Tip Dude used to take photography a lot more seriously, before the days of digital cameras. Nowadays, anyone with a $200 digital camera and a little patience can take really good photos. Here are ten things to consider when trying to take good amateur photos:

• Do Not Center The Subject - This is the most common error committed by amateur photographers. On most autofocus cameras, there is a crosshair target in the viewfinder. Many people align the target with the middle of the subject. This is the right thing to do for focusing, but it generally creates a crappy composition. For example, if you were taking a picture of the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry (take the R or W Train to Whitehall Street), centering the subject in the viewfinder would give you a breathtaking Lower Manhattan skyline backdrop on one side, and a few cranes in a New Jersey container yard on the other side. Ideally you’d want the subject off to one side so you can capture most of the Manhattan skyline.
• Figure Out How To Get Autofocus To Focus On The Subject And Not The Background - Continuing the prior example, you would need to get the subject off to one side and still have it in focus, while the background is in soft focus. To accomplish this on most cameras, you center the subject in the viewfinder, push the shutter down slightly to get the autofocus to do its magic, and then while holding the shutter in that position you move the camera to put the subject in the desired location within the frame. Then you click the shutter. This should allow the camera to remain focused on the subject while moving it away from the center of the frame.
• Check The Viewfinder And Check Again, What You Snap Is What You Get - Another frequent error committed by novices (and sometimes even by experts) is that they accidentally cut something off. When Tip Dude took a bunch of paparazzi-style photos at his sister’s prom, he focused most of his attention on the sister and her friends, all of whom were about 5′6″ tall. When the photos came out, it was noticed that the sister’s boyfriend, who is 6′3″, had the top of his head cut off in almost every photograph. Another common error is for something in the background to be cut off, such as the tip of a tall church spire. Check and check again to make sure you haven’t cut anything off either in the foreground or the background.
• Hold The Camera Steady - Many amateur photos are blurry. They are blurry because they are either out of focus or the camera wasn’t held steady when picture was taken. The latter is the most common reason, since most cameras have pretty good autofocus these days. In low-light conditions, many digital camera have shutter speeds slower than 1/60 seconds, which is generally recognized as the threshold at which the camera shake becomes a major problem. To avoid this problem, rest your elbow on something while taking a photo. Practice holding the camera steady while pressing the shutter down. If the light is really low (dusk or at night), rest the camera on something solid (such as a wall, a trashcan, or a ledge) while taking the photo. Used the timed-shutter feature if necessary.
• Use Your Zoom Appropriately - The optical zoom on your digital camera has more than two settings. You shouldn’t use it only for zooming right in and zooming right out; there are many intermediate steps that creates a different view. If you’re not sure what would be appropriate, take a few shots at different zoom levels and look at them on the computer screen afterwards to see which one you like better. Also, you can always crop down a photo on the computer later, if you didn’t zoom in far enough.
• Know Not To Use The Flash Unless You Have To - There are times when flash photography is really appropriate, but the crappy flash on most point-and-shoot digicams generally penerates only 2-4′ from the camera. This means for any general purpose shooting, such as photographing a group of friends in a dark room, the background inevitably ends up being too dark while whole-body shots show up quite well, and half-body or facial shots show up completely washed out (from being too close to the flash). If you’re taking candid shots in dark indoor conditions, you’d have to use a flash. If not, you should probably look for some place where lighting is better to take your photo. Modern digicams do quite well even indoors and even when in the dark, especially if you rest the camera on something solid while taking the picture. Only use the flash if you have absolutely no alternative. One exception to this is if you are taking a photo against a sunset backdrop and you want the people in the foreground to show up not as shadows - use the flash.
• Ensure Camera Has Appropriate Resolution Settings - It’s amazing how many people are out there with 5 megapixel cameras taking pictures that contain about 2 megapixels each. Unless you have a really good reason, you should always set your camera to the highest resolution setting. You can always scale it down on the computer later. Shoot in RAW format if you can, although many people (Tip Dude included) do prefer to shoot in JPEG because the RAW files from a modern digicam are just too big to easily work with.
• Get Decent Photo Software So You Can Correct Photos Later - Half the art of film photography is in the darkroom; half the art of digital imaging is on the computer. Even with basic tourist photographs, sometimes color correction and other post-processing would be necessary - for example, to make your face not green and sickly in a photograph taken under flourescent lighting. On the PC, many people use Corel Paint Shop Pro software (Tip Dude uses Version 3.12; the latest is Version 12) . On a Mac, many people prefer Apple’s Aperture software, which is used by many professionals. Those graphic professionals who use the PC sometimes prefer Adobe Photoshop.
• Check The Lighting Conditions - Generally, the autosensing circuity and logic in modern digicams performs poorly in low light and high contrast conditions. In low light, the camera sometimes fails to focus on the subject, and often incorrectly detect the color. In high contrast conditions, sometimes the photo would show up completely dark in the dark parts because the shutter speed was incorrectly sensed. Generally, unless you know what you are doing and know how to adjust all of these things manually on your camera, avoid high contrast shots. Low light shots are easier, but you still have to make sure the focus is right and that you don’t shake the camera.
• Snap The Same Shot A Few Times - You never know which one is going to be your masterpiece. Disk space is cheap, and travel is expensive. If you’re afraid of running out of memory, buy a larger memory card or bring your laptop with you so you can download photos whenever you have a break in your travel schedule.

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