A 2013 guide to holiday snapshots

The best thing about coming home from a wonderful holiday is that you can show off your tan and your photos. With these basic tips, your snapshots are guaranteed to make the right impression.

1. Less is more
This one's especially important for those who share their holiday pics via social media while they're still abroad. Just because you're taking thousands of photos during your beach holidays, doesn’t mean your friends and family want to see them all! Make sure every photo you share is interesting and unique. If you took fifty very similar pictures of the swimming pool at the hotel, choose the best one and archive the others. Don’t waste the valuable time and attention span of your audience!

2. Choose the right platform to showcase your photos
If don't want to your holiday pictures to look like snapshots from someone else's life, avoid Instagram. But if it's not on Instagram, how will you share your pics with your followers?!Most people don’t appreciate it when you clog up their email box with big attachments. It’s better to share your photos through a website such as Adobe Revel, Picasa, Photobucket, Flickr or Facebook and send your friends the url of the album. The advantage of using Adobe Revel is that you can use some of the famous Photoshop software to edit your photos online for free.

3. Shoot interesting subjects (yourself)
By all means, aim your camera at things that capture your attention - especially if other tourists don't seem to notice them. If you're not a professional photographer, chances are your pictures of the Dubai Skyline or the Eiffel Tower won't be the most fascinating photographs your friends have ever seen. These landmarks will only become interesting for your friends and family if you combine them with something they care about: you. Going on a city trip means you've got a licence to take lots of selfies!

4. Always work on a copy The most important thing when it comes to editing is that you should always keep an unedited version of your original photo. You can use a web-based editing service or offline software to edit a copy of your photo.

5. Improve the compositions Most holiday snapshots can be improved by cropping them according to the rule of thirds. Imagine a noughts and crosses grid within your new frame and position the subject of the photo along one of the lines or on one the four intersection points. Your photos will become much more interesting this way.

6. Enhance dull colours
Experimenting with the brightness, contrast, colour intensity, levels, sharpness and focus of your photo can improve your snapshots immensely, even when the original looked fine to you. If only some areas of your photos are a bit too dark or too bright, look for the Dodge and Burn brushes to adjust those specific areas.

7. Have a crack at Vine
Just because you can't stick 6-second looping videos in an album doesn't mean they're not interesting to watch. In fact, my favourite snapshot of my trip to Barcelona earlier this year is a vine:

The horsemen of the APPocalypse

I don’t need to tell you about the supernatural significance of the number 3. But have you noticed that there seems to be more magic in the air, lately? There has been a lot of buzz around 4G, the new Play Station 4 and of course the Samsung Galaxy S4. I couldn’t help but wonder about the meaning of the number 4…

The first thing that comes to mind is the four-leaf clover. This rare herb brings good luck when you find one. Traditionally, the first leave stands for faith, the second for hope, the third for love and the fourth for luck.

The number four has a rich cultural background. The ancient Egyptians, for example, thought the world was made of four elements: earth, water, air and fire. That’s not exactly how modern science would put it. These days, the experts say that matter always is in one of four states: solid, liquid, gas or plasma.

Other academic insights in the number 4:

* It’s the first non-primary

* It’s actually 100 in binary

* Our DNA is spelled in an alphabet of just 4 bases

* Every square number is either divisible by 4 or gives remainder 1 when divided by 4.

This number even seems to be the answer to what the ideal size is for a team. Yes, the A-team had strong characters, but they needed each other to be awesome. And didn’t Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and Thing decide to stick together because as a team… they’re the Fantastic Four? But it’s not just superheroes that feel stronger when they form a team of four. Just look at some of the greatest bands in history: The Beatles, Queen, Led Zeppelin, ABBA and even The Black Eyed Peas work together like the four wheels of a car.

The more I think about it, the more bewitching the number 4 becomes. On a calculator, it is depicted with 4 light bars and both in English and in Dutch, it is the only number whose number of letters is equal to its value. Even guinea pigs – the chosen rodents – have 4 toes on their front paws. It's magic!