4. Be flexible.
Many different shots can be taken at any location. Look for the close up in a city or country scene. If the sky is overcast try for that stream or woodland picture. If it is raining look out for reflections or misty mood shots. Remember a clear sunlit sky may produce harsh shadow, which makes for strong patterns and that the even lighting from a cloudy sky helps flower images or portraits.
Get up early and stay out late to get the most interesting landscape shots at dawn or dusk.
5. Check sharpness; buy and use a tripod
Avoid camera shake. If you have a standard lens, 50mm say, don't use less than 1/50th of a second hand held. If you are using a 200mm zoom don't use any thing less than 1/200th handheld. Always check for sharpness by zooming in on your screen. Zoom in to the maximum and check for sharpness along edges or details. (The latest cameras use various technical tricks to stabilize the image... but they aren't foolproof and tend to operate well only in a restricted number of situations). If there is softness or blurring take the shot again. If in doubt use the tripod.
Using a tripod forces you to think about composition and take the time to carefully select the important elements of the shot. Failing that lean against a wall, a person, or use a cushion, especially a bean bag, or table top.
6. Storage Do make sure you have a backup copy of all your important pictures. If you are going to store them on disk buy a separate hard disk... say 80GB, or more if you can, and save them as tif files. Otherwise save them as high quality .jpg and store them on CDs or DVDs if you have the latest technology. CD is the most cost effective method, but it isn't totally safe. It's always better to have a choice and a second backup if you can afford it. In terms of disk space a tif file can take three times or more space than a .jpg. Be careful using .jpg files. You can select various rates of compression and in addition, because of the way a .jpg file compresses the information, you can have quality losses as the number of saves increases. Do save a tif copy of your best image files file and store them securely before you use any photo editing software. You can also store images on the web if you have access to fast Broadband. Investigate Flickr and Picasa, but remember that they may restrict image size (and thus quality).
