by Megan Worley

Created on: August 21, 2009

Having a digital camera gives you a great opportunity to capture your favorite people, places and things. How to take great pictures of all those things is something that takes a little know-how and some practice. There are several rules of photography to follow depending on what you are photographing but the most important thing is to experiment. Try different settings and angles until you find one that you love. Rules were meant to be bent or broken, especially when it comes to art.

The most important thing is knowing how to use your digital camera so spend some time looking over the manual and playing with the camera. It is important to know what settings do what and what settings are best in which situations. It is also important to know how to turn the flash on and off and how to change the file size of the pictures you are taking so you can get the best quality. Also read about how to manually adjust setting such as shutter speed and ISO.

Read a book or article on the basics of photography. Although the details such as the aperture size and shutter speed can be boring it is important knowledge to have if you want to take truly amazing photographs. These books will also talk about bracketing (using several exposures for one picture) and what all those confusing numbers on your camera really mean.

Spend some time looking at pictures, whether from a website or in a book, to get inspired. Although your photographs and how you take them is entirely up to you it can be helpful to see what others have done and use that as a guidepost to take your own photos. It is good to see how others have framed there shots, or used different angles or depth of field to make their photographs more interesting.

Pay attention to the background when you are taking pictures to make sure that there are no awkwardly placed poles or other objects. A pole coming out of someone's head can ruin a picture and can often be avoided by simply moving a little.

Don't be afraid to move around. Get down on the ground, or climb up on something to get a different view and a more unique picture. Don't be afraid to get really close and capture just a color or texture of an object. Also don't be scared to get panoramic shots. The most important thing to getting a picture you love is playing around so experiment as much as you can.

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