Sometimes you may have a difficult time deciding how best to capture your scene. Fortunately with digital, shooting that extra picture is nearly free. So go ahead – press that shutter button.

The Long and Short of It
Out in the wilderness with beauty all around, it’s sometimes hard to decide on how best to take that photo. What is going to look better – horizontal or vertical? Well don’t fret, just go ahead and try both ways and then make your decision afterwards.	I prefer the vertical because it emphasizes the depth of the scene. But since there is no right or wrong, you decide.

For the most part, we’ve stayed away from the “techie” stuff so far. We’re going to stray slightly to explain how more pixels can come in handy.

When Pixels Count
Although I was using a 400mm lens, I was unable to get any closer to this bald eagle. He was sitting on a small branch in a pine tree 200 feet away and 50 feet off the ground. This photo shows the full frame. It has a resolution of 5600 x 3700 pixels.	To keep the eagle from remaining a speck on my print, I tightly cropped the image. This yields an 870 x 1300 pixel image. Had my original image had fewer pixels, the cropped image would have lost detail.

Picture taking is often quite spontaneous but you can turn it into something that is more planned. To capture that perfect shot, you may want to take a few minutes to find the best view.

Take a Short Walk
What a view! I jumped out of the car and snapped the gorgeous Grand Tetons from the road at the Jackson Lake Dam. My initial thought was that here’s a view that can’t miss. However, a quick in-camera review revealed the orange floats in the foreground.	For this photo, I just walked twenty feet to the left and snapped. The objectionable orange floats had disappeared and a sliver of beach appeared in the viewfinder to yield what I found to be a more interesting shot. What do you think?

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