a North Dakotan girl through and through, wife, mother and die hard Catholic.

Whether you’re a starting out as an aspiring professional photographer or simply looking to take nicer photographs for personal use here are a few tips to get more professional and nice looking images!

STRAIGHTEN YOUR HORIZON LINES

I don’t know how many times I’d shake old Sarah when I was in High school or just starting out in photography and I didn’t correct my horizon lines for a photograph. It instantly improves your images with a few short clicks and just make it looks seamless better visually.

TURN DOWN YOUR SATURATION

overly orange skin tones and abnormally bright green grass, nuff said.

UTLIZE YOUR HSL SLIDERS

HSL stands for – hue, saturation and luminance. These will be your best friends with manipulating skin tones, elements like the colors of greenery, the ocean, you name it! It give you the overall tones you’re wanting to achieve with you photographs and help with the previous tip and you can use both in lighroom desktop and mobile!

BE MINDFUL OF LIGHTING

Lighting is one of the biggest elements with photographs! There is definitely a time and place to “break the rules” of photography to play around with lighting but this with dictate your setting of exposure, ISO, aperture which can change your image drastically.

UTLIZE DIFFERENT FRAMING TECHNIQUES

Use your location/landscape to create a more visually interesting image from a group of trees framing your image, maybe a cool downtown urban staircase, etc. The options are endless!

SHOOT IN RAW

For my lovely DSLR camera users shooting in RAW is the best for the quality of photographs you take. It essentially pulls even more information making a larger file size (taking up more space than a jpeg image) with each image you take allowing you to manipulate easier while editing making your life while using lightroom easier in the long run. Shooting in RAW is the best for the overall quality of your photographs but don’t get me wrong it will not save you from a poorly taken images so learning the in’s and out’s of your settings in ISO, aperture and shutter speed are crucial.

Let me know which tip is your favorite tip below in the comments below!