Photography is one of the most rewarding hobbies around, particularly because you can always look back at the photos you snap with fond memories or with the perfect set of reference points from which to make improvements. So if you are indeed a little bit more serious about your photography craft, there are some top tips put together by camera retailer, Clifton Cameras which you can use to become a real ace at taking photos.

Get a Camera Upgrade

This perhaps goes without saying, but should be mentioned nevertheless because as much as you can take some really good pictures with a smartphone, there are some serious reasons why real and serious photographers invest in upgrades such as a DSLR or mirrorless system with many more advantages. You may have an impressively touted 18-megapixel smartphone camera which allows you to snap bigger pics, but as far as the overall quality of your images (sharpness, clarity and crispness), the bigger sensor contained in dedicated DSLR or mirrorless cameras always wins.

The true beauty of using a dedicated camera though is that it has more advanced features which a true or growing photographer would simply love to manually play around with, making tweaks and adjustments to get some of those effects no smartphone could ever easily manage.

Master the Exposure Triangle

This trio of photographic elements (the way in which a photograph is taken) is what makes up what is known as the exposure triangle, and they're best adjusted through a dedicated camera that allows for manual adjustability (mirrorless or DSLR over a smartphone camera). These include the lens aperture, shutter speed and ISO. It's no help really getting technical about each of these elements, but all you need to know is that playing around with them, tweaking and adjusting is where the fun in photography lies and it should be left up to you as the photographer to find specific things out yourself like the fact that ISO makes an image brighter but that brightness comes with a level of noise added to it.

Learn to Work with Low Light

Again, it's a matter of playing around with the adjustments, but with the view of learning about what you're doing along the way. If you can master the art of working with low light to take pictures which come out to your satisfaction, you will eventually be able to come up with some magical shots in environments with any levels of light.

Hone Your Photography Skills Everyday

Never miss an opportunity to take a good photograph or to just test all the settings of your camera out. Practice does indeed make perfect, so practice your photography craft as often as you can. You should also learn to edit the photos you take. Be it manually or by using tools like those from Topaz Labs, photo editing/sharpening skills also determine your worth as a photographer.

Zoom "Physically"

Yes, again the DSLR and mirrorless cameras trump the much-loved smarthpone camera by way of offering optical zoom instead of just digital zoom, but the best picture quality you can ever get is that which is in proper focus with the camera settings in default mode. So this means that as far as is possible, you need to physically move forwards or backwards in order to "zoom" into and out of your subjects of focus.