The easiest way to improve your photos is to keep everything still.
The best way to do this is to use a sturdy spot for your tree(or subject) to sit, and to keep your camera steady by using a tripod.
Once you have your camera on a tripod (or very sturdy surface) and at a reasonable distance from the subject, and under well lit enough conditions, to allow the camera's auto-focus meter to work properly,(if it's too far away use some photo editing software to crop the image down to just your subject) then use the self timer if your camera has one,...this way your not touching the camera when the shutter is tripped and the picture is actually taken.

If you can, try to shoot under fairly bright conditions, with a neutral to dark background (unless the subject is dark) so that you will not have to use the on camera flash (they make everything ugly, you could shoot a DaVinci with on-board flash and it would be ugly). Soft light that doesn't cause harsh shadows is best, so shooting on overcast days is ideal. People mention using bounce cards to lessen the shadows, and lighting set-ups etc. I find that if you keep it simple but get good clean shots, you have something that you can work with.

If you don't have Photoshop and can't afford it (who can?) you always download the Gimp for free, and it'll do everything that PS will do, just takes a few hours to learn how, there are plenty of free tutorials on the web. With this type of software one can easily "fix" most any good clean (sharp) picture up into an image worthy of being called photograph instead of a "pic".

Just think of it this way,...you should at least a small amount of time into photographing your trees since you've put all that time into making them look good.

In the pictures below I have saved the first one just as I shot it. The second picture shows about ten minutes of time spent in photo editing software, I intentionally used a mediocre tree here (so it IS one of my own :-D) so that you can see how much the photo effects the overall image. There has been no virtual work done to this photo, it's just about "fancy-ing" up.

The tree is a ligustrum mother and son (I know it's supposed to be daughter but we don't have a daughter we have a son) it started training this spring.

Attached Images

	ligMotherSon.jpg (70.3 KB, 46 views)
	LigMotherSon2.jpg (62.9 KB, 58 views)

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