This is a collection of pieces of advice to make your everyday photos more enjoyable to look at; a little more with every post. These are only bits which do not claim to be complete, but are rather all you need to know at that moment.

I assume my readers are non-professionals who are interested in capturing their memories in the way they have experienced them, instead of how their camera device automatically suggests an output, thereby speaking of using anything from a mobile phone to an auto-set DSLR.

About the author: I am Mareen Fischinger, a professional photographer, living and working in Düsseldorf, Germany.

You can email to snpsht@ google's mail service if you have contributions, topic suggestions or feedback to give.
(Please note that I know nothing about certain camera models and do not see myself in a position to give any shopping advice.)
April 27

About snapping portraits in the sun

Not so advisable.

If you shoot in direct sunlight and do not have a bouncer or fill flash handy, you will have to deal with shadows under the eyes, nose, chin etc. and it just does not look good. Leave alone them squinted eyes.

Viv in my Glasses

Genrally speaking, a non-genuine photo is probably best taken in the shade. 

There are two types of shade:

1) An overcast day, which is the better solution.

Go Anything that's written on your shirt!

2) If your photo is taken in the shadow cast by a building or tree, your camera will quickly adjust and the scene will look natural and not dark or cold at all, as long as you have no streaks of strong and bright sunlight interfering.

IMG_0001 (!)

April 10
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(listen or read) 

What is shutter speed/exposure time?

Shutter speed is the time that your camera measures the sensor to be exposed to the scene you are taking a picture of in order to get enough light onto it.

Darker situations require longer exposures and are more likely to get you a shaky photo.

As a rule of thumb, 1/100 for anyone and 1/25 of a second for an advanced photographer are okay to hand-hold.

Shutter speed stands in direct correlation with aperture/f-stop (more about this later).

April 8
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(Alternatively, above is the audio version of this post — please leave feedback: do you want this?)

How to dress for a portrait or family photo 

If you want to photograph one person or a group of people and bring out their faces and personality, it is advisable to make them wear some non-distractive clothing.

Pastel colors like light blue, light pink and light green (without type and big logos) forward the attention to the actual human and virtually disappear beyond their faces — this helps a lot, especially when photographing a group of people.

It is also a good idea to turn down white and black clothing for the reason of over- or underexposure, where all structure would be burned out and gone; and to avoid small crazy patterns which can create a moiré.

April 6
Framing a photo at a sight I come to shudder when tourists take photos with their friends. Comparing photos you like to the photos most people take of their friends will show you why. Seemingly the #1 reason for this are heads being placed in the center horizontal line of the snapshot, no matter what’s going on behind them. Why? (Anybody that crazy about the sky?) How about making room in the middle of your picture for the sight or location itself, which is usually behind you, or getting closer to it? Also, a simple line-up of your fake-smiling peeps is probably a lot less interesting than them actually interacting at the spot – talking, joking, hugging, or anything that will make you refeel the situation and relation between them once you go back and look at your vacation photos at home. Something you probably want instead of bragging about having been in a certain spot. (top example photo from Mike Pearson, photo below is property of M. Fischinger) 

Framing a photo at a sight

I come to shudder when tourists take photos with their friends.

Comparing photos you like to the photos most people take of their friends will show you why.

Seemingly the #1 reason for this are heads being placed in the center horizontal line of the snapshot, no matter what’s going on behind them. Why? (Anybody that crazy about the sky?) How about making room in the middle of your picture for the sight or location itself, which is usually behind you, or getting closer to it?

Also, a simple line-up of your fake-smiling peeps is probably a lot less interesting than them actually interacting at the spot – talking, joking, hugging, or anything that will make you refeel the situation and relation between them once you go back and look at your vacation photos at home. Something you probably want instead of bragging about having been in a certain spot.

(top example photo from Mike Pearson, photo below is property of M. Fischinger) 

April 3

Why we don't like ourselves in photos

I keep hearing sentences like “I never look good in photos”. This originates from the reality of how we usually see ourselves. We look in the mirror every day and the person looking back at us is someone we know like our mother or siblings.

We are “used” to that look, speaking of the angle we take at ourselves, the height of the view (eye-level) and most importantly, the reverse sides. No face is symmetrical, and a sudden horizontal flip of our whole self, as it is in photos of us, is double the change of unsymmetricality to us.

No wonder we like the look of ourselves in Photobooth pictures taken with our Macs: They act like mirrors. Ever noticed?

Just as it is possible to get used to your own voice in a recording, you can get used to your look in photos. It just takes some time and practice. Release your muscles and put on a genuinely happy face.

In ten years, you will be happy you didn’t hide from every photo taken. 

April 2
Let’s talk about sensor sizes! Sensors have different sizes, as you can imagine by taking a look at the different camera sizes and models. The smallest ones are smaller than a fingernail and have the same 12MP resolution as a APS-C (22,5 x 15,0 mm) sensor built in in a semi-pro DSLR. The smaller a sensor is, the higher is the effort required to amplify the information it gathers from the scene it is photographing. But more calculation leads to more errors, which means more noise. The bigger a single physical “pixel” on a sensor, the less noise it produces. Take a look at the different sensor sizes. (graphic above from wikipedia.org) —- (first contribution from Martin, edited by Mareen)

Let’s talk about sensor sizes!

Sensors have different sizes, as you can imagine by taking a look at the different camera sizes and models.

The smallest ones are smaller than a fingernail and have the same 12MP resolution as a APS-C (22,5 x 15,0 mm) sensor built in in a semi-pro DSLR.

The smaller a sensor is, the higher is the effort required to amplify the information it gathers from the scene it is photographing. But more calculation leads to more errors, which means more noise.

The bigger a single physical “pixel” on a sensor, the less noise it produces. Take a look at the different sensor sizes.

(graphic above from wikipedia.org)

—-

(first contribution from Martin, edited by Mareen)