five best phoshooting tips

1) Select Only Your Best Photos

Select only the best of your pictures to show to others and leave the rest in the drawer. Showing someone every picture you have taken dilutes the effect of the best pictures and gets very boring. You may want to show twenty pictures of little Johnny at the park because they are all quite good and you can't decide which are the best but, trust me, you will be better off making that decision and showing only the few good ones.

2) Turn the Camera on it's Side

At first it feels awkward holding the camera on it's side, but it is worth making the effort to get used to it. If the shape of your subject, a person or a building, fits into an upright rectangle, you waste so much picture space if you shoot in landscape. You paid for all those millions of pixels, don't waste them. 

3) Get the Framing right in the Camera

One of the easiest ways to improve your photography is with careful attention to framing. Look into the corners of the viewfinder to see what is there. Do you need all that background? Can you get closer to your subject or zoom in?

4) Direction of Lighting

Photography is all about light, the direction of the light falling on your subject is most important, you must look at your subject carefully and see how the shadows fall.
If you are able to choose the time of day to shoot your pictures, try to pick a time when the sun is low in the sky, either shoot in the early morning or late afternoon. Shooting pictures of people with the sun too high in the sky, tends to cause the subject's eyes to be in shadow and/or your subject will be squinting in the strong light, both of which tend to look horrible. A nice side effect of shooting in the early morning or late afternoon is that the color of the light is 'warmer', reds and yellows are stronger which generally gives a more pleasing effect.
If you are photographing in sunlight, try to position yourself so that the sun hits your subject from the side, this will give you nice 'modeling' and help create a 3D effect in the picture.
Sunlight behind the subject can give a very pleasing 'backlight' effect but be careful that you are not getting 'flare' in the lens, which degrades the contrast of the image. 

5) Direction of Lighting

The very worst kind of lighting is provided by the little flash fitted into all modern cameras and phones. Not only does it give your subjects the dreaded red eyes, but also flattens all faces into shadowless featureless blobs. Use the in camera flashlight only in an emergency, when there is no other choice.