As you move around, watch what becomes the foreground vs. background and what ends up being captured in your picture. This is how you tell a story with your picture. Decide what is going to be in your picture and what you are going to leave out. Decide whether you want to include your background as a pretty backdrop, to help establish the environment for your subject, or if you are going to eliminate it because it is too distracting.
Fill the frame with your subject
Of course, you've read "Think before you shoot", so you've already decided what your subject is <grin>, so now move around in order to fill the frame with your subject for maximum impact. Decide what to include and what to exclude. Focusing in on what captured your attention and excluding elements that distract away from this idea will help to make your picture more impactful.
Check the background
When taking your picture, you may want to include the background as a nice backdrop or to explain where you are, or you may want to try to eliminate the background if its too distracting. If there is something distracting in the background, such as a tree or post sticking out of someone's head, a bunch of people you don't really need in the shot, move around to get rid of them. It can be as simple as moving one or two steps to one side, or holding your camera higher (or lower) in order to use the ground (or sky) as the background, rather than what you currently see. In this shot, I really didn't want to see all the parked cars around us. I just wanted to capture my two daughters all snuggled up ready for their trek through the zoo. So I shot from above and tried to fill the frame with them as much as possible.
Shoot from down low
Shooting from a low angle makes whatever you shoot seem bigger. You can use this to emphasis the size of a building or tower, or even just to isolate a building from surrounding buildings by shooting it against a nice blue sky. When shooting kids from down low it makes them seem larger than their surroundings, making it obvious that this is a picture of the child in their environment -- not a landscape that happens to have a kid in it.
Shoot from above
Of course, don't forget to shoot from above. Kids seem smaller and more cute (as if they need to be any more cute than they already are). Put to extremes it offers a fresh look (or perspective) on things.
Look for that "unique" angle
Getting that unique perspective on a subject will make for a picture that can really stand out.
Shoot from different angles!
Even after you've taken a few pictures, don't stop. Get up, move around and see if there is an even better angle to take the picture from. That's one of the great things about shooting digital is that you can take lots of shots and just delete the ones that don't turn out. And reviewing the pictures as you go will give you additional ideas of how to shoot the scene.
Take care and happy shooting!
Glen -- DigicamJunkie.com
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