Colours
One can create amazing patterns with colours. There are several ways of handling them. One is to take a photo with a very limited set of colours, like just two or three very similar ones. Another is to find things that have the wrong colour, or unusual colours.
This photo has some kind of story to tell, a strict story of violet and green.
This photo, which has a very similar composition to the previous one, looks chaotic and less interesting, as all the colours of the rainbow appear randomly in different flowers across the frame.
Cutting Objects
It is very difficult to find a normal scene around us that consists of perfect rectangles that match the frame of a photo. When you take a photo, you will almost inevitably cut something off, it may be the roof of a house or one half of a parked car.
The important thing is to be aware of what you cut off. A picture of a runner, where you see everything except the one foot that touches the ground, will look incomplete. A picture of a runner where one only sees the head and torso, however, may be perfectly acceptable. Look at the frame you are taking. Follow the edge. Are there things you think shouldn’t be cut? Would other people find it strange that one sees only one leg in the lower left corner, or could that even be considered a fun effect? Think. Evaluate. Judge. Decide.
The picture here is framed so the entire statue is visible except the back of the head. There is no obvious reason for this, and the framing seems sloppy.
Objects may be cut in the middle of a photo as well. There may be a door opening, where one just sees an elbow that looks silly and disturbing. On the other hand, a head and a shoulder that leans out from that same door opening may look perfectly normal.
Not only objects may be cut. It is also possible that implied or real lines are cut. Imagine a photo of a church or a big building with plenty of tourists in the foreground. Their presence will break the clean lines of the building.
Sometimes it may be good to add some life to the building in the form of humans, but often you just want to get rid of distracting people.
Outside a busy building it will be almost impossible to wait for a moment without any people at all. One trick here is to use post-processing. Take a number of photos. Layer them in an application that handles layers. Then remove the surfaces with people on each layer. If you have taken the photos with care, you will now have a composite photo without a single person. This can even be the Louvre in the middle of a day in the middle of the tourist season. But then you have to take really many photos.
Panoramas
A panorama is typically a very wide picture that goes almost 180˚ around you or even more. A panorama is often not suited to post on a web page, as it can appear as a thin horizontal line without much detail. Some panorama pictures could be replaced with one normal photo that is cropped from the top and the bottom.
However, panoramas still have a place.
A panorama shows a much wider field than a normal photo. If one wants to show opposite sides of a landscape, for example, a panorama shot may make sense.
A panorama usually shows more detail than a normal photo. Even if you want a normal size photo of a mountain view for a web page, you can take a panorama and then scan it carefully at home and crop to the particular part of the scene you want to keep.
In this panorama, the buildings to the left are opposite the palm leaves to the right. By using a panorama, the photographer can show the entire port from one end to the other and even a large part of the ocean.
If you have access to good printers, it may of course also be nice to actually print out a wide panorama to put on a wall.
When taking a panorama, unless you have very steady hands, it may be good to make sure you have time to make several attempts. The camera needs to be kept in a very stable position as you rotate it around you, and you may inadvertently move it too much. To keep it steady, it may be good to keep your arm fixed compared to your body, and slowly turn your body around. If you find a way to use support from objects around you, like a table, that can also be useful. (Some cameras may be able to handle shaky hands and panoramas better than others. If you become an enthusiast for panoramas, it may be worthwhile to search the internet to find the best panorama camera of the day.)
The exposure of a panorama depends very much on where you begin. Try taking a panorama photo of a sunset. First point to some spot opposite the sun, where it is already dark. Take the first panorama. Then point the camera directly at the sun (but avoid looking at the sun directly, if it is still bright). Take the second panorama. The first panorama is likely to be heavily overexposed around the sun. The second panorama is likely to be very dark except around the sun. Experiment with your conditions and your camera, where you can take the most pleasing panorama.
Some cameras may also fail with foc