USEFUL TIPS
BASIS FOR A BEAUTIFUL PHOTO BOOK
I can make such a beautiful photo book for you, if the quality of your photos leaves much to be desired, the end result will always be disappointing. In this article you will read about some helpful tips and common mistakes, so at least you don’t make them!
SETTINGS
SET YOUR CAMERA TO THE CORRECT TIME
On vacation, you obviously take your camera with you to take great pictures. Still, we often reach for our phone to take a quick picture, or we are on vacation with others who also have a camera.
When you get home, you put all the pictures you took on your computer only to find that all the pictures are mixed up. Both sorting by name and date does not make the photos appear in chronological order. After all, you didn’t think about setting your photo camera to the right time before you went on vacation. Thus, selecting the photos does become a difficult job, since you do not have the photos of the same subject all together. Besides, it becomes very difficult for me to put all the pictures in a chronological order in the book.
Therefore, before you travel, make sure to set your camera’s (system) time to the correct time and possibly time zone of your destination. With your phone, this usually goes well because it automatically picks up the local time of the network.
Should you find after your trip that you forgot to set your camera to the correct time, there is an option to adjust the date to the correct time in a few steps.
Learn how to do that, click here.
WHO DOESN’T TAKE A SELFIE?
PROPER SETTINGS FOR A SELFIE
In addition to the camera settings on your phone, make sure your front camera settings are set to maximum size and quality.
Often I see cute selfies coming by. Taken at a beautiful moment or at a special place and are worth a nice spot in the photo book. Unfortunately, I frequently encounter that the quality of these selfies leaves much to be desired.
Therefore, make sure your front camera settings are right. Set them to maximum size so that these photos can also be included in the photo book at a large size or sometimes even at full-page.
Setting your front camera varies from phone to phone, but in most cases you go to your camera and from there you can click on the cog (settings). If all goes well, you will see something along the lines of “front camera” or “front photo size”. If not, of course, you can google your phone model and find the right settings. Make sure you set it to the largest size possible.
Below on the left is a sample of a good selfie that can be placed full-page in the photo book. Right view of a full-page selfie with poor quality.
Selfie good quality
Selfie poor quality
CONTINUOUS SHOOTING MODE
MAKE USE OF THE BURST MODE
On most cameras, you will find the burst mode/continu mode by the symbol below.
Sometimes you have enough time to extensively compose or take your position, but in some cases you don’t. For example, when photographing moving people, children playing or animals.
Then when you have your camera set to “burst mode” or “continuous shooting,” all you have to do is hold down the shutter button and your camera will keep taking pictures. Afterwards, you can then easily select the best and most beautiful photo(s). For example, the photo of that moment when your running dog is off the ground with all its paws, or just that moment when that lion turns its head and looks briefly into your lens, or that one photo of your child or travel companion where he/she does not have his/her eyes closed.
You can, of course, just take a single photo in ‘burst mode’. All you have to do then is not hold down the shutter button. You just have to have done it a few times to get a feel for how long you need to hold down the shutter button for a single photo shot, but it’s child’s play!
Afterwards, choose the best photo from the series of photos you took in burst mode
Above you can see some photos taken in burst mode. After you take the photos, you can look back later at your leisure and select the best photo(s).
See the bottom left photo where one of the zebras just turns its head toward the camera? This photo is not so much the result of luck or proper timing, but of the fact that the camera kept taking pictures continuously, capturing every movement.
In this article you will find some helpful tips for selecting photos.
VERIFY SETTINGS
DATE STAMP PRINTED IN YOUR PICTURE
In many cases, it is actually a distracting factor and actually ruins your photo.
While taking the photo, you don’t see it, but afterwards you then see, for example, that in that one nice group photo, the time stamp was just printed on the head of one of your travel companions. Or printed on another important subject in your photo. In addition, it is also very distracting from the beautiful moment or landscape you want to depict in the very photo.
In the lower right corner, the date stamp is printed in the photo
The stamp can no longer be removed
ADDITIONAL TIP
TAKE PANORAMIC PHOTOS
A photo book is always beautiful if there is 1 line throughout the photo book in terms of design style but a lot of variety in terms of layout. A nice change from the many ‘standard’ photos is a panoramic photo. A panoramic photo is often taken of an impressive landscape or to give a good view of an environment.
But how do you take a panoramic photo?
1. With your digital camera you can take multiple photos that overlap, you can merge them into one image afterwards with editing software. For most people, however, this is too complicated or too much work, which is why there is another option.
2. These days, most phones also offer the ability to take a panoramic photo directly from your phone’s camera. In panorama mode, the camera takes pictures continuously and automatically pastes them all together. Since your camera does all the hard work for you, anyone should be able to take a panoramic photo (if you have a phone with a camera with panorama mode).
Taking a panoramic photo with your phone is very simple. Read more about how to take panoramic photos, as well as some helpful tips for even more beautiful panoramic photos!
