural light from the windows and indoor lght won’t give a good result as they are of different temperature.
4. Get down
Crouching and lying down will often give you a whole new perspective. Shooting anything from the subjects own height will make the subject more pleasing to watch. It will also give you the opportunity to include more of the foreground in the frame, essentially filling the frame with more interesting things.
5. Get high
Drone shots have become very popular these days because that perspective was usually unreachable for 99% of the places. This has opened up a whole category of photography for many.
Even if you don’t have a drone, try and find high places to shoot down from. It might give you new ideas and interesting shots.
6. Add interest
Sometimes there simply is something missing from an image. Try and place a few rocks or leaves into your image. You might also try to throw leaves into the air for added effect. Also keep a look out for things you could add into your foreground that are already lying around. Maybe It would be better to take your shot a few feet from the side etc. Look around and explore.
7. Edit
While a great shot will look great even right out of the camera editing can take it to a whole other level. Some images will require more editing than others, others might require close to no editing. It’s a all a delicate game of what your image needs and where you want to go with it. Learning good editing techniques is important and shouldn’t be overlooked.
*images are taken from various sources and Pixabay.
