My Three Top Tips (TTTs) for taking better pictures

Happy Friday everyone,

I always get slightly perplexed when I show someone a nice pic I took and the first question is "what camera/phone do you have?" Ugh.

It appears I'm now a blogger... not sure how that happened or if I will keep it up but I did make a (slightly inebriated) promise last night and I never lie so I'm gonna share some advice I've learned from one of my other great passions, PHOTOGRAPHY.

Am I qualified to give this advice? Probably not. I did win photo of the day for the Dog (best!) category on pixoto once, for this pic of this handsome fella:

I also ran a photography business for a while. It was great fun.

Anyway, onto the tips:

1. Always start with "THE LIGHT"

• Photography literally means "painting with light" but "the light" is something that poncy photographers say to people to sound clever and never actually explain...
• Your photo will always have these two things, sometimes more things: the LIGHT and the SUBJECT. 99% of people worry only about the subject but ask yourself this question - if there was no light then why would the subject matter? Start with the light.
• But what is light? Ah man... Light has many things - colour, intensity, direction, it can be harsh or it can be soft, it's one of the most amazing things in the universe... whereas your subject could be something as dull as my cup I'm drinking coffee out of. Notice the difference when I take 4 pictures of the same thing, just moving myself 90 degrees each time:

• Which do you prefer?

TOP TIP: Use the shadows to help you think about light, then move yourself relative to your subject (if you can) to take the best picture you can.

2. Get high (!) or get LOW

• Massive generalisation again - 99% of photos are taken at adult eye level. Here's the problem - we are all similar height (from a lens' perspective) so all photos we take at eye level look the same as all photos everyone else takes at eye level...
• If you can change your vertical perspective you will immediately start taking different, and probably more interesting pictures. We've all seen amazing drone shots, the cameras are the same as your phone, it's just a wildly different perspective.
• This is me in Chichen Itza a few weeks ago, I had a bottle of water so I made a little puddle and then put my phone (upside down, nothing important got wet) into the puddle to take this shot (the photo is worth more to me than a phone!):

TOP TIP: A great photo is worth a wet knee. Change your perspective, get high if it's doable but getting low is always an option.

• The main exception to this, unless you are being really creative is...

3. Portraits: it's in the eyes

• The only time I use my DSLR these days is when I want to take a great portrait. Why you ask me? Because I have complete control of my focus on my DSLR, it's like shooting a beautiful gun that won't hurt anyone (unless you are really mean!).
• Always focus on the eyes - the eyes are the most fascinating part of the face, the complexity and uniqueness is outrageous.
• Get yourself EYE level. This is especially true for kids - a photo taken of a 2ft dude from 2ft high looks way better than from 5 or 6ft high, fact.
• It is harder to do this on your phone because touch screens are hard to manage in the split second your may need to take your shot but compromise and go for the face, don't let your phone control your focus!

TOP TIP: Focus, tell a joke or say something nice about them, wait ... snap.

So there you go, Faris Aranki - Strategy and Emotional Intelligence (and anyone else reading), hopefully these help out. If you have any questions let me know!

Have a great weekend,

Phil