Photography Tips {A Different Sort of Friday Five}

On Fridays we have a little extra fun at {aka}|design because we share five random things from our week. This week we’re sharing 5 simple photography tips.

Sparked by a twitter conversation yesterday morning (hi Sarah & Layla!), I thought it’d be fun to let others know about some photography tips I’ve learned over the last few months.

You see for much of the first year of this blog, I took photos with an old hand me down point and shoot camera. It worked, but it wasn’t pretty (neither were the photos it took!).

When it was time to say adios to that camera I wasn’t quite ready to shell out the big bucks for a Nikon or Canon DSLR, so I bought what I call a bridge camera - a fujifilm finepix s1700. It looks sort of like a DSLR, and has lots of extra features, but you can’t change the lens.

I proceeded to use this lovely camera on automatic mode right out of the box for a few months. A slight improvement over the old point and shoot. But then I entered Crafting With The Stars, and my “star” Gina gave me some photography pointers. And then I read a whole bunch more about taking better pictures. I’m so NOT an expert (and taking portraits still gives me fit – people move y’all!), but here’s the basics of what I’ve learned:

1. Turn of your flash! DON”T USE IT - EVER!

2.  Take your camera off of auto! It may be scary, but you just have to dive in and use manual mode. Learn how to change your aperture/f-stop. This is the number you change to adjust how much light gets let into your lens. The smaller the number the more light gets in. This means you can even take photos at night or on dark days! There are obviously other settings, but this is a start.

3. Get yourself a tripod. When you open up your aperture to let in more light, your camera becomes more sensitive to shaking and therefore blurring. A tripod is indispensable for clear crisp photos!

4. Use a photo editing program. Whether you choose Photoshop or a free program like gimp - which is what I use – even really good pictures can use some tweaking. I always adjust the brightness and contrast, and I use either Sharpen or Unsharp Mask. If you don’t know how to use your program, do a google search for a tutorial. Gimp is also how I add watermarks and other text to my photos.

5. Make use of great resources. There are so many sites, ebooks and courses out there it’s almost silly not to make use of them! Here are a few that I recommend:

• Say NO to Auto eBook by Kristen Duke Photgraphy – just $10, or the actual print book for $20
• Kevin & Josh’s new site Shoot Fly Shoot - ecourses like Photography 101 and Photography 102 for just $69
• Digital Photography School – a site by a “collection of photographers that comes together to share and grow understanding of digital photography”.

So that’s a summary of what I’ve learned and put into practice since the fall. There is still SO much more for me to learn. But I do love to share, and I’ve been really pleased with the results so far.

Could your photos use a little tweaking? Have you put these tips into practice already? What other photography tips have you learned that might help others?

Photo Credits: Fuji camera image via Fujifilm Canada, no flash image via google search at this site, manual mode image via Mansurovs Photography, tripod image via Digital Camera 360, gimp laptop graphic via gimp.org, help image via NOVA.

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