Although you probably glance at your camera’s LCD screen to see if you’ve correctly exposed an image, this isn’t a reliable way to assess exposure as images may appear brighter or darker on the screen than they really are. The best way to accurately check exposure at the time of shooting is to use your camera’s histogram, which is the little graph that shows up next to your images.

Learning to interpret the histogram will take some time and practice, but the brief explanation of it is that it gives you information about the tonal range present in your image. The left side of the graph represents the blacks or shadows and the right side represents the whites or highlights.

If the graph is skewed to the right, your image may be overexposed and you’ll have lost a lot of detail in the lighter areas of the photo. If it’s skewed to the left, it’s likely underexposed and will be too dark. For a more in-depth explanation of the histogram, check out Digital Camera World’s histogram cheat sheets.

The best way to get a bit more creative with your photography is to experiment with perspective. The exact same scene can often look very different when approached from a different angle, and capturing your subject from above or below may change the whole feel of a photograph.

Not every angle will work for every photograph, of course, but you’ll never know what works and what doesn’t if you don’t experiment. When shooting animals or children, you can try getting down to their level and viewing the world through their eyes. If you’re shooting a portrait, why not stand on a bench and shoot your subject from above?

The rule of thirds is based on the idea that pictures are generally more interesting and well balanced when they aren’t centred. Imagine a grid placed over your images with two vertical lines and two horizontal lines that divide the picture into nine equal sections.

If you were following the rule of thirds, rather than positioning your subject or the important elements of a scene at the centre of the photo, you’d place them along one of the four lines, or at the points where the lines intersect. Some cameras even have a grid option you can turn on, which can be useful if you’re still learning to compose your images.

Of course, photography is all about creativity and personal expression, so you may sometimes choose to break this rule and place the points of interest elsewhere in your photo. This is absolutely fine, but before you start breaking this rule, it’s important that you understand it and are in the habit of consciously thinking about the points of interest and where you want to place them. We also have a list of compositional techniques to improve your photography.

When shooting portraits, you’ll be focusing on a very small area so it will be more important than ever that you get a nice sharp image. The eyes in particular are an important facial feature, and they’re often the first thing people look at, especially when it comes to close-ups and headshots.

With this in mind, your subject’s eyes should be your main point of focus. To get both eyes nice and sharp, choose a single focus point and aim it at one of the eyes. Once the first eye is in focus, keep the shutter button pressed halfway down and move the camera slightly to recompose the photo and include the second eye.

Generally speaking, the background should be as simple and clutter free as possible so that it doesn’t pull the viewer’s attention away from the main subject of the photo. Muted colours and plain patterns tend to work well, because you don’t want viewers to end up being more interested in the colourful building or church tower in the background than your model.

Fixing a distracting background can be as simple as moving your subject or changing your angle, but if that doesn’t work, it may be possible to obscure it by using a wider aperture and getting in as close to your subject as possible. Whenever you can, though, try to keep the background neutral, especially if you’re placing your subject off to the side of the photograph and the background is very visible.