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Improving your holiday photos #1

It’s that time of year again. The sun is out (mostly) and the UK is holidaying. Wherever you choose to go this year there will always be the holiday snaps. Perhaps that’s all you want, a record of where you’ve been, and who you’ve been with, but with the ultimate destination for our holiday photos being social media, we all need to try and make the most of our images.

The single simple improvement to your image, whether it’s a smart phone or a camera, is composition. It’s the easiest thing in the world to point your camera at your loved one and end of with a person front and centre of the shot. It’s also the most boring image.

Here’s one simple tip to help you take a more interesting shot. When photographing a person, put them to one side of the centre, but looking towards the centre of the image. A good rule is to put the person (or other subject) about a third of the way in from one side, and one third of the way up from the bottom of the frame. The eye naturally follows where someone is looking, so if they are looking out of the frame, your eye will follow. So, place them looking in to the empty space in the image and you naturally follow that.

Take a look at the image above and see how it follows this principle.

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Southport

Ramada Sunset

Evening LightDriving home along the coast road a little bit earlier than usual, just as dusk was settling I stopped off in the car park on the coast side of the Marine Lake. The sun was setting behind the Marine Way Bridge providing a warm tone to the bridge and the Ramada hotel. The other end of the lake was a colder bluer tone. I love the split of colour in this shot. There was no heroic sunset, just the gentle softening and warming of the light as the sun dropped below the horizon.