Stepping closer or zooming to your subject will eliminate distracting clutter and make it easier to see your subject. Don’t put people’s heads in the middle of the picture because their heads are not in the middle of their bodies. Take a moment to look at what is behind your subject. Cluttered backgrounds distract from your subject. For pictures of one or two people a vertical format works best. You can better fill your photo with your subjects.

Often we take pictures of kids and pets while standing over them. By getting down to their level you can capture a more flattering image. Also try walking around your subject to look for different backgrounds and lighting effects.

Sunshine often creates undesirable shadows especially when the light is coming from behind the subject. Using a flash outdoors fills the shadows with light. If you are uncertain how to use this feature ask us for assistance.

Resolution is the measurement of how many pixels (picture elements or dots) make up your image. The more pixels in an image, the sharper it will look in larger prints. It also allows for cropping on smaller prints while maintaining good quality. Digital cameras allow you to change your resolution setting anytime you wish. Choose settings based on the largest size photo you expect to print from the images you are shooting. Shooting at a resolution much higher than needed for the print size you intend to make will not yield a sharper photo. Higher resolution images create larger files, which will reduce the number of images that will fit on your memory card and they may transfer slowly onto your computer. High resolution files can be downsized in a computer, however this may negatively impact your image quality.

Changing resolution will change how many photos you can fit on your memory card. Most cameras indicate how many photos you have left on a card, based on the resolution setting. Compression is another factor in image quality and is different than resolution. Digital cameras (and digital photo programs) usually save images in JPEG format. JPEG reduces the amount of information in  your file to reduce the size of your file – this is called "compression." Compression greatly reduces file sizes allowing more images to be stored on your card. On digital cameras these settings are usually called "fine, normal and low." For making prints, the normal (or middle) setting is often the best choice for quality and file size. The low setting will allow more images to fit on your card. These images may look good on your computer, however prints may be poor quality. For most uses the JPEG format is the best choice. When maintaining maximum image quality is important, save images in the TIFF format. Since TIFF does not compress files there is no loss of quality, though each file will be very large requiring much more memory than a JPEG file would.