How To Take An Unforgettable Photograph

This is how you take an unforgettable Photo: 228 ideas, tips and secrets for taking instantly better photos.

WHAT TO GIVE | Are you casting around for an inexpensive gift for someone you don’t know all that well, or for someone you do know well but, for whatever reason, everything you can think of to give that person doesn’t feel like a fit?

You won’t go wrong by shooting them a copy of esteemed American photographer George Lange’s The Unforgettable Photograph, written with the assistance of journalist and onetime Vancouverite Scott Mowbray. Everyone is snap happy these days—it’s not for nothing that “selfie” was named Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year for 2013—and most of what is being shot would be instantly improved by adopting any of the 228 dead easy non-technical suggestions put forward in this meaty $6 picture book.

Here are three favourite takeaways from my now dog-eared copy.

1. Shoot the moment not the subject. This is pretty hard to do if you’re one of those people like I am who tend to line people up and than just shoot them. It takes practice to move away from ducks-in-a-row-style photography, but Lange provides plenty of examples of how to go about doing this.

2. Move into the action. A lot of people stand in one place and observe their subject in the distance. Keep moving —and move in close—until you find the place where , suddenly, you’re seeing things differently, says Lange. “Always be hunting for a new angle.”

3. Keep it real. “There’s nothing wrong with shooting smiles and holiday rituals, but life isn’t a marketing campaign,” says Lange. Shoot raw emotion and honest behavior: tears, tenderness, intimacy, humor. Lange offers tips for capturing these things authentically. — Ruth Rainey