- Put your keyboard somewhere well lit with natural light.
- Set the camera to aperture priority mode*, and select f/8. The lower the number: the more "bokeh" (arty blur) you will get. The higher the number, the more of the keyboard will be in focus in a shot.
- Ignore the camera's screen. Use only the viewfinder when shooting.
- Get down close to the board, low angles are generally more interesting.
- Pick something good for the middle of your picture. And try to make the corners matter too.
- Get used to autofocus. It can be a bastard. Back away a bit if autofocus never bites.
- Take about 4x as many pictures as you think you need. Then do some more.
- Once you're done, load them up on your computer and tweak the levels so the whites are white and the blacks are black.
- Do all of this again, and gradually suck less at it.
*I actually shoot in shutter priority mode. Aperture and shutter priority modes are pretty much all you ever need on an SLR. I have a slow old camera, and shitty light up here, so I have to watch out for accidental long exposures. Shutter priority means I can simply shoot at 1/60th of a second with my 60mm prime, and get decent shots free from motion blur. Aperture priority is better if your gear is modern and your light is good.
