6. How to Take Photos 1: Basic Tips

Almost all this information comes from lessons by Chris Bray and Chris Parker, including the photo examples. 

How to Hold Your Camera

To hold your camera steady, your left hand goes under the lens, as close to the end as possible, for more stability, and keep your elbows in. You want to keep the camera steady to reduce camera shake, which blurs your image. You can also set the camera on a tripod or a hard surface, like a railing or the roof of a car. Or, you can lean against a wall, if available.

For vertical shots, put your right hand up on top, and lift your right elbow up high, and keep your left hand underneath with your left elbow tucked in.

Now you know how to hold the camera, it’s time to check your settings. Check your lens to make sure you have AUTOFOCUS and STABILIZING switched on (NOTE: older lenses won't have these options! Also note, Nikon calls this feature VR - vibration reduction). Stabilizing is a wonderful feature, because it anticipates and reduces camera shake. Say you wanted to take a shot of a boat, really far away. This first photo is at 1/50^th of a second, without stabilizing:

Now, see the difference with it turned on:

It’s still not perfect, but, what a difference, right?

Next, set your camera mode to a Creative Mode (P or better). Make sure your Image Quality (Resolution) is set to the highest possible. Someone once switched mine to the lowest and didn’t tell me – it was so sad looking at all the beautiful photos I took with tiny resolution. It's a good general lesson to warn you, people get curious when playing with new cameras, and they often mess it up. If you're ever so kind (or foolish) as to let someone toy with your camera, double check all these settings after to make sure they don't mess up. Be warned!!! I've had someone "take a look" at my camera and then accidentally delete all the photos! People do silly things sometimes... 

and your AUTO FOCUS (AF) Point to center point. What does all this mean? I explain later in this lesson, but, for now, these are good general purpose camera settings.

The Shutter Release Button

Now that your camera is set, it’s time to take pictures. Almost all cameras have a 2-stage button. Press halfway to focus (a gentle squeeze), wait for a beep and a green light (so you know it’s in focus), and press harder to trigger the second stage and take the photo. Don’t press all the way down at once, or it won’t have time to focus first, and your photo will look blurry. Also, be careful not to shake the camera as you press the button – be calm, still and gentle. And, always take multiple shots of each subject (especially with digital cameras, it’s free, so why not?). If it’s worth shooting once, it’s worth shooting several times, to get the best light, angle, frame, clarity, etc. You can always delete extras later. Also, look at your camera screen after you take a photo to see if it’s how you want it. You can zoom into it and check for details, blur, etc. This will show you if you need to change your camera settings and try again. We’re so lucky we can do that now, and get instant feedback, while the subject is (hopefully) still sitting there. This is one of the joys of new digital cameras.

Auto Focus Settings

What’s AFS? So, there are options for your autofocusing system: single focus (AFS) or tracking focus (AI-SERVO, or AF-C). AFS is when you press the shutter button half way, it focuses once, and holds that focus, no matter where you turn or point the camera. With tracking focus, it keeps refocusing and changing every time you move the camera. Select AFS, it's better. Why? Well, if your camera is like mine, it’ll have trouble focusing on a pure sky, especially if there are no clouds to focus on. So, what I do is I’ll focus on the horizon (easier), keep my finger on the shutter button, and then tilt the camera up to shoot what I actually want. With tracking focus, you can’t do that. 

Another advantage of AFS – if I want a good shot of a back-lit subject, like forest trees or something, I know if I just photograph it, the sky will be over-exposed (white) – this problem is known as contrast limitation. So, instead, I look up a bit, focus there, then tilt down to photograph the subject, and with AFS, the aperture, focus, and shutter speed help keep the sky looking good. If I do it just right, the foreground subject won’t be too dark either. None of this is intuitive because the human eye has a much greater contrast range than a camera. You just have to get used to thinking this way any time ground meets sky. But, with AFS you can compensate and find an exposure that gets some of the sky color while keeping enough detail of what's on the ground.

AI-SERVO is great if you're trying to take a photo of a bird circling overhead, and it's position keeps changing, near and far, so you need your autofocus to keep changing as well. Shots like these are still incredibly difficult to achieve. You may find more success in this situation by practicing with MANUAL FOCUS. Your success with these settings also depends on your specific camera.

Manual Focus

What about manual focus? When do you use that? Well, never if you can avoid it. The only time when you may need to resort to manual focus is when the autofocus fails – like in low light situations. Or, if there’s a clear blue sky, the autofocus might have nothing to lock onto. In these situations, a good trick is to start with autofocus, wait until you get a good “beep” and then switch to manual focus. As long as you don’t touch the focus ring on your lens, it should keep that good focus as you take more pictures at a similar distance. This can be really helpful at night. Let’s say you want to take a shot over several seconds. You have your camera on a tripod, but it just won’t focus. Shine a flashlight on the subject – get your camera in focus, and once you hear that beep, switch the lens from AF to MF. Now you can turn off your flashlight and get that long shot you wanted. Everything’s set up for it.

Consider the Composition

Now you know your settings, and how to focus and take pictures. So far as composition, it helps to give your subjects room to move and see, so they don’t feel claustrophobic – give them “nose room”. Without nose room, your subjects may feel uncomfortable:

portrait by Hanneke Benade

I have a series of composition lessons you should review (see here). For photography, a few other pointers can help. When you take photos of people, focus on their eyes – the sharpness of their eyes is really important, remember, they’re the windows to the soul.

In landscapes, fill the frame and crop out the junk – ask yourself what it is about the shot that’s actually interesting to look at, and what tells the story. Find a great foreground subject to counterpoint the distant view. Check the background for distractions from the focus. “Good composition beats trying to fit everything in.” Avoid taking shots at eye level; experiment with different camera angles and try to get to the same height as your subject.

File Format

I have made a longer lesson about this here, but for now, it's generally better to set your camera image quality to RAW - to preserve more details.

Also Remember:

1. Keep your horizon line horizontal, unless you intend the final photo to be skewed (to knock your viewers off-balance).

2. Leading lines work “best” from a corner.

3. Look for details – zoom in to see things up close.

4. Try vertical photos too, don’t forget them. National Geographic requires photographers to take horizontal and vertical versions of every subject––it’s in the contracts.

5. Don’t worry about deleting photos until later, at home. Don’t waste time on location deleting when you can’t see them properly in the tiny view screen. You’re just wasting your time and your batteries, and people often delete the wrong ones.

6. Get in a good habit of transferring your memory cards to your computer, so you can empty them. When you take photos, you want your cards to have plenty of space. With school cameras, we will be transferring files with USB cables. Do not touch the SD Cards! But, be sure to empty them as soon as you save your photos.

7. San Disk cards are pretty durable. External hard drives are not. You want to save your work on more than just one external hard drive, or it’s catastrophic when it fails on you.

8. Bright, sunny midday is generally considered a bad time for photos because of the harsh light contrast limitation. Personally though, I love it.

9. Over exposure can be great for creative silhouettes.

10. For portraits, you generally want a shallow depth of field. For landscapes you want a deep depth of field. Try to focus on what's near, as the camera will still keep the background fairly well focused. If you focus on what's farthest away, the foreground will be very blurry.

11. When going out on location, don't just focus on what you meant to photograph. Look around you with fresh eyes and determine what's most interesting or beautiful. Just because you go to the beach, doesn't mean the water will be the most dramatic, eye-catching view. Perhaps the clouds are particularly beautiful, or there's a zillion sea gulls flying over head.

12. When on a hike, don't forget to look behind you, the most beautiful composition could be hiding right over your shoulder.

13. Once you find a perfect subject, one of the dumbest things you can do is stop shooting. Keep shooting. If it's worth taking one photo, it's worth taking several - and you never know which shot will have the best exposure, or the sharpest focus, etc. It's much better to have choices when you get to editing.

14. The fastest way to guarantee failure is to not bring a camera with you. Get used to taking one everywhere you go, always be ready for the right shot.

15. It really helps to get the shot right from the start, and this means pay attention to your settings. The less you have to edit later, the better. And, professional photographers can tell if a photo looks over-worked.

16. Great photos are made, not taken.