Taking professional pictures is harder than it seems. There are multiple steps to it. Joseph Aguirre, professional photographer and cinematographer, helped walk us through the steps. Starting off, you have to determine (if taking a picture on a person) their skill color, and what type of lighting looks best on them, “People tend to look best in softer light. One way to do that if you don’t have any professional tools is to find some sun cover. Ideally what is called “open shade” where you have sun and light nearby but not direct sun – what’s called reflected light.” You then want to determine what type of image you want, do you want a sharp shaped image, a blurred, dull? “It’s also nice to have shape on that light, so if you have one side of the face getting more reflected light and the other side getting less, that gives the face shape and contrast which is nice.” If you have ever heard of the rule of thirds, that plays a big role. The rule of thirds is a composition technique where your subject is positioned in the left or right third of the picture, with the remaining two thirds left open. With photography and the rule of thirds, “you put people’s eyes in the top third of a photo.” The rule of thirds generally applies all the time, whether “you are shooting a closeup or a wide shot.” Finally, the most important step,you want to “make sure your photo is in focus and there are now distracting bright or overly contrasting colors. If you can’t control the colors you have in your photo, you can always change your photo to black and white.” This is important to be able to achieve the picture you are aiming for. If the coloring of the image somehow does not work out how you want, you always have the availability of editing tools and black and white filtering. And now you have a professional picture!