by Jenny Sherman

Created on: June 03, 2009   Last Updated: June 04, 2009

Found yourself with a photography habit? Consider yourself lucky! Once putting a novice photographer into debt, the digital world makes photography inexpensive and accessible. Although dark rooms still have their place, the digital photographer is the new pop-culture.

So where to start: Although the mode of technology has changed, the basics of photography haven't. To be sure to get a decent photograph whatever you happen to shoot, framing comes first. As a beginner, remember the Rule of Thirds: Imagine your frame is divided by two horizontal lines and two vertical lines, each trisecting the space into equal thirds so you are left with a series of nine rectangles. The eye is naturally attracted to points where the lines intersect, and these are the locations you want to place your subject. It is common to center an object in the viewfinder, but the more dynamic photos will be a little offset, slightly unbalanced and dominating a third of the photo.

A second basic rule is to get to know your machine. Play with the camera settings. Click the dials and experiment with the presets. Read the manual, even if you don't want to. New digital SLR (single lens reflex) cameras have dozens of settings to help you in low light, capture fast subjects, take a landscape shot and everything in between. Accustom yourself to these features and get to know your camera, so when you need to take a picture quickly you'll be ready.

A third tip: do it the way the pros do. Professionals use their digital camera in the same way they did their film shooters by setting the aperture and shutter speed to create the best picture possible. Both of these features control the amount of light permitted into the camera body; light that once exposed grain on a negative that now produces a digital positive copied to a memory card. The light is admitted in by a hole, or the shutter, that opens and closes. The aperture, also known as the F-stop, refers to the size of the hole. The shutter speed refers to the amount of time the hole is open. The correct metering of aperture and shutter speed controls the light and creates a well-balanced photograph.

To know if your light is correct, always keep an eye on the light meter. This is the graph at the bottom of the viewfinder that goes from negative to zero to positive. The goal is to keep the meter at zero, signifying you have the correct amount of light based on your settings. If the meter is in the positive, you have too much light and your photo

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