My kids, places we’ve been, THE family photo, or just favorite pictures that I want to show off.  It all makes it feel just a little bit cozier.

I’m not a professional photographer, but over the years, my love for photography has grown to new depths.  I’ve stepped out in upgrading to a nicer camera and taken a class to learn more about this thing that I now call a hobby.  That said, I felt it appropriate in this category of Creative Home to pass along some tidbits that will have you taking great photos!

First of all, don’t think you need a certain kind of camera to take great photos.  Get to know your camera and what it can do.  You will quickly find out what it does well and what the limitations are.

After you’ve done that, it’s time to experiment!  This is the fun, creative part that I love.  To help get you started, think about these ideas when taking photos…

~rule of thirds

~balance

~leading lines

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~symmetry and patterns

~view point

~background

~depth

~framing

~cropping

~experiment

To read more about each one of these visit here.

Sometimes you can take great photos but still want to add some pizazz to them.  Although post processing can take a lot of time, sometimes the results are definitely worth it.  There are lots of great tools for editing from free to lots of money!  My personal favorite (free) ones are Picnik which is part of Flickr and Pixlr (similar to Photoshop using layers).

You might think you’re done there but the truth of the matter is that finding a printing company you’re satisfied with is just as important.  I used to go with a company that had really cheap prices because I like to save a buck, but I was never really happy with the results.  They never quite looked like my edited photo.  It was then that I realized that a company you’re happy with is just as important as the photo itself.  There’s are lots of great companies out there.  My personal favorite is the photo lab at Costco.