Quick heads up for perspective and people

If you are taking pictures of people while standing, it may be a good idea to try and lower your point of view just a bit, especially if you have a really wide lens. If you are sitting in a table with friends, then you really don't need to pay any special attention.
If you are standing and trying to snap something with a wide lens, then most people have the tendency to point their camera a bit downwards to have as much of the object as possible in the frame.
That will distort your perspective; it will make your subject appear as if it's being sucked towards the center of the since the top of the subject will be closer to the camera's focal plane than their feet/bottom part.

By lower your view point, you'll be able to frame your subject with the camera in a more level position in relation to your subject and avoid as much as distortion as possible.

Making things interesting

Most of the time photos are important and dear to the one taking them. It doesn't matter if the photo is blurry, shaken, crocked, eaten by a dog or whatever. That picture however is only special to the persons in it and/or the one that took it. So what could someone do if he/she/it wants to take a photo of someone and keep it interesting?

Since I'm no expert myself, I try to keep a couple of things into consideration when taking photos. Things like colors, light and shadows, perspective and patterns. Of course not everything will be present in the scene most of the time patterns. What I'm trying to do then is to think of the scene and how it would pop out, what element would make the scene show itself, because sometimes having everything in there (or giving attention to a lot of elements) may ruin the photo by being too busy.

For example if a scene has a nice interplay between light and shadow, it may be nice to tone down the colors to give more importance to the lighting. Or perhaps there is a prominent pattern going on with elements in the scene but the perspective is not exactly right. Do something; don't just stand where you were when you saw it. Go out of your way, climb something to go higher or drop down on the dirt if it's going to give you a better perspective. Try not to show things from the same angle as you saw them, simply because others would have also seen them from that angle (And this is not me being great at taking photos, it is just something that I've picked up from someone else that knows what he is talking about. When you think about it, you were walking on the same path someone else just did. So what you are seeing isn't really all that special when taken as something “new”). You see a flower that looks great? Don't just stand over it and take a photo of it. Chances are people have already seen it a million times. Drop down to its level as you may be able to get light through its leaves or petals or find a small insect there minding its own business. Go upside down, see if you can make a pattern with the grass around it…
Is there something you want to take a photo of and its angles or perspective aren't jumping out enough? Get close to it by walking if you can and zoom your lens out to its widest angle possible. You won't be doing it so that you get more stuff in the frame, as you widen your lens and you get more breathing room, you can also get closer to your subject. That would make things look exaggerated. If you want to “squash” something (perspective wise) use your lens's narrowest zoom setting and take a few steps back. Wide angles exaggerate perspective, narrow squashes it.
If something isn't contributing to the scene, don't be afraid to change it or take it out to make the rest pop out.

By dropping to the ground - even for this cliché image - the sky is visible in the frame, making it easy to get silhouettes. Plus, the viewpoint is not the same one as the one that someone would have when just walking by.

Putting things into perspective

If you have an SLR or dSLR camera then chances are, you are wondering which lens to buy, which working focal length to invest in. Well in case you haven’t figured it out yet, the answer is simple (in the sense of choosing your focal length), get what you need for the things you like shooting the most. And please don’t ask about “how X zoom” the lens has, as that is just a marketing trick and means nothing about the lens really. A 70-200mm zoom lens is less useful than a 24mm fixed length if what you like shooting is street scenes, and like wise a 600mm lens is more useful than a 17-85mm zoom lens if you like shooting wild life. If you are still confusing the wide and narrow focal lengths, think of it like this: The higher the mm number, the further away you’ll see. The smaller the number, the closer you’ll be able to see (This is just a way of thinking about it if you are confused, the mm rating means something else in reality!). 200mm is narrower than 24mm because it translates into an angle of view; with a 200mm lens having a narrower view cone than the 24mm.

Another thing that a lens’s focal length changes is the perspective, or how things look. People keep saying that you need a 40-50mm lens. The reason behind it might stem from the fact that it was the lens being given away with cameras most often back when film SLR cameras started popping out or  that lenses in that focal range are closer to the human eye in terms of perspective distortion, or rather the lack of it. What do I mean with that is that lenses outside that range tend to change how things look depending on how much wider or narrower the focal length is when compared to the 40-50 range. Check out the old stone olive press.

The reason is that the wider the lens, the closer you can get your subject. But the closer you get, the closer some elements of your subject get to the lens, while the things further away don’t, or at least not in any significant distance. Remember those scenes in comedies where the teacher points at a pupil and the view from the pupil is distorted with the teacher’s finger almost touching the kid’s nose, an elongated arm like a bridge and the teacher almost in the back of the frame? That is what you get when you use a really wide lens and have a subject that is really really close to it. If you go narrower than the 40-50mm range into let’s say 200+, then you get the exact opposite effect. Things get squashed and they lose their extreme depth.

So, remember that when you want to take some portraits. Don’t put up your ultra wide lens and go close to them or they will start complaining about their nose looking like Rudolf. Use a narrower range, like let’s say 70-80 and just take a few steps back if you are too close. (On the other hand, if you are going to take pics of some kids with a sense of humor, you might want to use that ultra wide to make for some wacky perspective.)