You’ve read and implemented the 7 tips to take better photos and want to take better photos... here are 5 Tricks to make better photos.
Lighting Conditions
This is one of THE easiest and most impactful tricks for any photo. Be alert and pay attention to the shadows and light cast upon your subject or landscape. Nothing makes a photo worse than having a subject that has half of their body covered in dark shadows.
Position yourself or subject to ensure that you have eliminated the dark shadows and bright highlights caused from the Sun or any other lighting source (i.e. a chandelier, light pole, etc).
Pro Tip: Avoid taking mid-day photos when the sun is directly overhead. This will naturally cast the most shadows on people’s faces or landscape.
Shoot photos during Golden Hour
Whether you are a landscape photographer or just want better photos, be sure to take photos during Golden Hour! Did you know there are actually TWO golden hours each day?
Golden Hour refers to the hour just after sunrise and the hour right before sunset. Due to the angle and reflection, the sun gives off a redder and softer light at these times creating a more visually appealing scene. As a bonus, this is when the sky will feature more vibrant colors and the light on a subject's skin will reflect a warmer glow.
Pro Tip: If you are shooting landscapes or popular destinations, force yourself out of bed and shoot sunrise as there will be way less people in the background ruining your photo.
Exposure Compensation
Exposure relates to the overall brightness or darkness in a photo. When taking a photo of a subject with a bright sky behind them, you will need to either raise the shadows or lower the highlights to properly capture the image. On most phones, you can touch the highlighted area of the phone and drag your finger to lower them. This will automatically increase the shadows.
Pro Tip: There are instances where you may want to keep a bright sky with a dark subject. If you are capturing a vivid sunset, you will want to keep the sunset colors properly focused and you can use the dark shadow of the subject to capture a perfect silhouette. You can also potentially edit out some of the shadows in a phone or computer program.
Photo Cropping
If you have some great old photos and did not follow the the tips and tricks, don’t worry, you may be able to salvage the photos by cropping the photo! A simple crop of a photo can easily bring the subject into the proper position. You can also eliminate some of the blank voids of a landscape to have your photo better fit the Rule of Thirds.
Pro Tip: Cropping is one of the most crucial factors on posting a photo to Social Media. Most of our devices are in vertical mode so if you are taking a photo in horizontal/landscape mode, you will most likely have to crop the photo when sharing it to social media.
Bonus Pro Tip: To show your photo and utilize the majority of the screen, crop your photo prior to posting to reach the maximum space given on a social media platform.
Facebook : 1 x 1
Instagram: 4 x 5
Instagram Story 9 x 16
Twitter: 9 x 16
Tik Tok: 9 x 16