A beginners guide to taking better pictures part 1

When it comes to taking pictures we all have to start somewhere, I remember getting my first camera. It was a Canon AE-1 film camera, it was love at first snap but also intimidating as all hell. There were so many buttons and so many functions, how would I ever learn them all? However with time and practice I was able to start taking the pictures I wanted and the freedom that came with it was amazing.

Its for that reason that I wanted to do a blog post on how, if you've recently picked up a DSLR camera you can take better picture. Now for the purpose of this blog post I'm using my camera the Canon 700D so some of the functions may be labelled differently, so if you can't find what i'm referring to and your camera is a different make, then you may have to google it.

Choose manual focus over auto focus:

This is such a simple thing that most people just don't take advantage of, but remember when you have your camera on its auto focus settings, it and not you will be choosing the images it takes. However by flipping the little switch on the camera lense that say AF to MF, you will be suddenly free to take the picture you want. Now in order to manually focus once you have flipped this switch, you will need to  manually twist the focus ring on the camera while looking at the image (I would suggest using the view finder to manually focus as its easier to gauge by eye what is in and out of focus this way).

It may take some practice to get the art of focusing down pat, but if your having problems one good tool is to use your camera's focus points. These are the small dots arranged in a circular pattern which you can see through the view finder. If you hold the shutter button half way down while focusing, certain dots will flash red and the camera will peep to tell you which parts of the image are currently in focus. Its a great tool to begin to get a feeling for when an image is in focus.

Use the rule of thirds:

In photography this is one of the biggies, when viewing a picture the human brain is naturally drawn to images that are composed in a certain manner and the rule of thirds uses this to its best effect. Put in the simplest way possible we are more drawn to images where the subject of the photograph is place off centre and in a way that aligns with certain points on the image (the picture to the right shows where excately to place the subject in order to create the most visual impact).

 I've placed a second of my images below so you can see the practical effect that comes from following this rule. As you can see it creates quite the visual impression.









In my next blog post I'll go into the holy trinity of photography, shutter speed, aperture and ISO. And how these can make a massive difference in the photos you can take.