The most common mistake people make when taking pictures is not filling the frame with the subject. If it's a photo of granny waving from the doorstep, let's just see granny and the door, not half the houses in the street with a small granny shaped blob in the middle. I think the culprit for this phenomenon is the focusing aid in the centre of the viewfinder. Most cameras have some sort of circle or rectangle etched onto the glass and we are inclined to think, in our less thoughtful moments, that this is the whole picture area. Take a moment to glance around the viewfinder to see what you have got at the edges and especially in the corners. Watch out for clutter in the background, that lamppost growing out of granny's head. Make sure that everything in the viewfinder is there because you want it to be.

Landscape or Portrait?

A lot of people never, ever turn their camera on it's side and shoot an upright picture. Yes, it can be a little awkward to hold until you get used to it but, what a difference it can make to the picture. If you are taking a picture of one person then it is essential to shoot upright, you waste so much of the picture area at the sides if you don't.

Close cropping for maximum effect

The picture on the left is a typical snapshot, two miles of coastline with a pink blob in the middle. Turning the camera on its side and moving in a little closer, as in the picture on the right, gives us a much better picture of the girl and we can still see enough background to get the message that we are on the beach.

For the sake of good layout on the page, I have made these two pictures the same height. In fact they are the same size, if you can imagine them in their original dimensions the girl is ten times bigger in the photo on the right.