10 Easy Tips to Make Your Pics Pop
By Adam Swenson
Mission trips are full of amazing sights and sounds, things you will want to remember later and share with your friends and family. Taking good pictures can be a reminder to pray for people and can be a great tool for recruiting people for future mission trips. If you want to improve your photography on your next mission trip to Belize, follow these 10 tips!
- Eye Level
Think of taking someone’s picture as a conversation. Would you ever talk right over the top of someone’s head? No, you get down on eye level. Adjust the height of your camera to get down on the level of the picture you’re taking.
(Note: Same thing goes for sharks.)
- Backgrounds Matter
If you want to draw the eye to the person/animal/flower in the shot try not to have a lot of gaudy stuff going on behind. If you can’t change where your subject is sometimes a closer zoom or you moving a few feet to one side or another will change the background enough to make a big difference.
This background is excellent. It conveys a great sense of place but doesn’t detract from the children in the foreground. (Note how this photo also follows the rule of thirds in tip #4.)
- Where’s the Sun?
If the sun is directly behind the subject in your picture, your subject will be “backlit” meaning there will be little definition.
You can: a) use this for artistic effect by silhouetting the subject, b) turn on a flash that will fill in the subject, or c) move to the other side so the sun is not directly behind.
- Follow the Rule of Thirds
When you are looking through your camera (or, let’s face it, phone) imagine the shot divided up into 9 squares as you can see with these guidelines. Place one of these red plus signs on the focal point of the shot. It’s much more interesting and pleasing to the eye to see a photo that is perceived as balanced, rather than with the subject just plopped in the middle.
In the following picture notice how the subject is framed in the middle left. The photo is much more interesting than if he were plunked right in the middle and tightly cropped.
- Put on your Bossy Pants
Bossiness—there’s a time and a place. If you are tasked with documenting the trip and you want to get more slice of life/as-it-happens shots, that’s great. Get pictures of people going about their daily activities. But (as I’ve had to learn) viewers like to see faces—especially if you’re showing these to the families of people who went on the trip. So get a few pictures where you take the time to line everybody up. And if someone’s not in the frame, move them!
- Golden Hour
The hour of sunrise (5:30 – 6:30 typically) and the hour before and just after sunset (again, around 5:30 – 6:45, give or take) have some of the softest, warmest, most beautiful light you’ll see anywhere. If you have something you really want to get a great picture of, make a mental note and go there during the golden hour if that’s feasible. You might be rewarded with something like this.
- Animals are cute
Dogs, cats, birds, monkeys, goats, pigs, cows, sharks, fish, crabs, rastafarians—there are so much great wildlife to get pictures of on your trip! It’s helpful to have a camera with a long zoom to get a tight shot without having to get too close. These guys haven’t had their shots.
- What do I Need?
If your church plans to go back next year, think ahead about what pictures you might be able to use to promote next year’s trip. If you hadn’t gone on this trip, what pictures would have helped you know what it was like? Look for pictures that will tell a story of the complex mashup of beauty, need, honesty, and resilience that is life in Belize.
- Going Under
If you brought a GoPro camera take it swimming and snorkeling—you’ll get some amazing shots! Half in, half out of the water shots are a cool look. Just be sure to use an attachment that floats or something you can strap around your wrist. It’s easy to drop a camera in the water. And once you’re out of the water, wipe off the lens or you’ll have a big bubble on your next images.
- Look for the Unique
Belize is full of great signs and other things that really convey a sense of place. This is one of my all-time favorites! Keep a sharp eye, as there’s great photography to be had just about everywhere you go.
Adam Swenson is a missions consultant at Thirst Missions, as well as an ardent amateur photographer and musician. Most photos by Ludimir Nah and Adam Swenson.
