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Technical knowledge and skill
Technical knowledge and skill accumulates with practice and experience.
Understand the basics of photography. Understand what is shutter speed,
F-stop, DOF, etc.
Know your camera well. Spending some time acquainting yourself with
your camera as it will save you a lot of stress down the line.
Practice photos taking . Understand and use the features on the camera.
Most digital cameras have different modes for different types of conditions
such as landscape, night mode, macro, portrait, etc. Understand these
modes, and know when to use the appropriate one.
Lighting
There are much differences between indoor and outdoor lighting. For
example, sunlight, which is natural light and tungsten light, which
is man made light are quite different and will actually create different
looks to the photos. Night time are usually scenes illuminated with
artificial lightings. There are many types of lighting (tungsten,
halogen, fluorescent) and they will all come out with different colour
casts. This will inevitably give a colour cast to your shots. An understanding
of white balance is important here.
Additionally, taking photos in sunlight may not require a flash.
When you take a photo the following will affect the final look of the photo:
- zoom value
- focus
- flash
- aperture value
- shutter speed
- white balance
Some camera can automatically set these parameters. On the hand, higher-end cameras can also perform auto-bracketing which sequentially take different shots of the same view using different setting. That way, you can choose the best shot from the different shots.
Composition
Composition arouses certain emotions and creates a mood from the photograph.
It is hard to be taught and is highly subjective. An eye for aesthetics
is helpful for good composition.
Try to be creative and innovative when it comes to composition. For
example, the subject of the photo need not always have to be the center
of the image. Learn to guage the composition using the LCD screen.
You should be able to tell almost immediately whether or not you took
a good photo.
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