Great digital photos don’t happen by just using a great digital cameras, it’s because of you!  With a digital camera, you can make your images look professional with a few basic skills and some retouching.

Here's some easy techniques to practice and help you produce photographs that you’ll want to share and display!

Set Your Tones

Change your white balance setting from auto to cloudy when shooting nature and wildlife photographs. This adjustment increases the reds and yellows, resulting in richer and warmer pictures.

Outdoor Portraits

Set your camera settings to flash on mode. This lets the camera expose for the background first, then adds enough flash to highlight your subject.

Macro Mode

On regular or auto digital camera settings, the minimum distance to take photos is around 3 feet. If you turn on the close up mode on your digital camera you’ll be able to get within about a foot.

Memory Cards

Always make sure you have additional digital camera memory cards.  A good rule of thumb is:

• 3 megapixel = 256 megabyte card
• 4 megapixel =  512 megabyte card
• 6 megapixel = 1 gigabyte card

Polarizing Filter

Polarizing filters reduce glare and unwanted reflections giving you rich, saturated colors. Don't have one? No Problem!  Just take a pair of sunglasses and use them as your polarizing filter!

Keep it Level 

Sometimes it’s hard to hold the digital camera level resulting in uneven lopsided images. When setting up your shot, look at the natural lines around you (horizon, fence, etc) and use them as guides.

Highest Resolutions

Select the highest resolution possible when taking digital photos. High resolution digital images give you more freedom to edit the image. It’s easy to reduce the size of the digital photo once you’ve moved it to your computer.

Of course, the best advice is to practice! The more you use new techniques and camera settings along the way - the better you'll get!