How to make your images more tasteful and sophisticated

Sadly, there isn’t a button on your camera, or a menu function in Lightroom, called ‘good taste’ or ‘sophistication.’

Creating elegant, tasteful images is something that comes with practice, and it’s highly subjective; it also depends on the genre.

‘Tasteful’ might be suitable for interior design photography, but shouldn’t be a consideration if you are doing hard-hitting documentary work with a tough subject matter, for example.

That aside, good taste is an important consideration in a lot of serious photography, so here are some pitfalls to watch out for.

SEE MORE: 9 creative photo ideas to try in October

01 Avoid garish colours 
One of the biggest mistakes you see in a photography competition entries is the tendency to ramp up the saturation, particularly with images where colour plays a key role – sunsets or beach scenes, for example. Try to avoid the tacky picture postcard look, unless you are going for a deliberately cheesy, Parr-esque effect.

If you use Lightroom, tweak Luminance as well as Saturation, and make the changes incrementally. Less is more in photo editing. When working with colours, try to use colours that match, or clash for creative effect. Adobe has put together a useful guide at color.adobe.com

02 Eschew heavy HDR
What is this, 2010? Unless you want to seem as current and relevant as Lady Ga Ga’s meat dress, try to avoid very obvious HDR as it just looks heavy handed and dated in 2015.

Combine crude HDR with over-saturated colours and you have a singularly ‘un-classy’ image, to paraphrase Ron Burgundy. Now, a bit of HDR is fine, especially with black and white, but never ladle it on, and never use it as a fig leaf to conceal softness or excessive noise.

SEE MORE: How to use ND grad filters… and when to avoid them

03 Combat cliché
Rather unsophisticated photographers tend to copy everyone else. Now, there’s nothing wrong with doing another shot of Durdle Dor at the golden hour, but what can you bring to the party that’s a bit different to all the other shots we have seen? Maybe on a cloudy day? Rough sea? Sleat? Swathed in mist? People standing around it?

Photography is easy but creativity isn’t, to quote the British photographer Paul Hill, but if you can deliver a creative image it will really stand out.

04 Watch out for eye contact…
Eye contact is always important in a portrait, right? Yes and no. While it can make or break a travel or child portrait, it’s not always a good idea with fine art nude or boudoir photography. The reason being, it can look titillating, like something from a cheap glamour shoot or from the cover of the last remaining lad’s mags.

So be careful, unless you do want to for a very ‘come hither’ look. There is nothing shameful or shifty about nude photography, but an averted or distanced gaze can make for a more attractive – dare we say classy – image.

05 Avoid crude composition 
Clumsy composition will also quickly drain any class from your photographs. So watch out for annoying distractions in the background – God gave you the clone tool, so use it. The same goes for very tight crops that smother the subject, and other rookie errors.

Don’t be afraid to break the rules sometimes though. If every one of your images slavishly adheres to the rule of thirds, your portfolio will also look unsophisticated.

SEE MORE: 6 composition techniques that will improve your photography

06 Beware crude Presets and Actions 
Finally, while Lightroom Presets or Photoshop Actions can be time savers, there are some really horrible and crude ones out there. Even some of the film emulation presets from quality suppliers like VSCO or MastinLabs can go awry if they are crudely applied without any proper consideration of the subject matter.

However good a sepia preset, it will never look good with very cutting-edge, modern subject matter, for example. Presets should only be a starting point, and you will still need to tweak a lot of exposure and colour settings to get the desired look, rather than just slapping them on willy nilly.

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