Lighting

 Invest in a cheap pair of lights

If you're doing any kind of indoor photography, invest in a cheap pair of lights. Buy at least a pair, complete with tripod stands and reflectors to direct the light. Opt for continuous light rather than flash units, as they're cheaper, easy to use and great for beginners, as you don't have to take test shots to see how the shadows fall during setup.

. Understand colour temperature

Different colours and levels of light are measured using the Kelvin scale. For the best results, look for studio lights with a temperature of around 5,500K-6,000K to emulate bright daylight. Lights with a lower colour temperature often render a colour caste in your images that will have to be corrected in Photoshop or an alternative image editor.

. Buy a light box -- but don't spend more than £20
Minimise shadows in your studio-lit work by investing in an inexpensive light box. Effectively a five-sided cube with gauze sides and top, you position your lights so that they shine through the sides of the box, diffusing the light and softening the shadows. Light boxes usually ship with a felted back cloth that can be attached using Velcro to create an infinite field of view by obscuring the seams of the box.

. Make best use of available light with a sheet of paper
If you can't afford studio lights, even out harsh contrasts when shooting with natural light by positioning a large sheet of paper or card to reflect the incoming light onto the unlit side of your subject. If shooting people, ask them to hold the card themselves outside of the framed shot. Alternatively, invest in a set of reflectors. You can pick up a new, multi-part set with white, silver and gold reflective surfaces for around £12 on eBay.

. Don't be dictated by the sun
Using automatic settings to shoot into the sun will throw your subject into silhouette as the camera dials down the exposure to compensate for the bright background. Shooting people with the sun in front of them, meanwhile, solves the silhouette problem but introduces another one: squinting. Solve this by keeping their back to the sun and forcing the flash to fire (switch from it 'auto' to 'on' or 'forced') to correct the exposure on your subjects' faces without leaving them squinting.

. Observe the rule of thirds
The most aesthetically pleasing images are those in which the subjects are aligned with the one-third power points in every frame. Position horizons one third up or down the height of the image, and people one third in from the left or right. Likewise, if you're snapping a frame-filling head shot, position the eyes so they're one third down from the top of the frame.

Some cameras give you the option of displaying an overlaid grid on the rear LCD to help you line up your subjects along these lines. If yours does, go one step further and put key elements on the points where the horizontal and vertical lines intersect.