Top 17 'Snapshot-to-Stunner' Photography Tips to use for beginners to add depth and drama to their photos - Goh Ling Yong
Ever looked at your phone’s camera roll and felt… underwhelmed? You were there, you saw the magnificent sunset, the breathtaking landscape, the candid joy on a friend's face. But the photo you took is a flat, lifeless version of that vibrant memory. It’s a common frustration, a feeling that your camera just isn’t capturing what your eyes can see.
The good news? The gap between a simple snapshot and a stunning photograph often has less to do with expensive gear and more to do with your eye. It’s about learning to see the world differently—to notice the light, the lines, the layers, and the story unfolding in front of you. It's about making intentional choices before you ever press the shutter button.
Here at the Goh Ling Yong blog, we believe that everyone has the potential to be a great photographer. It all starts with mastering a few fundamental principles that can instantly add depth, drama, and a professional touch to your images. Ready to transform your snapshots into stunners? Let's dive into 17 game-changing tips that will elevate your photography, starting today.
1. Embrace the Rule of Thirds
This is the first rule of composition every photographer learns, and for good reason. Imagine your frame is divided into nine equal squares by two horizontal and two vertical lines. The Rule of Thirds suggests placing the most important elements of your scene along these lines, or at the points where they intersect.
Why does this work so well? Placing your subject off-center creates a more balanced, dynamic, and visually interesting photograph. It gives the subject "breathing room" and encourages the viewer's eye to move around the frame, exploring the entire scene rather than just staring at the middle. A centered subject can often feel static and boring, like a passport photo.
Pro Tip: Almost every digital camera and smartphone has an option to display a grid overlay on the screen. Turn it on! It’s the easiest way to practice and internalize the Rule of Thirds until it becomes second nature.
2. Hunt for Leading Lines
Leading lines are one of the most powerful tools for creating a sense of depth and guiding the viewer's attention. These are natural lines within your photo—like a road, a fence, a river, or the edge of a building—that lead the eye from the foreground of the image toward your main subject.
By composing your shot to include these lines, you create a visual pathway that pulls the viewer into the photograph. It makes a two-dimensional image feel three-dimensional, adding a layer of immersion and making the scene feel more expansive. Without a clear subject for the lines to point to, the effect can be lost, so make sure they have a destination.
Pro Tip: Look for S-curves (a winding road or river) for a graceful, gentle journey through the frame, or converging lines (railway tracks disappearing in the distance) for a dramatic sense of scale and perspective.
3. Use Natural Frames (Framing within a Frame)
This technique involves using elements within the scene to create a natural frame around your subject. Think of shooting through a doorway, an archway, a window, or even between the branches of a tree. This adds an immediate sense of depth and context to your photograph.
This "frame within a frame" accomplishes two things beautifully. First, it isolates your subject, drawing the viewer's eye directly to what you want them to see and eliminating distractions. Second, it adds layers to your photo—a foreground (the frame), a middle ground (the subject), and often a background—which is a classic recipe for creating depth and a more compelling composition.
Pro Tip: The natural frame doesn't need to be in sharp focus. In fact, having a slightly blurry foreground frame can enhance the sense of depth and make your main subject pop even more.
4. Master the Magic of Golden Hour
If you only learn one thing about lighting, let it be this: the time of day you shoot is everything. Golden Hour refers to the period shortly after sunrise and before sunset when the sun is low in the sky, casting a soft, warm, golden light over everything.
This light is magical because it's diffused and directional, creating long, soft shadows that reveal texture and add a beautiful, dramatic quality to your images. The harsh, overhead light of midday, by contrast, creates unflattering shadows and washed-out colors. Shooting during Golden Hour will instantly make your landscapes more epic and your portraits more flattering.
Pro Tip: Use a mobile app like PhotoPills or The Photographer's Ephemeris to plan your shoots. They will tell you the exact times for sunrise, sunset, and Golden Hour in your location.
5. Find Drama in the Blue Hour
Don't pack up your camera as soon as the sun disappears! The period just after sunset (or just before sunrise) is known as the Blue Hour. During this time, the sky takes on a deep, saturated blue hue, and the ambient light is incredibly soft and even.
The Blue Hour is perfect for capturing moody cityscapes, as the cool blue of the sky contrasts beautifully with the warm, artificial lights of buildings and street lamps. It's also fantastic for serene, atmospheric landscapes. The low-light conditions mean you'll likely need a tripod to keep your camera steady for a longer exposure, but the dramatic, painterly results are well worth it.
6. Change Your Perspective
The vast majority of photos are taken from eye level. To instantly make your images more interesting and dynamic, simply change your perspective. Get low to the ground or find a higher vantage point.
Shooting from a low angle can make your subject seem more powerful and heroic, and it allows you to incorporate interesting foreground elements you might otherwise miss. Shooting from a high angle can provide a unique "bird's-eye view," revealing patterns, shapes, and a sense of scale that isn't visible from the ground. Moving your feet is the cheapest and most effective tool you have.
Pro Tip: Before you take a photo, walk around your subject. Crouch down. Stand on a bench (safely!). Look for an angle that tells a more compelling story than the one everyone else is seeing.
7. Look for Layers: Foreground, Middleground, Background
A key secret to adding depth is to think in layers. Consciously compose your shot to include a distinct foreground, middle ground, and background. This simple structure helps lead the eye through the scene and creates a powerful illusion of three-dimensionality.
The foreground element could be anything: a patch of flowers, an interesting rock, a puddle reflecting the sky. This element serves as an anchor, giving the viewer a starting point. Your main subject typically resides in the middle ground, and the background provides context and completes the scene. This is a technique Goh Ling Yong frequently uses to turn flat landscape scenes into immersive vistas.
Pro Tip: A wide-angle lens is excellent for exaggerating this effect, as it can make foreground elements appear larger and more prominent, pulling the viewer right into the scene.
8. Use Shadows to Sculpt and Define
Beginners often fear shadows, seeing them as dark, problematic areas in a photo. But professionals hunt for them. Shadows are not the enemy; they are your best friend for creating drama, mood, contrast, and depth.
Strong, directional light (like from the side during Golden Hour) creates long shadows that sculpt your subject, revealing its texture and form. In portraiture, this is called "Rembrandt lighting" and is prized for its dramatic effect. In street photography, the interplay of light and shadow can create mysterious, graphic compositions that are incredibly compelling. Don't be afraid of a little darkness.
Pro Tip: Try converting a photo with strong shadows to black and white. Removing the distraction of color often emphasizes the beautiful interplay of light, shadow, and form.
9. Fill the Frame
Sometimes, the most dramatic statement you can make is to get closer. Filling the frame with your subject, leaving little to no room around the edges, forces the viewer to focus on the details, textures, and emotions you want to convey.
This technique works wonders for portraits, where a tight crop can create an intense sense of intimacy and connection. It's also effective for abstract photography, where you can focus on the patterns of a leaf, the texture of peeling paint, or the intricate design of a flower. By eliminating distracting background elements, you make your subject the undeniable star of the show.
Pro Tip: Don't just zoom with your lens—"zoom with your feet." Physically moving closer to your subject will often produce a more intimate and less compressed-looking image than simply using a telephoto lens from afar.
10. Harness the Power of Negative Space
The opposite of filling the frame can be just as powerful. Negative space is the empty or uncluttered area around your main subject. Using it intentionally can create a sense of scale, simplicity, and elegance.
A single tree in a vast, empty field or a lone boat on a calm lake uses negative space to emphasize the subject's isolation and draw the viewer's eye directly to it. It gives your composition room to breathe and can evoke a feeling of peace, loneliness, or freedom. In a world full of visual noise, a simple, clean composition can be a dramatic breath of fresh air.
Pro Tip: Look for clean backgrounds like an open sky, a calm body of water, a plain wall, or a misty field to effectively utilize negative space.
11. Shoot Through Things
This is a creative trick that instantly adds a layer of depth and a voyeuristic feel to your photos. Instead of shooting your subject directly, try shooting through something in the foreground, like foliage, a glass, a fence, or a string of fairy lights.
This technique creates a soft, blurry foreground that frames your subject and adds a professional, dreamy quality to the image. It makes the viewer feel like they are peeking into a private moment, which adds a layer of narrative and intrigue. It’s a simple way to turn a standard portrait or scene into something more artistic and unique.
Pro Tip: Use a wide aperture (a low f-number like f/1.8 or f/2.8) to ensure the foreground element is nicely blurred and doesn't distract from your main subject, which should be in sharp focus.
12. Create Drama with Backlighting
Don't be afraid to shoot into the light! Placing your light source (like the sun) behind your subject is called backlighting, and it can create stunning, dramatic effects that you can't get any other way.
Backlighting can create a beautiful "rim light" or halo effect around the edges of your subject, separating them from the background and making them glow. This is especially beautiful for portraits, where it can light up hair with a golden radiance. Alternatively, you can expose for the bright background and turn your subject into a bold, graphic silhouette, which is perfect for telling a story with shape and form alone.
Pro Tip: When shooting backlit portraits, you may need to use a reflector or a touch of flash to bounce some light back onto your subject's face so they aren't completely in shadow (unless you're going for a full silhouette).
13. Pay Attention to the Background
A distracting background can ruin an otherwise perfect photo. A telephone pole that looks like it's growing out of someone's head or a bright red car in the corner of a serene nature scene can pull the viewer's attention away from what truly matters.
Before you press the shutter, take a moment to scan the entire frame, especially the edges. Are there any distracting elements? Can you change your position by a few steps to the left or right to get a cleaner background? Can you get lower to replace a busy background with the clean sky? A simple, uncluttered background will always make your subject stand out more.
Pro Tip: When you can't change your background, you can blur it! Use a wide aperture (a low f-number) to create a shallow depth of field. This will throw the background out of focus, making your subject pop.
14. Tell a Story
The most memorable photographs are the ones that tell a story. They evoke an emotion, ask a question, or capture a decisive moment. Instead of just documenting what something looks like, think about what you want to say with your image.
A great photo has a subject and a verb. What is your subject doing? Are they interacting with their environment? Is there a sense of motion or emotion? Look for moments of connection, quiet reflection, peak action, or subtle humor. Thinking like a storyteller will fundamentally change the way you approach photography.
Pro Tip: Try a "before, during, and after" approach. If you're photographing an event, don't just capture the main action. Capture the anticipation beforehand and the reaction afterward. This will give your collection of photos a powerful narrative arc.
15. Look for Symmetry and Patterns
The human brain is naturally drawn to symmetry and patterns. They create a sense of harmony, order, and visual satisfaction. Actively looking for these elements in your environment can lead to incredibly striking and dramatic compositions.
You can find symmetry in architecture, reflections in water, or the perfect arrangement of objects. Patterns can be found anywhere—the bricks on a wall, the leaves on a tree, a row of parked bicycles. You can either emphasize the pattern by filling the frame with it or create tension by breaking the pattern with a single, contrasting element.
Pro Tip: Reflections are a photographer's best friend for creating perfect symmetry. After it rains, look for puddles that can reflect buildings, people, and the sky to create stunning, mirrored worlds.
16. Understand Aperture for Depth of Field
If you're ready to move beyond your phone's automatic mode, the first setting to understand is aperture. Aperture (measured in f-stops like f/1.8, f/4, f/11) controls how much of your scene is in focus, a concept known as "depth of field."
A wide aperture (a low f-number like f/1.8) creates a shallow depth of field, meaning only a small slice of your image will be sharp. This is perfect for portraits, as it blurs the background and makes your subject stand out. A narrow aperture (a high f-number like f/16) creates a deep depth of field, keeping everything from the foreground to the background in sharp focus. This is ideal for sweeping landscapes where you want every detail to be crisp.
Pro Tip: Start by using your camera's Aperture Priority mode (often labeled 'A' or 'Av'). You choose the aperture, and the camera automatically figures out the correct shutter speed. It's the best way to learn and take creative control.
17. Shoot in RAW
Think of a RAW file as the digital equivalent of a film negative. It captures all the unprocessed image data straight from your camera's sensor, unlike a JPEG, which is a compressed file where the camera has already made decisions about color, contrast, and sharpening for you.
Shooting in RAW gives you maximum flexibility in post-processing. You have far more control to recover details from shadows and highlights, adjust white balance, and fine-tune colors without degrading the image quality. It's a non-destructive way to bring your creative vision to life during the editing process. While the files are larger, the creative control they afford is invaluable for turning a good shot into a great one.
Pro Tip: Even if you don't edit your photos much now, shoot in RAW + JPEG mode. This gives you a ready-to-share JPEG and a high-quality RAW file to practice on later as your skills develop.
Your Journey Starts Now
Photography is a journey, not a destination. The goal isn't to take one perfect picture, but to enjoy the process of seeing the world more deeply and creatively. Don't feel overwhelmed by these 17 tips. Pick one or two that resonate with you and focus on practicing them during your next outing.
The more you practice, the more these principles will become second nature. You'll start seeing leading lines, natural frames, and beautiful light everywhere you go. You'll stop taking snapshots and start creating photographs.
Now it's your turn. Which of these tips are you most excited to try? Do you have a favorite beginner tip that we missed? Share your thoughts in the comments below! We'd love to hear from you. And for more professional tips and inspiration delivered straight to your inbox, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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