When taking photos of animals always try to include the animal's eyes in the photo as this is an indispensible part of wildlife photography. Another important thing to do when taking photos of animals is to use a big lens, as animals are usually shy and do not people being close to them. When it comes to editing a photo I always like take away distracting details and redundant details. For example, if there's something in the photo that doesn't need to be there then take it out by cropping or try lowering the brightness that spot to make it less visible. Sometime, I have background in photos that I don't like so, I try blurring the or like aforementioned, I might lower the brightness this way, you can be sure that these distracting elements in your photo are less obvious.
When it comes to portrait photography one thing I sometimes notice is that the subject face might be too dark, when this happen the detail that should normally be there is lost, the good news is that usually you can restore this detail by lighting up the that particular portion of the photo. Also, two things that I think people make mistakes with when taking pictures of people is that you don't want to have the person just standing there looking bored. Plus, I've notice that photos of people that only include the face and shoulder usually seem a lot of interesting than just show the whole person in the photo although, there are exceptions to this. Another thing that I believe makes portraits a lot better is to have emotion in the photo; you don't want your subject just standing there looking bored try to take the subject laugh or show some type of emotion that represents their personality or the personality of another person.
When it comes to sports photography try to get a photo of people doing something important to that particular sport. For example, if you happen to be taking photos at a triathlon, try to get photos of the person crossing the finish line or doing one of the transition sites.
Hope this article was successful in helping you with your photography.
