photo gripes

My father is an avid photographer, yet you can hardly find any pictures of him. When we were young, I could never understand why he couldn't just pass the camera to someone else and get in the picture (apart from the fact that I vehemently objected to being taken in general).

Since then, I have taken up my photography myself, and begun to understand my father's peculiarities. I think it is best summed up in this short extract from zynfandel:

the annoying thing about being on holiday is that all strangers seem to take crap photos. I mean, how hard is it to frame a picture properly? I take all these decent photos for people and when I hand them my camera in return they inevitably crop off the top of the building or my feet or something equally essential. Not being able to take good photos is as inconsiderate as being fat and smelly and taking a 12-hour plane ride.

It's sad but true, that the average person just can't seem to take a good picture. It seems particularly true of waitresses and fellow tourists; yet these are the people who should go through some photography training as an essential prerequisite to fill their roles.

So if you fall into either of these categories, here are some useful photography tips for you:

1) Try to hold the camera at the right angle. Usually the right angle is parallel to the ground. A 45 degree angle may be passed of as artistic, but anything else probably means your eyes are crossed or your back is crooked.

2) In closeup portraits of faces, it can be artistic to selectively exclude parts of the face. But when taking the whole person, either (upper) half-body or full body works best. Please don't decapitate people at the knees or behead them. Neither should you add in auxliary body parts from people who aren't supposed to be in the picture. This also includes putting your own finger across the lens.

3) If the person is the subject of the picture, put them in the centre. If the background is the subject, then put the people in the corner. (You may choose to focus on them first.) It is not artistic to have the tip of the Eiffel tower protruding from someone's head.

4) Make the people as big as possible, and cut out any unnecessary miscellaneous distractions. Just as you don't want to add extra heads and elbows, neither do you want the corners of tables, the tip of a roof or the edges of doors and windows.

5) Hold the camera steady. This is especially true if there is no flash and light is low, or if the red-eye reduction (multiple flash) is enabled.

There, with just five simple rules you can go on to take great pictures for everyone!