Use a long exposure to soften streams and waterfalls. Place your camera on a tripod and use a small aperture (f/11 or f/22) to drive down your shutter speed to 2 seconds or longer. This will give flowing water the milky look you want. Make sure the camera is steady, and then shoot a lot.

Patience can make or break a picture. If you’ve found a scene you like but think it would look better if the light were different, wait a little bit. Or make a note and go back to the same location at a different time of day or even season.

Use a polarizing filter to lessen or eliminate reflections from glass. This works really well on windows of stores or cars. But the trade-off is that your exposure will be a bit longer, as the light is cut down by almost two stops.

Capture the hustle and bustle of the city at night. Place your camera on a tripod and use a long exposure (slow shutter speed) to blur the movement of cars and people. Try shooting for about 10 seconds first, and then adjust creatively to catch the motion of the lights and the feel of the city.

When shooting a portrait of an athlete, use fill flash (or flash turned on even in daylight) to light up the shadow areas under a hat or helmet. This will balance the light from the entire scene and light up the face. On a compact camera, the setting to choose is "Flash On."

In bright sunlight, when you may be focusing on the sky, set your exposure compensation for -1 to darken the image and the sky. This adjusts the meter to allow less light into the exposure. If you have a subject in the foreground, make sure he doesn’t become too dark.

Sitting around a campfire and roasting marshmallows? You can get some great shots in the light of a fire, but remember that if the fire’s in the picture, the camera’s meter can be fooled by the brightness of the flames. Compose and meter your exposure on your subjects’ faces to expose them properly.

When composing a sports picture, leave some room for the action. For instance, if a runner is going left to right, leave more room on the right side of the frame for him/her to run into. This will make a big difference on the impact of the image.

Don’t forget to bring your camera to holiday barbeques so you can capture all of the fun. Take pictures of the food being grilled, games being played, as well as groupings of friends and family.

Shooting vertically can really change the way you see. Many things go top to bottom, not side to side. Fill the frame with what's important. For portraits and pictures of monuments, vertical can be the preferred framing, but try it in other situations as well.