Wow! For a first time photographer who just picked up a camera and started shooting, these are great!
A couple pointers:
Look up the Rule of Thirds, learn about it and how to use it. It's one of photography's most useful tools.
See if your camera has any manual features or settings. If it does, learn how to use them. There's only so much you can do with your photo after it's been shot, so try to get the exposure, focus, backlighting, white balance, and all that other jazz how you want it beforehand.
Don't be afraid to crop! You can, in some cases, achieve a whole new feel of your photo if you crop it into a "new composition". Look around the edges of the photo - are there blaringly obvious nuisances sticking out from them? Crop it! Did you "cut off" someone's limbs at the joints in your photo? Crop it! Is your subject not positioned just right? Crop it!
Take lots of photos of the same things, playing with composition, angle, lighting, etc.
Speaking of composition, here are a few tips:
- Check to see if background objects "stick out" of foreground objects - for example, a telephone pole directly behind a person. In 2D, unless one of these is heavily out of focus, it can look like the person has a pole sticking out of their head. Generally, not a good idea to have stuff like this, and it's usually pretty involved to fix it once you've taken the photo.
- When taking pictures of people, focus on their eyes.
- Balance the tones in your picture. Unless you're specifically going for an off-balance photo, don't have one side all lit up and the other side dim and dull. The same goes for objects in a scene (size and sometimes shape) as well as colors.
Lastly; don't be afraid to break the rules of photography sometimes! Nothing is ever set in stone with art; and while I'm not telling you you should go crazy with it, you don't have to be a stickler either.
Keep up the good work, I hope to see more photos by you in the future!
