Advanced Tips in Photography
~ My Top 10 ~

These advanced tips in photography will improve your creativity and help you to express yourself more fully. Follow these top 10 tips and you will find your photography progressing by leaps and bounds.

1. Believe in Yourself

The first of my advanced tips in photography is the most important - believe you can do it!

• Believe that you are clever enough and creative enough to get great shots
• Believe that the camera you currently own is good enough to get the shots you want because you know that creativity, and true artistry, come from within, not from a set of techniques or a better lens.
• Believe that there are great photographs everywhere, just waiting for you to find them, no matter where you live

2. Commit to Continual Discovery

Even if you have a point-and-shoot, commit to a continual learning process that will never end. Cameras are getting more and more complex and there are many things for you to try out but you don't have to do it all at once. Start with the camera manual. Read if for half an hour every day. Read it before you go out shooting. Go back the next day and read something new. Keep learning and evolving.

3. Give Yourself the Creative Knowledge You Need

You need to know the rules of photographic composition - give yourself the time to learn them because they can be learnt, just like any other skill, and once they are learnt they will be an automatic part of you. Commit to learning about:

• colour
• line
• texture
• balance
• depth (perspective)
• foreground interest
• Practise the rules of composition until you know for sure they are firmly embedded in your subconsious mind and can never, ever be forgotten.
• Any above all... simplify, simplify, simplify

4. Give Yourself Time

When you find a subject you want to photograph, give yourself (and your subject) all the time it needs to get the shot you really, really want. Keep asking yourself if you can improve it in any way. Is there a better angle? Would a change in shutter speed add anything? How will the light alter if I come back just before the sun sets? Give it your all.

5. Use a tripod

Not only does a tripod help to improve the clarity of your shots but it slows you down so that framing and composition improve.

6. Bend Your Knees

Try shooting from lower angles. Beginners seem to be unable to bend their knees and hence all their shots are taken from the same angle, often looking down a little on their subject. If your camera has a live-view, tilting monitor, you can use the camera low down near the ground very close to the subject with the camera pointing up. Otherwise, get your body down as low as you can - a whole new world will appear.

7. Zoom with Your Body

One of the best advanced tips in photography I can give you is to consider buying a prime lens for your camera i.e. a lens with a fixed focal length. The quality of a prime lens is greater than that of a zoom and they are also faster which means they are particularly suitable in low light situations. You will find that the aperture (f stop) can be set to a smaller number therefore allowing more light to enter. The problem with a fixed focal length lens is that you have to move your body! So you will get quite different shots with a prime lens and the interesting thing is you become more involved in your subject - you have to go to the subject because it won't come to you now that you don't have a zoom. This can have a huge impact on framing and composition.

8. Underexpose by Half a Stop

This is a bit of a psychological trick. By slightly underexposing, blacks get blacker which makes all colours seem stronger by comparison. Try it and see!

9. Use a Telephoto Lens for Landscapes

A wide angle lens is of little use when shooting landscapes. Use a mid-range telephoto lens instead and pick out one area of the scene that is really interesting. The composition will be simpler and easier to control and altogether more powerful

10. Use Flash When Shooting At Sunset

This is the last of my advanced tips in photography and a good one as almost everyone seems to love taking shots of sunsets. If you are shooting a landscape scene at sunset, any foreground objects will be silhouettes due to the difference in exposure required between the objects and the sky. This can be effective but another way to shoot is by using the flash to add some light to the foreground so that the objects stand out against the dramatic sky.

Looking for More Advanced Tips in Photography?

Digital Photography Masterclass by renowned photographer Tom Ang is an in-depth, inspirational, and uniquely practical guide to every aspect of digital photography. There are assignments and analysis spreads, and step-by-step tutorials to help you hone your skills. He teaches you to look at the world with a photographer's "eye" and shows you how to get great shots every time. In short, this book shows you how to master your camera to ensure the best results in every situation and how to push the computer to keep up with your vision.

I hope these advanced tips in photography have been useful and start you on a path to greater creativity and self-expression.