What is the first thing that comes to your mind, just before you take a picture

The first thing that comes to my mind, just before I take a picture is i want the quality to be perfect and looks clear and beautiful, and specially not blury, sometimes i like to take picture of black and whites with great quality, and Under pretty much every Eye Candy post here on Rookie you will find at least one commenter asking, “How did you take that picture? ho can i have that skills?” Now, it’s true that all of our photographers have mountains of skillllllz—and were probably born with a gift for expressing themselves visually—but they too had to learn the basics before they could take great pictures.

Another question we get on a lot of our photography posts is “What camera did you use?” Unless you’re doing 3D photos like these, getting a specific make or model of camera isn’t as important as you might think. Neither is having a really expensive camera—a fancy machine isn’t better at teaching you how to be a good photographer, and you’d be surprised to learn how many professionals use cheap ones.

For example: Petra uses a Canon AE-1 or something, which you can find for under $100 on eBay, Craigslist, or a used-camera store, on all her shoots, and gets the film developed at the drugstore.Eleanor often uses a disposable camera, a cheap old film camera called the Yashica T3 thing, or a35-millimeter analog SLR that can be had for about $25 on eBay. A ton of Tara’s work is done with cheap cameras: these two were taken with the webcam on her HP laptop; this one was taken with a disposable camera; this with a waterproof disposable. Also, she says, “all my photography pre-October 2009 was shot with a cheap point-and-shoot.” Lauren Poor used a disposable camera for this shoot; for this one she used “the cheapest digital point-and-shoot [she] could find,” took videos of her friends, then took screenshots of those videos. “The tools you use are important when they’re used thoughtfully and for specific purposes,” Lauren says, “rather than mindlessly selecting the most expensive camera.”

Whatever camera you’re using, take some time to get to know it. Become friends with it. Just like friends, every camera is different, and each one has its own habits and quirks. Learn what all the parts of your camera can do.

But some of the most basic things you can do to take better photos apply to all cameras, always. Here are a few of those, to get you started.