What's the best advice you've been given regarding photography?

1. Rule of Thirds. This can make almost anything look better, and it's really really easy to do. Just imagine a tic-tac-toe board over your photo and try to put interesting things under the lines, or where the lines meet.
2. Prefer to underexpose rather than overexpose. Often, pixels that are nearly black can be brightened up again, but a pixel that's white is always going to be white. Essentially, while pure white is a value of 1, there's really no such thing as pure black in normal photography, so there's more room to recover very dark pixels. (Higher-end cameras are far better at recovering useful pictures from underexposed areas, but phone cameras aren't nearly as good. Don't rely on being able to recover underexposed photos taken on a phone.)
3. Don't ever use the flash unless you just want to see something. Flash has many issues, especially on phones; with the flash so close to the camera, you get a weird, flat look that really doesn't ever look good. Plus, the rapid falloff means you need to be pretty close to your subject anyway. If you need to see something, then use flash; but don't use it if you don't need to.
4. Take a lot of photos. Nobody gets home and thinks "Damn, I wish I took less photos." Most of these photos won't be any good, and that's fine. Nobody publishes their worst photos. All that matters is your best photos, and the more photos you take, the more will be good.

Move. Don't just take the photo from where you are standing, with the camera at eye height, if there is time to do more. Move in close to focus on what is interesting. Move around the subject to simplify the background. Move the camera down to compress the horizon or move it up to get more horizon.

Not that I'm an experienced photographer or anything, but: The best camera is the one you have with you.

It's so stupidly simple, but true. Even a crappy camera in your hand is better than what you have lying at home.

• Read your camera's manual (and try out all the different things)
• Take a ton of exposures. Think you've got it in one? Take at least another five with various framings of what you're photographing.
• Look at the pictures between shots. It's too late when you get home and see everything's out of focus, or you're getting X in the background you could've avoided.
• Use aperture mode to get untidy backgrounds/foregrounds out of focus
• Don't use the flash. Flash photography is advanced. Use brightness settings/exposure times instead.

Then to get the most out of your snapshots, spend the minute it takes to post-process each of the images you're keeping afterwards (but don't overdo contrast or color saturation like is common on blogs/social media. Don't overwrite original files though)

The single best piece of advice I've got in any kind of creative field is: Learn "the rules" because it will help you break/ignore them properly. For example - several people have mentioned the 'rule' of thirds (there's a few other grid systems as well like harmonious triangles, golden mean and so on). The thing about these methods is a lot of pictures are made that way, so not doing that can be more interesting sometimes.

Same goes for focus, and exposure. Learn the rules, learn how to do it "properly" - then stop worrying about doing so.

Learn your software too. Editing is a huge part of photography. Photoshop and Lightroom aren't "cheating", they're part of the process. Ansel Adams, one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, used darkroom effects all the time. He'd have loved photoshop. Don't be afraid to crop to non-standard shapes, to push and pull colours and contrast around, try out filters and effects. You won't destroy the original image, you'll learn lots of stuff and eventually you'll find a style (or styles) that you like. Maybe that style is very hands-off, fresh off the sensor; maybe it's heavily edited and stylised - it doesn't matter.

Learn your gear. What gear you have doesn't matter - whether it's a phone or a cheap digital or a high-end dedicated camera - but knowing how to use it does. Try all the settings. See what they do, and what they don't do. See how each thing affects the image. See what you like.

Ignore anyone telling you not to do something. Do all the things. You might find you like that effect. Flash is a good example. Lots of people find flash hard, and it can be tricky. I rarely put my flash in my camera bag, but some people make careers out of using a flash for effect. Try it. Good chance you'll find you don't like it, but you never know unless you try.

Take pictures and look at them afterwards. Why do you like this one? Why doesn't that one work? What would you change to make this one even better? But do take pictures - because really, that's the only thing that matters.

One of my favourite pictures I've taken recently was shot on my cheap and ancient phone, not my £1000 camera. The background is in sharp focus, the subject is not and is more than half out of frame, hits zero compositional rules and it's a glorious photo which really captures the moment it was taken. I would share it but it's my kid and he isn't old enough to consent to having his picture published publicly.

Never say “I’ll fix it in post,” unless there is no way to get it right during shooting. Things that would take 15 seconds to fix in person can take thirty minutes to fix in post.

Two rules, of which one applies to everyone at a given point in time. It's hard to know which is which though. Depends on what baggage you attach to the word 'photographer'.

1. Having a camera does not make you a photographer
2. The only requirement for being a photographer is taking photos with a camera.

The other advice I've taken is the same as for learning pretty much anything else - there is an enjoyment to photography, AND there is a mechanic to it. You have to put in the time, effort, and learning in to the second before the first will produce anything but garbage. That means that in order to take photos of animals like you might want to do, that doesn't mean you don't need to take a bunch of photos of buildings, action scenes, landscapes, portraits, macro artsyfart shots, etc. The same way the best musicians are perfectly capable of playing in multitudes more styles/genres than the ones they're known for.

I'll talk about something that has less to do with the technical aspects of photography. I had a teacher who talked about the awkwardness of nude shoots. He said, don't ask the model to undress, instruct them where to put their clothes. I don't even do nude photography, but this one stuck with me. The point is that if you act with complete confidence, if you act like what's going on is perfectly natural, your subjects will be a lot more comfortable.

Most people are not professional models. Most people get uncomfortable in front of a camera, and that discomfort usually leads to worse portraits. Your job is to make them comfortable, or at least, distract them momentarily from that discomfort. It's only awkward if you make it so. As a photographer, your subjects will take their cues from you. It's amazing how the situation changes (as do the resulting photos) with a small attitude adjustment on your own part.