How many photo techniques are there every photographer must know?

Photo shooting is easier than ever today. New modern point-and-shoot are offering automatic configurations for all atmospheres and situations. But they are not shooting the best photo. An amateur make take “good” photos with modern cameras but she most probably misses the chance to shoot best photo in her life. Although all modern cameras, focuses and other equipment; there’s a word in photography world that a really good photo needs technique and knowledge. If you want to take good photos, you have to know some skills like catching light and focusing in the right level. How many photo techniques are there every photographer must know?


Probably most important thing in photography is light. Adjusting the light may change a photo from disaster to statue-of-art easily. Especially adjusting sunshine angle is very important because wrong adjust may leave shadows and glare. Also it will change all colors on photo to shining objects. Professional photographers like to take photos on early morning or evening because of light.
Using flash is also very important. Professional photographers rarely use flash indoors. If there’s a white wall or area in the room or place, you may use it because it reflects light and helps to shoot good photos.
Autofocus feature is today a standard feature of cameras. But it’s possible to see that autofocus mostly ruins good photos. Main problem on autofocus is that it only focus on the center of the area you framed but taking all objects into the middle of frame is very hard especially for amateurs. So it’s very frequent that objects seem very slight in photos. All cameras with autofocus also have standard focus lock feature. Best skill for using autofocus is focusing the frame into center and pressing the shutter half. Than adjust the frame to find the best shot. It will avoid the photos that background is sharp but objects are fuzzy.

Rule of thirds is a popular technique in photography. It’s not only using in this area, also various art techniques use it. You need to imagine grid of four lines first in frame. It must plane the picture into thirds. It will divide the frame into 9 equal parts. Now you must put the object into one frame. It must be not in the middle and some close to high or bottom. You can use this technique also in landscape shooting.

Reading camera’s user manual may also help you to shoot good photos. There are lots of features in new cameras but because of automatic mode, no one is using them. It’s true that reading instructions like power on, power off and remove battery may be useless, but reading features pages may be usable. Some of the features only a few photographers are using in modern cameras are aperture priority, ISO setting, white balance and exposure bracketing. Especially aperture priority helps to identify deep level of the area so you can set right focus level.
Using optical zoom is also very important. Cameras use digital zoom in default. It’s a commercial trick that selling cameras with 20x zooms are easier than selling cameras with optical zooms. It’s possible to specify how far the sensor from lens on optical zoom. It’s also easy to fix problems of optical zoom on photo editing software than digital zoom.
Battery level is also very important for good photos. Most of the modern cameras close the detailed features if battery level is not enough. So you may only shoot photos with basic features and these photos will not be saved by all processor power of camera.