2.  Don't Center the Subject!

If I had a dollar for every photo I've seen where the faces were centered in the scene I 
could buy a new DeVille.  If you take a shot of your dog lying on the sofa, what good is
the entire front  of the couch and half of your living room wall showing up above it?  
Answer: None! It's only natural for people to center the main part of the subject, like 
people's heads, in the viewfinder.  But all the extraneous junk above them contributes 
nothing to the photo.  So, before you shoot, tilt the camera so the faces of people are 
near the top of the scene, being careful not to overdo it and do the old head-chopping bit.  
Bummer when that happens!

If it's a critter shot, and it's reclined, place the head near one side of the photo, not in 
the center.  Also, shoot slightly from the front of the pet so the body goes off at a 
slight angle away from the camera. This puts the attention on the face, and who can 
resist a critter's face.

The left photo below features my 18 year old male cat Tan in a typical snapshot.  You 
know,,,, flash on the camera and just aim and shoot and hope ya got something.  Notice 
that he's centered in the photo and there's all this garbage around him. Who wants to 
see the whole lounger he's sitting in, or that dark end table with some CD's sitting on it? 
And it's a great shot of his back.  I wonder what he looks like from the front?

The right-hand photo shows him after I got down to his level and moved in.  You can 
focus on the face, but before shooting, swing the camera so the face is closer to the end 
of the frame.  Now, even though that shot was taken with the same camera, with flash 
right on the camera, it has turned out to be a shot of him and not half of the furnishings 
in my house.  Note also that, with his face closer to the camera than the rest of him, it 
appears brighter (because it's a little closer to the flash unit) and therefore draws your 
attention right to it.  Even though it was a total snapshot, it still isn't a bad shot of
Tan.

Another advantage to avoiding all the useless junk above the heads and faces is that it 
also makes the subject larger on the actual negative, and it will then appear much larger, 
and clearer, on the finished print.

Let's look at it another way.  You may have a neat shot of the family pet that you want 
enlarged to an 8 by 10.  If you shoot from too far away, the actual part of the 8x10 that
includes your dog may end up to be no larger than a 3 by 5.  So what's the point of 
enlarging the daylights out of negatives to get the subjects bigger when you could have 
shot the scenes that way in the first place?  The first shot of Tan would have to be 
enlarged to about 24 by 30 inches to get him to actually fill an 8 by 10 area.  Move in!  
The less a negative is enlarged, the sharper the print will be.

Two other points!  
If subjects are facing one direction or are moving, it's better to leave a little more space 
for them to look or move into.  For example, a side view of a car should have a little bit 
of space in front of it and less space behind it.  If a person is standing and facing off to 
one side a bit, a tad more room on that side, with a tad less "behind" the person, will, 
again, produce some area for moving in to.

The second point is to leave a little extra room at each end of the frame.  The 35mm or 
digital frame has a proportion that when the entire negative is enlarged you get a 4x6 
photo.  If you double this you get 8x12,,, NOT 8x10.  This means that if you have 8x10's 
made from favorite shots you will loose a little from the ends of the photos.  Leave a little 
extra room on the ends of the frame when taking photos to allow for this if you may get 
8x10's of that shot.