How do I make photographs look more professional at home?

Basically I want to know if it is the type of camera, the film, the lights, the model, or all of the above?

I used a freind of mine to take pictures so I could practice different types of photos and play with lighting...I used lights (I used a standing lamp that had 3 sockets that I could adjust, and regular bulbs) and took pictures with my digital camera and also with a 35mm Nikon. How do I make them look like I was not just snapping shots of my friend and more like modeling photos?

Some variation of this question gets asked all the time, but yours is different because it shows some awareness. Congratulations, that's a great place to start from.

The word photography means 'painting with light' and that is literally what you are doing. The camera is far less important than knowing how different kinds of lighting model shape, texture, mood, etc. The lighting is key and, from your question, you already sense that.

The essential step in turning your photos from snapshots of friends to more professional looking images is to start looking at professionally done images and think about how they used lighting to get the image you're looking at. For that, you'll need a background understanding of lighting so you can put what you see together with how different types of lighting affect an image. You can get that from basic books on lighting and many online tutorials.

Having special equipment is nice, it makes things easier, but it's not essential to improve your photography.

Using diffuse (not direct) sunlight coming through a window produces a great light for many shots of people and by changing the posing you can radically change the image. If the shadows are too dark, you can learn how to use a bounce/reflector to lighten them. Don't have a professional reflector or bounce? No problem, use a white sheet and throw it over ladder. Don't have a ladder, take a door off its hinges, stand it upright, support it solidly and throw a sheet over that! No cost!

Having all the equipment in the world won't produce a professional looking image. On the other hand, understanding the fundamentals can enable you to produce good to great images without the fancy equipment. Study light and lighting (by LOOKING a lot - everywhere you go, look at the light and what it does). Think about it, how the lighting you see creates your reaction to what you see. Pretty soon, you'll start seeing different lighting situations as you walk around and imagining how you would use it to make a great picture.

Put lighting together with posing (another reason to look at other peoples pictures) and you'l start knocking people out with your pictures.

Vance

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Nikon is a good brand to go with. And i would say all of the above to make your photograophs more professional. But professionals also use editing software to fix or get rid of anything that is wrong with the photo. I would suggest you look into getting some software so you can enhance the way your photos turn out.

Buy a high megapixal camera, mine is 10.0 & it always takes wonderful pics.

One way to make the photos look more professional is by buying some photo books or mats and placing your photos in the best presentation you can.

Invest in photoshop, or another computer program similar to editing photos. You can do amazing things with photoshop - distort, change picture size, play with all the different black, white, and color levels, the clone stamp tool is one of my personal favorites in photoshop because you can get rid of red eye, or even wrinkles. You can also add other photos to the picture, and it will make it look more professional.

Boy, I can't wait to read these answers after 24 hours. I am not a pro, so I can't give you the answer that you need, but you will get some help from someone, I am sure. Everyone else has said, "it's the camera," or, "it's Photoshop," and it's not. It's the lighting. Those other answers will nearly start a fight in certain circles. But I do like the idea of putting the pictures in a nice photo album. If they are worthy. ;-)

For lighting, try those new daytime full spectrum bulbs. If your camera doesn't do a good job adjusting the white balance, daytime bulbs work well. They will create a soft blue effect on a white background (which I've yet to figure out how to adjust myself), but otherwise they create a white light on the face. Normal household bulbs are what's called Tungsten, and can create a golder, orangish, yellowish, red-orange effect, which isn't as pleasing. And fluorescent bulbs create a greenish or blue-green effect.