A camera, although not essential, can be a handy tool for the aspiring artist or designer. A quick snapshot can serve as a note or reminder of an idea for a project. A good photograph, as an element of design in a print or web project, can establish the mood and tone as can an illustration. If you make art, you should take a picture of your work as soon as it is finished to keep a record of your work and progress.

With so many affordable point and click cameras available one would think that taking good pictures would be easy. Instead, taking a lot of bad pictures has become easier. A few simple guidelines will help improve the quality of your photos.

Lighting

• Natural lighting is the best. Filtered sunlight (clouds, and evening or morning light) is less harsh. Harsh, bright sunlight can wash out natural tones and leave dark shadows in all the wrong places.
• Keep the sun out of your pictures unless you are trying to capture ghostly orbs.

Background

• Eliminate distracting clutter.
• Watch out for things like lamp posts, telephone polls, trees or branches that seemingly come out of someone's head.
• If your subject is white or mostly white, don't use a white background. If the subject is black, don't use a black or dark background. If there is a lot of white in the picture, or a lot of dark, you can adjust the white balance. Also if you are shooting in artificial lighting.

File type

• Most digital cameras will let you choose the level of quality you want for your pictures. To print or crop and enlarge, you will want the highest setting (RAW or NEF). You can always downgrade the quality in a graphics editor, but you can not increase the quality.
• For the web or to view pics on your computer, JPEG will be fine. 

Motion

• If your subject is moving you can move the camera with the subject just like if you were duck hunting or shooting clay pigeons. This will help prevent motion blur but might require some practice.
• Conversely, if the subject is not moving but you jiggle the camera when the shutter is in operation, you will get a blurry picture. Hold the camera with both hands keeping your elbows close to your sides to steady your camera.

There are many photography websites and many more pointers on how to take good pictures. So what are you doing here? Maybe you just want to know who I am or maybe you want to see some of my pictures. So ==>here<== they are.