Are your vacation photos boring, with picture after picture of someone standing in front of a familiar attraction? Before you go this time why not learn some fundamental or advanced photography techniques and have a little fun. For example, doing something as simple as changing your camera angle can result in more-dynamic pictures. For the best results, use a camera with a large, bright LCD screen, which will make it easier to compose your shot.

Have you thought about what kind of camera to take along? Should it be a digital camera or on that uses film? That's a personal decision that I'm betting you've probably already answered. Once you have chosen your equipment, make a checklist of accessories you might need to pack in your bag. You will be rewarded later, I promise. I can't tell you how many times a checklist has saved me. When you're a thousand miles from home you want everything at your fingertips. No one wants to be thinking about where to buy some new batteries or an additional memory card right in the middle of their vacation? There is no worse feeling than running out of film or seeing that memory card full signal during a golden photo opportunity.

Vacation photography does not have to be full of frustrated co-vacationers or missed shots. Here are some great ideas to keep your vacation photography on the right track. Most important, you will want to take along a small pocket notebook to jot down what is happening each day. At times I have even taken along a small ipod or voice recordable device to capture details about each event of the day. One thing I learned when the kids were small was when I first arrived at an attraction or landmark I better immediately pick out a good spot, maybe the entrance, or something with a good background to take a photo of the kids now. Before and after pictures can be quite humorous. Our kids may be little darlings in their matching vacation outfits for the moment but after three hours of walking in the sun they will look more like messy little playground kids rather than our photogenic angels. Try to make photos that are interactive whenever safely possible take images that show your family interacting with your surroundings, or show there reactions to something they have just seen. This will bring life to otherwise standard snapshots.

As soon as you arrive home take out your daily notes and create a new, clean, journal of your daily events. It will help you create those important captions that help make your vacation photos a story worth telling to friends and relatives. Please don't count on remembering everything later, remember to jot down notes while you were on your trip. Don’t forget to put in your notes times when you were taking multiple shots of the same scene at different exposure settings. It is a good idea to choose the highest quality setting that employs a low-level JPEG compression. But don’t forget to take plenty of memory cards with you. You can always reduce the size later. I also recommend that ladies pack their ID and other essentials from their purses in their camera bags as well. Not having the extra strap of a purse on your shoulder is a real relief at the end of the day. Also, no one will be putting stuff they don’t want to carry in your purse!

.Finally, as soon as you get home take the time to upload or download your images or take them to be printed. Leaving your images on your memory card or as undeveloped film when you get home will not help you remember your trip at all. Whether you use digital or film cameras have your images saved onto CD for your computer. We will be talking about the many things you can do with them later in my next article. Also, if you shoot with a digital camera a lot, consider purchasing a portable hard drive to keep all those travel photos on, one specifically for digital photography. When you learn these few simple techniques I’m almost certain you'll want to take lots more photos now no matter where you go!

Coming up next...learn how to put some action and music into them with a photo slideshow!