Underexpose for positive film and digital, overexpose for negative film You can increase your color saturation by slightly adjusting your exposure. Generally speaking, for negative film, color saturation will increase with slight overexposure. For digital and positive film a slight underexposure should increase your color saturation. Play around with it by bracketing as mentioned above.

Use higher saturation film or camera settings If you are using film you can purchase films that are designed to yield higher color saturation. If you are using digital, most digital camera’s will let you select different degrees of saturation. Read your camera manual to learn how to do this.

Fill in shadows A lot of scenes you will photograph will have a contrast range that is outside ability of your film or digital camera to record. That is to say exposure range from shadows to highlights is too great to record all detail. Either highlights will “blow out” (be solid white) or shadows will “block up” (be solid black) or both! The best way I have found to handle this situation is to get proper exposure for highlight areas and fill in shadows with some form of supplementary light, such as an on camera flash or a reflector fill card. A reflector fill card can be white, silver or gold and you use it to reflect light into shadow side of your subject. As for using your on camera flash, read your manual to see how to set up flash for “fill flash” and give it a try. If your camera allows for it, make sure your flash exposure is set so it is a stop or two weaker then main light of your scene. A lot of camera’s now have a way to change your flash exposure when it is set to fill flash.