Photography Tips That I Finally Liked and Made Me a Better Photographer
I have tried several times in my life, but I have not been able to take up photography. I like to take beautiful photos, but all the rules, settings and tricks seemed incomprehensible. Over the past year, some of these fundamentals have finally clicked in my head and I “figured” it out. Here’s what did it for me, so you don’t have to search for them yourself.
Let’s just go over my failures in photography, just for some context. In high school and college, I wanted to be a concert photographer. I spent a ton of money making poorly shot 35mm film from a cheap DSLR. No matter what I tried, it didn’t work out for me. The combination of filming shitty punk rock shows and waiting for film to develop made it difficult to learn how to properly use the camera. I tried again in college with the bulky, compact camera of the mid-2000s, but the awkward size combined with my own lack of orientation meant the camera spent most of its life on the shelf. Photography is difficult , and nothing in it seemed to impress.
Ultimately, smartphones were born. They rekindled my desire to learn how to use the camera properly, and recently I found a camera that suits my needs and that I will carry with me – the Sony RX100 . As a bonus, I also learned how to use this damn thing. A lot of different factors have influenced this to take hold, and now I can enjoy it as a hobby. If you are also interested in photography, don’t be me – start with these suggestions.
Stop obsessing about the camera and just choose the one you will actually use
I’m not a fan of course, but that doesn’t mean I am not doing my due diligence when it comes to large purchases. This is problematic with photography because I feel like a lot of professional photographers like to say things like, “ Sure, you have the ability to point and shoot, but you have to learn how to shoot with an SLR. “Of course I want to take great photos. I want to have professional grade equipment because if it’s good enough for them it would be a great investment for me as a beginner and hopefully as a beginner professional, right? For some reason, people like to make any non-DSLR camera inadequate and sometimes even useless.
Hearing all this was disappointing, because I have no desire to carry a giant camera around so that I can photograph silly signs and cool things that I see in nature. Luckily, I found out that just as you don’t need a guitar amp at home that’s loud enough to play in the club (because that’s a situation I’ll never get into), I also don’t need an SLR. When I finally accepted this fact and swallowed my computer pride, I was able to move on.
After some research, I discovered Sony’s line of RX100 soap cameras . They take great photos, have tons of manual adjustments, and fit in my pocket. Over the past few months, I have taken more pictures with this camera than any other camera I have (other than a smartphone). Why? Because this is the type of camera that works for me and the best tool is the one that you will actually use. You may not like the idea of looking like a hobbyist when surrounded by people with fancy cameras, but that doesn’t matter. Consider if you need this high-end hardware, or if you just think you do, because that’s what review sites and enthusiasts recommend.
Watch YouTube guides for your camera, they’re incredibly helpful
Once you find a camera that suits your needs, you must learn how to use it. Bad news: Your camera manual sucks. The good news, though: YouTube exists and it’s useful.
Unless you have the most misunderstood camera, chances are you will find dozens of tutorials, reviews, and tips for using the camera on YouTube. See them all. Not only will you learn how to use the camera and what each button, dial and function actually do, but you will also learn some of its quirks and challenges. You will even see how to deal with these issues and how to tweak your camera settings so that they work best for you and the photos you want to take, whether it’s club photography in low light or nature photography with a macro lens.
Tips and guides have obvious benefits, but reviews are more helpful than you think, even after you’ve bought your camera. Reviews usually point out camera flaws to help you understand which features work best and which don’t. They also tend to work as a quick demonstration of the basic functions of your camera, reducing training time. This was especially convenient for me because Sony’s user interface is terrible.
Find the right photography guide for you
Read any photography tutorial and you’ll be amazed at numbers, fancy acronyms, and industry buzzwords that don’t make sense. This is one of the main reasons photography is such a dense hobby. F-feet. Megapixels. Sensor size. Photography connoisseurs love to throw terminology in your face right from the start. Most of this is completely useless for newbies.
Maybe I’m just visually learning, but nothing I’ve read about the various camera settings has really stuck in my brain. I came across two tutorials that finally helped. Our friends at Gizmodo shot a video demonstrating what each setting does on a camera dial, and this was one of the first to really figure it out. After watching, I finally figured out how each setting works and why (or when) I am “I’m actually using this. It also showed me that manual mode is usually not needed by someone like me. Shutter priority and aperture priority do their job most of the time, and programmed auto does the rest. For some reason, I’ve always thought it was embarrassing to use anything other than manual, which is not the case, whatever the self-proclaimed photography professionals tell you.
Speaking of shutter speed and aperture, I was very much helped by this graph explaining ISO, aperture and shutter speed . Before, I was fixated on the specifics of the number – say, when exactly I would use f / 5.6 instead of f / 8 – but I realized that it is not the specifics that are important, but the conceptual understanding of each setting. The higher the aperture value, the more in focus the entire scene. That’s all I (and you) need to remember.
There are hundreds of tutorials, tutorials and graphs out there ( including our own extensive guide ). What worked for me may not necessarily work for you, but spend some time looking for what works, and don’t make yourself suffer for a guide that doesn’t work. Eventually, it will all sink and you will be on your way to better photos.
Find your niche, find photographers you admire and copy, copy, copy
Thinking that you want to “learn to take good pictures” is as pointless as saying that you want to learn to play the guitar. Most of us don’t really want to just learn to play the guitar, we want to learn the mechanics of playing a certain style. Photography is the same.
Some people are happy to be able to use their cameras well, take a few pictures from their vacation, throw family portraits and consider it commonplace. It’s not me. It’s great that people can take technically great photos. But for me, learning to take technically great photographs of everyday things is like trying to learn Yngwie Malmsteen’s incredibly fast guitar solo. It serves no purpose to me and does not interest me. For me, it’s about finding a niche I’m comfortable in and emulating. That is, I’d rather learn three chords of some Green Day song and call it a day.
For me, this niche is due to the absence of a not stupid term – “adventure photography”. I took inspiration from sites like Radavist or even, somewhat embarrassingly, Red Bull . Just people doing something in cool places. It was always “fun to photograph,” but once I started digging deeper, I found tons of photos to draw inspiration from and places to visit. The choice of style, even random, helped me focus and learn more.
If you have a style that inspires you, you need people to inspire you. There are many ways to find other photographers, practice your skills, and experiment with your camera. If you’re interested in an assignment, look for Facebook groups, and the websites have daily or weekly assignments with pictures to give you new ideas. Social networks like 500px , Flickr, and Instagram make it easy to find photographers that inspire you. Find a photo you like, try to reconstruct its composition and technical details, and then try to take a similar shot. You will learn a lot about your camera and composition in one shot.
Like so much else, photography is as scary as you let it be. I let it go too far when I let the technical details take over, but I eventually came to my senses. Once I realized I was thinking too much about it, I learned to just enjoy it, which really helped these newbies learn the skills.