This advice is pretty simple and straightforward, but it is very important and can determine whether you come home with some good images or not. Let me stress this:

"TAKE A LOT OF SHOTS"!

Especially today with digital being commonplace, you can take a lot of photos and not worry about wasting money on film. There are Compact Flash cards, and other formats, that can hold hundreds of photos. The cards are usually pretty cheap too! Therefore, there is no excuse for you to not take a lot of shots!

In addition to having a lot of memory cards handy, you may consider buying a portable storage device. There are many different models out there with various features, but they all share at least one function; they will allow you to copy your memory cards to a portable hard drive. This will allow you to use only one memory card and after you fill it up, you just copy it onto the hard drive. Some of these devices have extra features, like a screen to view the pictures on the hard drive.

I'm not going to recommend one over the other, but I'll mention a couple of models. Wolverine makes a nice portable hard drive and media viewer, called "Wolverine ESP 120 GB Portable Multimedia Storage Player." There's also a model called "The X's Drive." I have used the X's Drive personally and it is a bare bones portable storage drive that works well. Do a web search to find a drive you like and check out the reviews.

When you take more shots, then the odds of you getting a good image increases. It makes sense, doesn't it? When taking a lot of shots, be sure to try different settings, different filters, etc. Try different modes on your automatic camera or try different aperture and shutter speed settings. Some advanced cameras have an auto bracketing feature where you can set it to “auto bracket”. When you press the shutter, it will take one frame of the current setting and one frame 1 stop or ½ stop above that setting and 1 or ½ stop below the setting, depending on how you set it. You can manually do this also if you don't know how to do this or your camera doesn't support auto bracketing. Try different focal lengths, a horizontal version and a vertical version, etc. Also, try different angles and perspectives: straight forward and standing or get down on the ground and try a shot from there. Maybe shoot through some bushes or branches. Move to a different spot and try from there. There have been so many times when I have tried these techniques and it has really paid off. I often don't realize how good a shot is until I look at the photos on my computer. Then I pat myself on the back for taking a lot of shots from different perspectives, angles, settings, etc. The best photographers will go out of their way to get a good picture, even if it means getting dirty and expending a lot of effort and energy. That's why they are the best photographers. The point is to take a lot of shots and change the variables to increase your chances of getting a good image.

Article by Jeremy Baker