Tips on Improving Your Photography

By

Dean

PlanetContent.com

It seems more and more these days adult webmasters are taking over the duty of shooting content for their own paysites. If you're one of those webmasters and are not particularly happy with the results you’ve been getting....read on. I’ve put together several tips that might help bring your amateur photography to a new level.

1) If you're shooting with film (not digital), make sure you are using the right speed of film. Film comes in a lot of different speeds (100, 400, 800 etc). The film speed has to do with the *sensitivity* of your film. In other words, a slower film speed (100ASA) is not as sensitive to light as a faster film (400ASA) and therefore needs more light to expose the film correctly.

What does this mean? It means, if your shooting picturesin your living room only using the light from the lamps etc, you’ll need to use a faster film such as 400 or even 800ASA. Fuji and Kodak both make exceptional 800ASA films. 10 years ago these films would made your pictures come out grainy, but today that’s a whole different story. I’ve blown 800ASA pictures up to 11x14 with virtually NO GRAIN.

If you’ll be shooting content outside in the sun (or shade), you can use a film that is a little slower (which will also have less grain) such as a 100ASA film.

2) If your shooting your models outside in available light, get them out of the direct sun. Shooting models in the sun will make them squint and unless you have lots of experience in photography, you’ll have terrible shadows to deal with. Find a shaded area to shoot your model in and get him/her out of the direct sun.

When I’m shooting outdoors, I try to find an area perhaps under something that would block the direct sun from hitting the model. I want to have sunlight all around us to reflect *sparkles* in the models eyes (sometimes known as catch-lights). Eyes with no sparkle look very dead and not healthy!

3) TILT your camera slightly when you shoot. One of the coolest tricks I’ve ever been taught about shooting was tilting the camera slighting when I am shooting. Many shooters go to great pains to keep the camera level and this my friend does not contribute to the art of making great pictures.

When you keep the camera level, your ensuring that everything vertical and everything horizontal within the picture frame stays that way. It is much more interesting for pictures if you have some diagonals. By tilting your camera slightly, you change what would have been boring horizontal and vertical lines to diagonals. Think *Dynamic Diagonals* when you are shooting behind the camera.

For examples of this, take a look at some of the content on my PlanetContent. I *always* shoot my people stuff with a little tilt to the camera. You’ll notice NO boring horizontal and vertical lines. By tilting the camera slightly, I have turned those into DYNAMIC DIAGONAL lines. Try it, you’ll like the results ;c)

4) If you're shooting with a digital camera, make sure that you are not letting the camera do all of the thinking for you. I have found that NOT letting the camera compress my images for me makes a lot of difference in the quality on the back end.

Everything I shoot with my digital is shot with very little to NO compression, low contrast and no sharpening. Then, I open my trust PhotoShop and do all of that stuff myself. If you're going to seriously consider shooting for your own website, you REALLY need to learn PhotoShop inside and out! It can only enhance what you do behind the camera.

5) Don’t be afraid to GET CLOSE to the action. A lot of amateur work that I see could have been been better if only the photographer wouldn’t have been so far away. Don’t be afraid to get in close with your subject and fill the frame with his/her essentials ;c). This will make your pictures better and will make your paying members happy as hell.

6) Prepare for the unexpected. Always keep a spare camera and batteries with you when you are shooting content. Just when you least expect it, something will go wrong with your system and you’ll be screwed. And... if you don’t have backup, you’ll look very unprofessional as well.

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