When you get home from a trip, the only thing you have to remember the great time you had are the pictures that you took of your vacation. You want to be sure that your photos will bring back great memories every time you look at them. I'm going to show you how to take better vacation pictures with your digital camera.

The main thing you want to do is tell the story of your trip. Everything that you want to remember from the trip should be included. Even as your leaving home you could take a shot of the snow in the yard to contrast the beach in Florida. Anything to take you back to the trip and allow you to go through the entire story and experience the trip again.

Make sure you take the correct equipment. Don’t forget your camera. You also need extra batteries, and memory cards. You should always be able to have a charged set of batteries to put in the camera during the day. Don’t forget the battery charger. If you don’t take a laptop, you will want to have extra memory cards. I would recommend that you plan on enough space to take 100 to 300 pictures per day. Make sure you have an easy to carry case that will hold the camera, batteries, and memory cards. The best type of case is one that has a belt loop so you can carry it out of the way.

Before you leave, make sure you read the manual and play around with the camera, so you know how to use all the options on the camera. Learn how to use the shooting modes and metering. Also experiment with the flash. For people shots, try to take mostly candid shots. Get shots of the kids having fun or doing things that they will enjoy remembering. If you take posed shots in front of things, try to make them funny or somehow interesting. Zoom in close for facial reaction shots.

Look at what is behind them before you shoot, so you don’t get strange objects behind them that can ruin a great shot. Like a tree or light pole coming out of their head. For landscape shots, try to look for an interesting angle or frame the shot in some way. Sometimes you will be places that are breathtaking, and everywhere you look is a postcard picture. Those are the places that you really need to try to be creative. Get interesting foreground items, or frame the shot to look different.

Don’t shoot into the sun. This will ruin most pictures, the camera will not meter correctly because of the amount of light going into the lens. When you get home and you now have all the pictures. The best way to be able to show them is put them into a slide show, and add some music. You will have a nice relaxing way to show others, and you will enjoy watching them over and over through the years. The best program and the one that I use is Photodex Pro show.

The most important things to remember are. Have fun, tell a story, and shoot as many pictures that you can. You can always delete the bad ones, but you can’t ever capture that moment again.

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