Start taking pictures that are just as cute as they are! Part of the popular BetterPhoto series, this book shows photographers how to get great shots of children of all ages, under any conditions, and with any subject. Learn how to use light, composition, and exposure to help improve photographs, how to capture a moving target and how to develop rapport with even the shyest or most rambunctious child.

Learn how light can breathe new life into your photos Do you take too many snapshots and not enough “wow” shots? If so, you may be spending more time thinking about your subjects than thinking about the light. In The BetterPhoto Guide to Light, veteran photography instructors Jim Miotke and Kerry Drager help amateur shooters of all levels master this basic ingredient of compelling photography. You’ll learn how to identify the best light, fix common lighting problems, and, most important, take stunning photos with whatever light you have. Full of image examples, hands-on assignments, and proven techniques, this book will show you how to expand your vision and take your photography to the next level.

Master composition and design to take your photos from okay to wow You already own the most important photography tool—your creative eye. With this book, you’ll learn how classic design and composition principles can be applied to a wide range of photographic situations to create images with impact. Jim Miotke and Kerry Drager, both veteran photographers and experienced instructors, share time-tested design guidelines, composition techniques, even tips on when to break the rules, that will transform the way you make photographs.

Whether you have a simple point & shoot or a DSLR camera, learning the basics of digital photography can be confusing. With The BetterPhoto Guide to Digital Photography, those mysterious icons, strange jargon, and dizzying array of imaging software and hardware quickly become tools to create great pictures. Illustrated with full-color photos for guidance, this easy, practical, lesson-based workbook gives you a step-by-step tutorial in getting bright, crisp, beautiful pictures from your digital camera every time. "Assignments" at the end of each chapter give you the opportunity to go out and test your new skills in real life. Learn about exposure, file formats and quality settings, low-light photography, digital filters and white balance, composition and lens choice, manipulating images, printing, and much more, all in a handy, bring-along format. Everyone who wants to create great photos needs The BetterPhoto Guide to Digital Photography!

Absolutely anyone can take better photos! If you can press a button, you can take great pictures. It’s as simple as that. In BetterPhoto Basics, Jim Miotke, founder of the popular online photography school BetterPhoto.com, shares tips and tricks to improve your photos right away, no matter what camera you’re using. Too busy to read a book? No problem—flip to any page for an instant tip to use right away! Learn to compose knockout shots, make the most of indoor and outdoor light, and photograph twenty popular subjects, from sunsets and flowers to a family portrait. Those who want to go further get tips on controlling exposure and the secrets behind ten advanced creative techniques. And everyone will appreciate Jim’s breakdown of easy fixes to make in Photoshop. No matter what your level of experience, you’ll be amazed how easy it is to start taking photos like the pros.

The author does a brilliant job demonstrating the proper way to take a photograph. She shows through example after example using over 100 color photographs better approaches to lighting, the importance of colors and tones, the execution of perspective, balance, centering, and most importantly focusing tactics. With the summer traveling season soon upon us, A Guide to Better Photography offers the novice photographer sound advice on all the techniques used by the professional photographer for taking exceptional photographs. This book is recommended to people of all ages who have struggled with the art of photography, or just taking a picture, but can't seem to make it work. This guide offers quick and easy solutions to taking better photographs.

Suddenly, anyone with a cell phone is a photographer. This book takes the basics of digital photography and makes them the tools for creative, interesting, and artistic picture-taking. Illuminating the most popular of 4-H projects, Daniel Johnson instructs beginners in the basics of composition, lighting, and the use of flashes--among other fundamentals of capturing a picture that’s more than just “flash.” With step-by-step, illustrated directions, along with spectacular examples, this book is the perfect starting point for 4-H’rs taking up digital photography--and for anyone who wants to learn how to take superior digital pictures.

Learn creative shooting techniques that will make you a better photographer! Wignall answers basic questions about landscapes and portraits as well as intricate ones about exposure, lighting, composition, and more.--

Exposure. It’s essential to producing high-quality photographs, but mastering exposure is difficult. At last there’s a BetterPhoto guide to exposure, packed with BetterPhoto’s signature assignments, diagrams, tips, and illustrations. It’s like a full-scale photography course between the covers of the book–all taught the BetterPhoto way, just like photographers learn at the top photography-instruction site on the web. There’s plenty of information here on both digital and film photography, discussing how different file formats affect exposure, how to adjust digital files, color correction, combining digital exposures, and much more. The author’s stunning full-color photographs make this hardworking guide as inspiring as it is instructive.

Photography has been the business and the passion of LIFE since the original weekly magazine's inception in 1936, and it continues to be the business and passion of LIFE Books and LIFE.com in the new millennium. But photography has surely changed during these many decades. The rigs and gear of old have given way-first slowly, then all at once-to sleek miracle machines that process pixels and have made the darkroom obsolete. The casual photog puts eye to lens, sets everything on auto and captures a photograph that is . . . perfectly fine. One of LIFE's master shooters-in fact, the final in the long line of distinguished LIFE staff photographers-was Joe McNally, and he has always believed that with a little preparation and care, with a dash of enthusiasm and daring added to the equation, anyone can make a better photo-anyone can turn a "keeper" into a treasure. This was true in days of yore, and it's true in the digital age. Your marvelous new camera, fresh from its box, can indeed perform splendid feats. Joe explains in this book how to take best advantage of what it was designed to do, and also when it is wise to outthink your camera or push your camera-to go for the gold, to create that indelible family memory that you will have blown up as large as the technology will allow, and that will hang on the wall forevermore. As the storied LIFE photographer and photo editor John Loengard points out in his eloquent foreword to this volume, there are cameras and there are cameras, and they've always been able to do tricks. And then there is photography. Other guides may give you the one, two, three of producing a reasonably well exposed shot, but Joe McNally and the editors of LIFE can give you that, and then can show you how to make a picture. In a detailed, friendly, conversational, anecdotal, sometimes rollicking way, that's what they do in these pages. Prepare to click.