10 Early Photography Lessons I learned
Here are some of the big Lessons that I had to learn early on in taking pictures. It took me many years to understand some of these.
1. Thinking that gear matters – while you do need some basic things like a camera and a lens it doesn’t matter as much which camera or lens. So, having the latest camera doesn’t directly relate to taking better pictures. Being out in the field taking pictures and learning how to compose shots, learning what makes a good picture and most important what do you like.
2. The lens is more important than the camera – The quality of the lens you are using has a much bigger influence on quality of your pictures than the camera body. This can be an expensive lesson.
3. Buy a good Tripod – For most types of photography a good sturdy tripod will be the one single tool you can use to help you take sharp photos. I have changed lenses and camera bodies several times in the last 10 years but I have only changed tripods once and that was to move from my heavy tripod to a carbon fiber tripod to get my weight down a bit.
4. Not having a good checklist – You should have a pre-shoot checklist this will help you avoid getting to your location without a critical part of your kit. Earlier this year I was headed out for a night of astrophotography and I had to return to the house twice and make a stop at REI before I finally got going. If I had a check list to check out before I left, I could have saved an hour or more of wasted time.
5. Watch out for what is behind your subject – This has been one of the big lessons that took me a while to learn. It is very frustrating to leave an area thinking you got some good pictures and you start looking at them on the computer and you can’t even make sense of the pictures. You must think about what behind what you are taking pictures of and you must know how that is going to look when you get your pictures onto the computer.
6. Shoot in RAW – Shooting raw allows you the most flexibility when adjusting your photos to match what you saw when you decided to take the picture.
7. Learn your camera – One of best moves that I have made is to really learn my camera’s menus, features and settings that work best for me. Often when you are shooting, and you see some new image you want and need to adjust things. If you know your camera you can adjust all your critical settings without moving away from the image to get on the menus and figure out how to capture the image. You should work to get to the point where you can change those settings without moving your eye away from the view finder.
8. Taking the same picture as everyone else – Often you have the chance to take pictures while out in our parks and other frequently visited places, one of the hardest challenges is to not simply take the same pictures as everyone else. Depending on the place you are taking pictures it is likely that other people have already take pictures there and if it is a very popular place and, in some places, there might be thousands of pictures. When faced with this try to find an image that is not the same as everyone else. This can be a pretty tall order at some sites but give it a try.
9. Highlights – when you take photos that are over exposed you cannot fix the problem in post-production. If you shoot a little darker you can work with that in editing. When a picture is too blown out you lose that data and it can’t be fixed.
10. Check your settings – Often when you have been taking pictures you might adjust the exposure or ISO away from a more standard setting. After you do this be sure to set you cameral back to your normal settings. I have more than once set the exposure compensation and forgot about it and the next time I use my camera I take a bunch of under or over exposed images.
So, there they are my tips. There are many more that I will cover overtime but if you think about these things, they will help you take better images.