If you are taking a photograph especially for your custom-printed canvas bag, personalised gift item or canvas print for home or office wall display, here are some useful tips:

1) Always shoot using the camera's maximum quality setting. This gives you much more flexibility. Later on, you can always make a large image smaller, that's easy, but you can't make a small image very much bigger without losing quality.

2) Think about props. Professionals do. If your subjects are children, have you got any costumes available? Accessories? Playthings? It all helps to keep them happy and looking active and interested.

3) If your camera has a zoom control - you should probably use it. If you are shooting people, either move in closer yourself - or zoom in. Every time you have to crop superfluous surrounding content from a digital image, some information is lost, so try and get the subject to fill the frame in the first place.

4) Press the shutter button slowly but firmly. Do it too quickly and you'll probably lose some sharpness from camera-shake.

5) Try using flash in daylight too. It's an old professional trick that can really help to fill-in any harsh and unflattering shadows.

6) Experiment with shooting into the sun. Although this can be risky, if you get the sun behind someone, there's never any glare into the subject's eyes - they will look natural and relaxed - and the light on their face will be very soft. You might also get an attractive halo effect glowing behind the head and shoulders that can be priceless in portrait photography.

7) Consider whether your picture should be taken portrait (vertical measure biggest) or landscape (horizontal measurement biggest). Bags, for example, are usually best with a landscape photo shape. Of course, canvas prints can be square, or any way you like - just think what's best for the wall hanging space you are going to fill.

8) If you're photographing in low-light conditions, try a mini-tripod and turn your camera's flash off. You can also steady your camera on a handy wall or even a car roof to get the perfect sunset shot, for example, but hand-holding the camera will almost always end in a blurred picture.

9) Use some simple rules of composition, dividing the picture into thirds or halves. If you're photographing a person, try to keep their head in the top third of the frame and their body in the other two thirds. This will look much better than if you just stick their head in the middle of the frame.

10) Be adventurous. Follow up on those "what if?" moments of inspiration. Once in a while, you will create something extraordinary that will go on to make a canvas reproduction that will be truly worthy of the accolade: an original work of art.