Photo credit: Sergey Pesterev

Light is so fundamental to photography so wake up early to get good morning light or start photographing an hour before sunset to make use of the “golden hour”. An overcast sky is great for photographing people and animals as it acts as a large soft box, casting even and flattering light on a subject.

Photo credit: Raimond Klavins

Pay attention to how much light you have and where it’s coming from. Try to shoot from the direction the light is coming or experiment with creating a silhouette or backlighting a subject or scene.

Photo credit: Julia Cumes

Window or door light can be a wonderful source of directional light and is great for creating beautifully-lit scenes or portraits.

Photo credit: Martino Pietropoli

Look for interesting shadows or create compelling silhouettes by shooting into a bright light source.

Photo credit: Jack Taylor

When composing a photo, divide the picture frame into a vertical and horizontal grid of thirds (similar to a tic-tac-toe board). Rather than placing your subject in the middle of the frame, place them at one of the four intersecting points on your imaginary grid. This will make for a more interesting and dynamic composition.

Photo credit: Johannes Plenio

There are many instances where it is not only acceptable but actually preferred to place the subject in the middle of the frame (examples being group photos or portraits that don’t have much context). Sometimes it’s interesting to break the rule of thirds and place your subject at the very edge of the frame.

Photo credit: Jakob Owens

Use a shallow depth of field (look for your widest aperture settings) to isolate your subject and blur out a distracting background.

Photo credit: Mattias Olsson

Use a fast shutterspeed (1/1000th of a second or faster) to freeze motion.

Photo credit: Ahmad Odeh

Use a slow shutterspeed (1/30th of a second or slower) to capture motion through motion blur. This can create a beautiful ghostly effect.

Photo Credit: Emilio Vittoriosi

One of the most common mistakes made by inexperienced photographers is that they do not fill the frame with their subject or the major elements of the image. Get closer (or zoom in) and exclude the parts that you don’t want. Open space (or “dead space”) serves no purpose when the subject is too small or cannot be identified. Try filling about 80% of your frame with interesting subject matter.

Photo credit: Priscilla Du Preez

Creating a frame within your image frame is the tactic of using natural surroundings to add more visual and compositional interest and draw the viewer’s eye to your subject. You could use any naturally occurring elements such as bushes, trees, a window, or even a doorway. In the process of doing this you need to be careful that you don’t only focus on what’s framing your subject. Make sure you focus on the main subject.

Photo credit: Simon Berger

Texture and color can add a significant amount of interest and create a sense of mood in any picture. Also, using a textured or colorful backdrop can bring life and compositional interest to your subject matter.

Photo credit: Guilherme Stecanella

Use leading lines to lure the viewer deeper into a picture or to an important subject. Straight, curved, parallel, or diagonal lines are all good at promoting interest. Good examples could be roads, rivers, streams, bridges, branches, or fences but there are endless things that could be used.

Photo credit: Tuan Anh Tran

Try to show the viewer a version of the world they don’t see every day. Shoot, for example, from down below or up above. You could stand on a table, crouch down on the floor or find another angle that takes a little work to access and is therefore not common for your viewer to see.

Photo credit: Nattu Adnan

Capturing “moments” is one of the hardest things to do in photography but it’s also one of the richest aspects of photography.Look for situations in which people are so engaged in what they’re doing that they don’t care about you. If people are very aware of you, keep shooting until they forget about you. Children are especially wonderful to photograph candidly as they are generally so unselfconscious. Look for places where people are working, playing, praying, dancing, walking, reacting to something or interacting with each other.