1. Find a cool theme

Something special what is worth to show the world. Your pet, your pot, your kid, your pit, your trip, your plate aren’t among them, mostly. Excepted if they have something really, really special, unique. No, not this. Study hundreds of photos of kids, pets, pots, etc. before you eventually engage.

2. Find adequate lights

Nice, or impressive, or special, but something really worth to work with. Avoid every day’s light, cloudy weather, too strong sunshine, the rainy cloud of November, etc. (Excepted special cases, again.)

3. Search for the best angle

Mostly, the light source should be 45 degrees behind your back. But there are also many special cases, techniques, of course. Use your common sense which looks good and which not. Try several cases.

4. Find the right background

Dirty concrete, crumpled plastic foil, gloomy crop, chaotic scrub, the crowd in the street is mostly not the right choice. The best is something neutral, completely blurry, pleasant color, blurred background. The background is as important as the foreground, integral part of the picture.

5. Put the focus, put it right

…on the object you want to show us. Blur the background, blur all other details, if you can. You can play with the focus, showing the important part of the picture. Advantage of DSLR (Digital single-lens reflex) camera about smartphones and small compact cameras.

Composition “Rule of thirds” (Picture: Wikipedia)

6. Composition

Do you know composition methods or techniques? It’s a nice thing. Almost than nice than a giraffe. There are several methods, could fill other 2-3 posts, maybe I will write them in these days. But read (Wikipedia article, and another lot of interesting posts if you want.

And, !popcorn, please! !popcorn ! !popcorn !

(Special thanks for @cXXXXX with her/his ugly weed photos for the idea of this post.) (Name changed in last minute.)

(Weed /marihuana/ photos from Pixabay.com.)