Hi Reader,

Here's your fifth issue of The Photo Sharing Tips e-letter. In this issue, we found some resources online that will help you take much better pictures.

Check this out:

Quality book on Professional Photo Techniques

Photo Sharing Tip #5 – Better is Good

One of the biggest disappointments is taking pictures with your new fancy digital camera, ordering prints, then getting the photos only to realize they didn’t come out that well. Here is a great book on some professional photo techniques and also some free tips from Kodak to help you take better pictures.

I used to have this amazing shot hanging in the kitchen of my house, and whenever some body new would come over, I would give them some elaborate story about how I waited 5 hours just to get that one shot….and then I would break down and tell the truth: I was just lucky! Almost every photographer has experienced this before: being in just the right place at just the right time. I love when THAT happens. Problem is, it doesn’t happen quite frequently enough for me. So after I got tired of that story, I decided to learn some techniques that could actually help me create better photos. I learned over the course of time that you can indeed CREATE your own luck, by setting up the right circumstances, and that if you have the techniques and skills in your arsenal, you can get that perfect shot time and time again. All you have to do is spend a little time practicing, and get the right direction.

There are literally thousands of books on photography, but I found one that is both reasonably priced, and a great start for the aspiring amateur.

Check this out:

Quality book on Professional Photo Techniques

It also comes with a rock solid money back guarantee, so give it a shot, I’m sure you will learn something useful and that next shot you will take can be that much better.

There is also a ton of free information online, though it takes a bit of digging and not everything you read is that good. I did find a good page at good old standby Kodak. Having read all the tips from Kodak, I think these are the most useful:

1)      Use a flash outdoors (and especially in bright sunlight)

2)      Move in close to the subject (closer is often better)

3)      Do not put the object of interest in the center of the picture

4)      Lock the focus (super important, I hate when this goes wrong as it RUINS the picture)

5)      Be a director (tell the subjects in the picture what to do to get a better and more engaging shot)

To read the full article (much more detailed than my cursory review above), complete with great example shots, go here:

http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=317/10032&pq-locale=en_US

Hope that helps you get on your way to taking better pictures!

-Aaron