Digital photography is attracting more and more interest. With the prices of digital cameras dropping, the interest only grows. But better cameras and more megapixels don’t mean that automatically the result will be a good photograph. It’s not only the camera, but how you (the photographer) approach the subject and environment, and if you can get your vision into the picture. It is an art of selecting. From three-dimensional scene that changes in time, to a static two-dimensional image. Selecting the subject, selecting the point of view, selecting the best photo from the series of photos that you made, selecting the import parts of the photo and select ways to attract attention to that and to reduce distracting elements. It is good to know the options where you can choose from. With that, good hardware and good skills can really help.
For many point-and-shoot photographers a good photo is rare and happens by accident. “Why doesn’t my photo has that impact. My colleague with a comparable camera did the same holiday travel trip as me, but did make photo that were more beautiful, more shiny, and really had a ‘wow!’ factor in it. I try over and over again, but can’t figure out why most of my photos don’t have that.” For that, photography is a skill as well as an art.
This Digital Photography Tutorial
Dptutorial.com is intended for people who want to get more out of their photography. Not only for the more experienced photographers, but also for the beginners. It is about making better photos. It will give you hints for the what might make an interesting photo possibilities to get out of a scene what is in it.
This site is not too much concerned with the technique of the hardware, but about using it to get better photos. Making better photos doesn’t have to stop when the shutter is closed again of pressing the release button. In the digital age the possibilities only begin there.
Making better photographs by avoiding flaws…
The way of making photos better is basicaly pretty simple: avoid flaws, and keep or strengthen the good elements of the image. Quite simple isn’t it?
Better photos in the first place can be obtained by avoiding, removing or correcting flaws. Flaws unconsciously give away that the picture is made by a novice and demolish the quality at first sight. Reducing those flaws can greatly improve your collection of photos. See the Photography tips for beginners page for some tips on avoiding flaws.
One important and generic (general) flaw is that a photo has to much distracting elements in it. Elements that distract the eyes of the viewer away from the important parts (the main subject) of the photo, and elements that don’t add to the scene. There are many ways to approach this. At dptutorial we will give you a wide range of options on the adding and removing accents page.
In some cases you can correct or remove a flaw afterwards with postprocessing, but it is often better to avoid the flaw when shooting the picture in the first place. For example you should hold your camera straight when shooting a horizon. You you could still mend it afterwards by rotating the photo digitally with imaging software. However this implies some slight loss of quality and sharpness, and losing slices of the edges.
…and having strong points
Still you don’t have a good photo if it is without flaws. Another important part is to have plusses in your picture, strong points that make it interesting (see the oddities and extremes pages). The art is to get those in when taking the picture, and bring them forward and reinforce them. If there nothing interesting or special in a picture, in subject, expression of a model, mood, form, story, colors, contrast and they cannot be brought forward, you should question if this is the right photo to keep in your collection.It doesn’t mean you have to wait till something exceptional happens before making a picture. Even from seemingly uninteresting simple things, a valuable interesting photo can be made. Something that promotes the photo from uninspired photo into picture that has impact, a mood, a meaning, or message.
And finally as always: Break The Rules. The ultimate way for an interesting photo is to let it differ from what people expect from photos, or what they have seen before.