accidental photography lesson: always remember the basics
Recently I changed a bit of my camera gear so I was pretty happy that part of my parents' visit included sites that were good for photography... Most of the pictures I took were from Volunteer Park (wikipedia). I highly recommend visiting the park if you live in Seattle and have never made it - somehow it took me six years to make it there myself :(. Anyway, a fairly large part of what I was doing while taking pictures was just familiarizing myself with what was different what wasn't, etc. playing with settings and whatnot. I've only just started to go through the photos now and I've already spotted some stupid things I did that can't just be photoshopped. Like the giant lamppost coming out of my dad's head in what would otherwise be a really nice picture :(. Fortunately there are also some nice shots and I'll try to clean them up a bit and post a few over the weekend.
The morale of the story? You have to always remember the basics - in this case it's watching the background in the image composition. If you don't then it doesn't matter how well the rest of the picture turned out, you're likely not going to want to keep that shot.