We're often asked "What is the secret to good photography?", to which we invariably reply, "If we told you it wouldn't be a secret." Be that as it may, here are a few tips:

Love the one you're with
Assuming you've already bellied up to the photo counter and armed yourself with your weapon of choice, there's no rush to cripple yourself carrying every lens you'll conceivably need until the end of time. As delightful as it is to feel up new and strange light-capturing apparatus, the pursuit of ever more often leads to disappointment. This is not to say that you'll have to satisfy yourself with a manual camera and a 50mm lens until the zen master approves your purchase order for a zoom, grasshopper. However, think long and hard before handing over your credit card to camera store personnel, who are experts in feeding shutterbugs but care little about the aftermath.

It can be very difficult indeed separating needs from desires, and certainly there's nothing wrong with pursuing your ideal bagful of equipment (not to mention the Search for the Perfect Bag itself - oh, the stories we could tell). Every craftsman knows the mantra about the right tool for the job. But photographers often go full circle from a camera and a lens to an arsenal which a National Geographic photographer would envy, and years later find they're happiest with... a camera and a lens. Or two.

Get up close and personal
This doesn't mean you need to invest in macro equipment capable of discerning individual blood corpuscles. Simply try to fill the frame, mostly, with your subject matter, be it a scenic or a preening relative. Just as one of the secrets to good writing is to cut, one of the joys of photography is learning how to crop, either in the viewfinder in real time, or afterwards in the darkroom or on a computer screen.

Do it often
Standard advice, worth repeating: take lots of pictures. With the advent of digital photography there's no excuse not to give your shutter finger a good workout. Contrarily, some find that going digital has negatively impacted their hit rate. Go figure. Probably has to do with the 'Oh my God this is like free film' syndrome, compelling you to happily snap away at every little thing that catches your eye because you never know which is going to be the decisive moment.

Remember: there's a reason photographers always say "Just one more."

Enjoy yourself
Those ostensibly lucky sods who lug around cameras for a living can be a miserable lot. It's a fearsomely competitive business, and the fun is liable to get squeezed right out of it when your paycheck depends on suborning your creative impulses to suit editors and clients. This cheery little article isn't aimed at working pros, however. It's for people who want to create a photo album which will be a pleasurable experience for all concerned.

Go big but not large
When adding pictures to a website don't be afraid to use up some pixels; that's what they're there for. On the other hand, make a sincere attempt to keep file sizes down; most of the world still has a dial-up connection. As ever, the search is on for that happy medium. We personally break out in a cold sweat over about 100kb; in terms of screen real estate, that's usually less than 800 pixels wide. Visually complicated images (e.g., shots of tree branches, or of Victorian drawing rooms with a trillion curlicues and knick-knacks) are a challenge and will be unavoidably bloated if you wish to avoid those blotchy .jpeg blues, but most photos aren't too difficult to optimize for the web if you've got decent software.