Practice and Patience Leads to Better Pictures

Taking pictures is something a lot of people like to do, whether it's of people, of kids, of landscapes, etc. Photographs are an awesome way to remember a certain event, or to simply capture something that's special to you.

And you don't need a fancy DSLR camera to shoot great pictures of those moments. Why? Because your camera is only as good as you. Did you catch that? Again, your camera is only as good as you. What I mean is that you can have the best camera around, but if you don't know what you are doing with it, you will most likely end up with poor pictures.

For those of you who have a simple point-and-shoot camera, or even just an iPhone camera, you can still take great pictures. You may not realize it, but a lot of today's point-and-shoots have manual settings. Read the manual that comes with your camera to find out if yours does. The ability to change settings can greatly improve a shot.

For example, choosing the "Beach" scene setting on a bright, sunny day will likely keep a picture from getting too overexposed. The "Macro" setting will help you get those stunning close ups.

To the right of my blog is an example. I took this shot today, and I’m very proud of this picture, but it took a lot of time and patience to get it right. I wasn't even outside when I took this shot. In fact, I never left my house! These are the leaves of Calla Lilys I received for Mother's Day. I wanted to capture the water droplet just teetering on the edge of a leaf, but it was quite difficult thanks to that darn thing we call gravity ;-)

For this shot, I set my shutter speed at 1/100 of a second, my focal length was 55mm, and I set my aperture to f/8. I used a faster shutter speed because I really had to take this shot very quickly. Too much time fiddling around and my shot would be gone -- that fragile little droplet would fall, my shot would be lost and I would have to start all over again.  

Take the time to really get to know everything your camera has to offer, you just might be surprised at what it can do. And, of course, practice, practice, practice! Honestly, take pictures of anything and everything, just as long as you're taking pictures.

The art of picture taking can take a lot of time and patience, but the effort is well worth it. Get out there and practice, you just might surprise yourself!