Photography is the key to scrapbooking. Often, the better your photographs are, the more appealing your scrapbook layouts are. Photography can be tricky, and every camera is different, yet the following tips will help no matter what camera you use, and what you are trying to take a picture of.
1. Get to know your camera. Be sure and read the manual, find out what features your camera has. If you have a digital camera, try taking the same picture with several different settings. Remember which settings you used, so you can see the result when you get it up on the computer.
2. Play around with angle. Tilt the camera, turn it on its side, try out the panoramic mode. Different angles will give different results. Try getting down low and aiming upward, try getting to the highest point and shoot down. There are dozens of different angles to play around with.
3. Play around with lighting. Remember that natural light is probably your best friend and you’d be amazed at the gorgeous pictures you can capture on a slightly overcast day. See what happens when you shoot in darker light, brighter light, watch where shadows fall, and play around.
4. Move away from the poses. While it’s great to set up a posed shot, try taking some spontaneous, natural shots. If you are working with action be sure and see if your camera has an action (sometimes referred to as sports) mode. This will help you capture Johnny at his soccer game and allow you some great shots to use on your scrapbooking layouts.
5. Tripods are a photographer’s best friend. They allow you to get into the shots yourself, but also to play around a little and not worry about shaking, or blurry images. You can get a fairly inexpensive tripod for about $10-$20. For general use, this would be alright. You might wish to bring your camera to the store before you purchase to be sure that it will work with your model.
Nicole Humphrey writes articles for the Scrapbooking Blog and for the Frugal Blog. She also guest blogs on a variety of topics. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
Related Articles:
Using Bad Photos On Your Layouts
Ten Most Common Photo Mistakes Scrapbooker’s Make (two part series)
10 Things Most Damaging to Photographs