I hear a lot of people use their camera as an excuse for why their pictures don’t look “good”. In the vast majority of cases, although no one believes me, it’s not the camera.

I recently went on a business trip to Orlando Florida, and took only a $200 Canon PowerShot SD750. Posted are some of the images I took. I’m not trying to pass these images off as works of art, but just wanted to demonstrate that you can get “accomplished” results with just a little more effort on your part.

Here are a few tips:

• Don’t buy the cheapest camera on the market. Although there are plenty of inexpensive cameras, all are not created equally. Read the reviews, purchase wisely.
• Pursuant to the item above, please do not engage anyone in a serious discussion about the poor performance of your cell phone camera. Nuff said.
• Don’t be afraid to bend your knees to get a unique perspective on your subject. Everyone else sees the world at eye level, but you are now a camera wielding, super human.
• Look to create depth in your images. Look for a foreground, mid-ground, and back ground in a scene.
• Keep the main subject of your image slightly “off-center”. Use the “rule of thirds”. If you don’t know the “rule of thirds”, consider this a homework assignment 🙂
• Exploit the use of patterns and path-ways to add context to your images.
• Keep your camera steady. Shaky camera equals blurry images.
• Don’t shoot directly into the sun or any other bright light. The subject in the foreground will ultimately come out too dark (Yes, that’s why that happens) or you’ll get the “hazy” picture without details.
• Get closer to your subject. In most cases, they won’t bite.
• Use flash in broad daylight when shooting people. The extra light will help fill in harsh shadows and make colors pop more.
• Be selective. Just because you take 1000 pictures doesn’t mean you should show 1000 pictures. Do not dilute your work. Even the best professionals take bad pictures — they just don’t show them to everyone.
• Use a photo editing program (preferably Photoshop or Photoshop Elements) to put the finishing touches on your images. Despite the opinions of some, it’s not cheating but rather equivalent to what you would do in a “dark room” to put the finishing touches on your images.

Check out the images I shot on the $200 Canon PowerShot SD750:

Happy Shooting!
Juan “Rain” Faidley