Digital Photography Tips - Creating a Routine

Digital photography tips will help you become a better photographer. Creating a routine will help you to make fewer mistakes and to be prepared to make photographs anytime.

As a professional photographer I am often asked for advise on digital photography tips. A great tip is to create a routine.

Almost every great photographer has one and you should, too. World-class athletes use visualization to achieve greater records and to do their very best every time they compete. It is similar with just about anything including photography.

Here is my routine:

Make sure you have fresh batteries and spare ones, too!

No batteries means no camera. Which translates into no photos! That is bad! Especially when you have a chance to photograph Big Foot or Elvis or the space aliens that keep landing in the north forty.

Always have a clean card.

Your camera may use a compact flash card, an SD card or even a memory stick, whatever the format, make sure you have enough room to take and store your new photos. And again have a spare one just in case. Elvis is waiting...

Check your ISO setting.

This is how you tell your camera what type of lighting you are shooting in. Bright or dim, outside or indoors. Try 100-400 outside and 800-1600 indoors.

Shoot on automatic.

For most of your adventures as a beginning photographer, automatic will be fine. Cameras are so sophisticated; let's let them do the heavy lifting for us. As you progress, you can venture into the world of manual and aperture priority and shutter priority, but that's another article.

Border Patrol.

Call it whatever you want; you need to look around the edges of your Live View or viewfinder to see if there are any distracting elements, which could distract from your subject. For example, have you ever taken a photograph of something or somebody only to look at it later and say, "I didn't see that," yes, we are all guilty of tunnel vision. Then our images of Aunt Sally won't include a large plant or tree that looks like it is sprouting from the back of her head! Learn to look around the edges and it will train you to stop having tunnel vision and really look at your image.

Do this routine or a variation of it every time you pick up your camera and you will make far fewer mistakes and your camera will always have power, have space to write photos and you will be aware of what is in the viewfinder/LCD. Do this digital photography tip and you will begin to see and think like a professional.