How To Take Good Photos With Your Slr Cameras

We all want to be capable of taking award-winning photos. And it seems so easy, right? Take a Nikon SLR, point it at an object and let the camera do the work for you. With the superb quality of camera available for less money than ever before it's simple, but it's not easy. And while you're developing the film yourself, there's a lot more to taking great photos than the traditional point and shoot lets on.

Lighting is the most important point of photography. It's important to have the sun in front of you so that it casts shadows, which give a sense of depth and space to your photos. Practice thinking about lighting as an object, that is, how it will affect your photos. You will have to be patient in order to obtain the lighting you want, but when you do, you will begin to understand just how important it is to wait.

A small subject makes it easier to modify the light around it. Macro shots of bugs, flowers and other close ups are very popular, especially for amateurs. This is also why landscape photographers have it roughest. Ansel Adams lived in Yosemite, waiting for the right moment, and showed only his best work accumulated from years of shooting thousands of photos.

Even after you've found the right subject you may not have the right lighting. You can change the exposure on your SLR cameras to be lighter or darker. A +1 Stop is good for overcast days, +2 is a more severe correction, -1 darkens ordinary gray and -2 is usually too dark. When it comes to flash, use it in bright daylight to make shadows look more natural.

Contrast is important in photography. SLR cameras pick up slight contrasts, so you don't want to have great differences between the subject and the scenery or lighting. The more photographs you take, the better you will become at developing a photographic eye.

With all those pictures you will get tons of practice. But most of them won't be worth showing. That's how photographers edit - they delete or dispose of all but their strongest images. So the more you shoot, the more chances you have of finding a good photo. Don't feel bad if you don't see but one a year, that's about how often Ansel Adams said you'd shoot one. And those stats worked out pretty well for him.