I don’t know who started it, but somewhere along the line we were taught that we should say “cheese!” when our picture was taken. The idea behind it is that we were supposed to smile from saying it, but often what results is a tight-toothed grimace, a glaze-eyed straining wince, or a glower from a stubborn child or angsty teen. If you are taking a group picture you can end up with all that and more! How do you get a smile? Nothing is fool proof, but here is some food for thought:

You’re finally doing it - taking that trip you always dreamed of. If you are like me, you will take tons of pictures as a way of taking the memories home with you. You may choose to bring a camera other than your phone with you. What you don’t want to have happen is losing any of your images along the way. How can you optimize your chances of getting your images home safely?

Don’t worry, I’m not telling you to take scissors to your prints! What I’m referring to is “cropping,” an editing term in photography which means to trim or re-shape or size an image. Photographers have always done this to make pictures look their best but it involved serious work in a darkroom! You can help your pictures look their best just by cropping.