Beginners guide to photography

You might be new to photography, or perhaps you’ve just hit a creative ‘slump’. Or, maybe, you just want to step back and revisit the basics of photography. Wherever you are, here are 12 tips that might help you:

• There’s a lot to learn, especially with some modern cameras, so, give yourself time and just take things one at a time. I always recommend a structured course if you’re just starting, the reason being that if you miss a basic step, you can be in for a very frustrating time.
• Learn to use the camera in fully manual mode (i.e. focus, shutter speed, ISO and aperture). Also, learn how your camera's metering works. It might feel irrelevant given the amount of automation available, but it will serve you well.
• Experiment with higher ISO’s. It’s better to have a grainy image that’s sharp than a smooth image that’s blurry. And it can give your photos a certain look that you might find attractive.
• While the latest gear always looks great, you probably don’t need it.
• Learn to look at how different photographers use light. This is fundamental to photography and the better you understand the use of light, the better your results will be.
• Practice getting everything right in the viewfinder (or screen) before you press the shutter button. Post-processing is helpful, but don’t rely on it.
• Always shoot in RAW.
• Learn about your preferred post-processing package by making adjustments manually. Don’t rely on presets as they will limit your results.
• Learn the rules so that when you break them, you know which ones you’ve broken. Consistency is the sign of a good photographer.
• If you do hit a slump, where you feel your photographs are getting worse, don’t worry. It happens to most of us. Just step back and return to basics. What isn’t working? What can you do to change it?
• Keep having fun recording the day-to-day. Creating great ‘art’ is rewarding, but you have a day-to-day life too.
• Photography is a continuous learning experience, so enjoy the journey!

I hope you find this useful.

Graham

It's time for another podcast...

Transcript

>> Speaker A: 0:17

Hello again. In, this podcast, I thought I'd talk about basics. So I've done a few podcasts that are aimed more for people who are perhaps getting started in photography. But equally, if you've been going a while, sometimes, at least I think sometimes it's good to just go back to basics and just see how you're doing. Maybe there are things you've forgotten. I certainly find that I sort of go down rabbit holes a little bit, sometimes with my photography and I forget other basics. So I thought this might be a useful podcast, just to put out there. And I'm going to run through a dozen things. So there are 12 steps to this and we'll see how we go. So the first one is that it can definitely feel like there's a lot to learn, particularly if you're new to photography and you're getting into, the slr, mirrorless photography. That's not to say that if you're exploring the capabilities of your smartphone, that will be, much easier in terms of what you can do. But there's certainly more to, learn. I think with dsl, LAR and mirrorless, particularly when you start looking at the pages of menus that a lot of cameras have these days. So that can be very daunting. So I think the first thing to remember really is to just take it one step at a time. Start with one thing, get familiar with it, get good at it, or at least to a point where you're reasonably confident that you know what you're doing. And I would say the measure of that is to produce work that is repeatable using, certain combinations of settings, let's say. Now, that's obviously quite a general statement in terms of getting in deeper. This is where I do absolutely recommend you do some sort of basic training course that takes you through each of the key elements of your camera and of understanding photography takes you through step by step, gives you exercises so that not only are you reading about what you can do, but you're actually doing it in a guided way. So, for example, understanding shutter speed and things like that. So, I'm not going to go on about my photography courses. That's definitely how I teach photography. And I do recommend that you find somebody, it doesn't have to be me, but find somebody who, who can take you through step by step. Because once you've done that, once you get confident in the key areas, and you understand them, that really does open up your full capability as, a Photographer as someone who is creating artwork, and I don't need to get intimidated by that either. it's simply a way I tend to look at photography these days. We are creating ah, art whether we know it or not. It might not be great art but that's what we're doing and the camera is essentially a tool. And that's also, I think that's the thing, a key thing to remember. And I have spoken to people who 're under the impression that if they spent a lot of money on camera equipment their images would transform and they'd be suddenly shooting great work. Well it's just the tool. So I will come back to this later. But while you can spend, and it's quite easy to spend a lot of money on camera gear if you don't understand how to use the tool, you're probably not going to see any real difference in your photography. So it really is important to understand the basic techniques. So that's the first thing. Just take it one step at a time. there is a lot to learn certainly if you look at it and try and do it all in one go it's a lot. But there's absolutely no need for you to attack it all at once. Now one thing I do recommend, the second thing is to do spend a bit of time using manual. And what I mean by that is taking out all of the automation on the camera. So put it into manual mode, use manual focus. And the reason I suggest that and you will need to have gone through the basics before you do this. So understanding shutter speed, ISO, aperture, once you've done that, once you go into manual you really start to build up your, not only your confidence but your ability to work with the camera. And I think once you've done that you can pretty much pick up any camera and start shooting. Good work. And by that I mean correctly exposed, corre. Correct shutter speed. I'm not going to say sharp because it depends what you're actually going for. So a good photograph to me is something that I had in my head and I've managed to produce it or create something on my PC screen. Initially that is what I had in my head more or less and something I like. So going into manual it really does get you sharpened up on the basic areas of the camera, understanding those basics. And when I was learning photography there wasn't really a choice because that's how cameras worked. not that old but even so using film, cameras which is how I started. you were pretty much in manual most of the time. The, ISO, you couldn't change that much, because that was obviously the rating of the film. However, you could do things like pushing and pulling, which I'm not going to go into. But, the point about this is that if you go into manual, you really get to know the camera as a tool and that's what it is. And I think once you get that, then you realize that the real creative part of it, where the really good images come from, that's the photographer. And that's why people pay a lot of money for good photographers, because they can pick up any camera and they'll get results that most people won't because they've got that experience, they've got that way of looking at subjects and they know exactly what they're doing with the tools that they have available. So try shooting in manual and, that will help you a lot. It might be a bit frustrating at first, but it will definitely make a big difference to, what you produce. The third thing to look at is ISO, because a lot of people are very wary of it. So now this is something that I've spoken about in other podcasts and I do recommend you keep your ISO as low as you can as a general rule. However, ISO is there for a reason. Now the reason that going back a bit, the reason that I would say use a lower ISO is that as you go higher, what happens is the picture gets more blocky. Grainy would be the phrase that we would apply to film. But you can see more of the pixels. Especially if you've got an area that's just one color that's very plain, you'll start to see a lot. You can see the individual pixels much more clearly when you go to a higher ISO. That's simply because you get noise within the camera that, you'll get that anyway. But at the higher ISOs, the, sense will pick it up more and show it. However, having said all of that, there's two aspects of that. One, you can use it as a way of creating a certain, giving your images a certain character. And I used to like playing with high ISO film and maybe dropping the rating down, but it would give me a very grainy result, like a sort of old newspaper type result. And that might be an effect I was looking for. So you can experiment with what high ISO in your camera, gives you. And also the main reason you're likely to push to a high ISO. Is that you're in low light or your camera in a lower ISO is just not giving you a fast enough shutter speed to get a nice sharp picture. So I would always say that it's better to have a sharp picture, that's got a bit of grain on it, that's got a bit of pixelation on it than a nice clean picture that's out of focus or blurry. And ah, that's the choice. So don't be afraid of ISO. In fact I'd recommend that what you do at some point is just experiment with ISO on the cameras or camera that you have so that you understand what results you can expect with certain ISO settings. So again this is all about exploring the capabilities of the tools you're using and getting to know the tools you're using. The fourth thing to remember is that you can use pretty much any camera. So you don't need, you definitely don't need the latest camera gear. Yep. As new cameras come out they generally have improvements of one sort or another. It might be in terms of the number of pixels they can handle, but how many do you really need? You have to think about where you're using your photographs or where you're likely to use them. So are you using social media? Are you trying to print them M A0 and even if you print them A0, a smaller sensor again are you going to be cropping them a lot? Are you able to use the full frame? There's lots of things to think about when it comes to the sensor. And to be frank, that's the main reason I've changed bodies on my DSLRs over the year because I like to shoot big images. So over the years the capability of cameras has improved. And that's one area where I've noticed that my camera that I was using, let's say at a particular time was giving me results that were not good. I could see I was actually looking at term of friend'results this as well, watching. And he had a camera with a higher resolution and it was just significant. I could clearly see the difference. So those kind of things for sure. But that comes through experience. You'll get to know where the weak areas are in the camera that you're using for the kind of photography you want to do. And that's where I would recommend thinking about changing your gear. Whether it's camera body, it's a lens or it something else. But basically once you understand how to use your camera, once you understand how cameras work in general and certainly get to know yours in particular. You don't need the latest camera to get good results. It's about understanding how the tool is used. And that is really I guess, the key message in this particular podcast. Ok, next thing. So the fifth point to think about and perhaps start consciously thinking about it is the light. Because what we're doing with photography, we're using light, photograph without any light is kind of boring. so we are using light that's really the medium we're working with and one of the things to do, and I recommend that you look at work that you like. So photographs that whether you've taken them yourself or somebody else has taken and look at how the light falls, how has the light been used? Where is the light source coming from? Are ah, there reflections? is the light being bounced from a reflective surface of some sort? Is that giving a particular look? What about backlighting? What about lighting from the side? All of these things. What about multiple light sources? So as you start looking at work that you like, start looking at what's going on with the light, what are the sources and how has the photographer used the lighting that's available. And you can also in that look at things like colour, contrast. One of the things, the elements that make up a good photograph for you. So that's really a starting point. It's something that when I teach her, ah, dive into that in a lot more detail but it's something to start thinking about. The sixth thing, and this is something that I learned when I was learning from a professional portrait photographer quite a while ago now and this was with film and being a professional portrait photographer she could shoot quite a lot of film at an event. And this lady worked the top end. So I was learning in the UK this would have been around 2004 and for a portrait session she would charge around £3,000 or would expect to ear about £3,000. And for wedding she used to do soccer players, that kind of thing, £20,000. So really high end. So we were learning from her and one of the things that she really drove home to us when you're coming at this as a professional, is that you do not spend hours and hours post processing images and in the days of film you had to scan them then. And the post processing capabilities weren't as good back then either. You could imagine. And I do remember a guy who was on our course and he'd come back, this was of course we'd over a period and he was talking about a wedding. He did, and he had then spent the next three or four days editing images. And, she was quite appalled by that because if you start looking at it, if you start costing your time, what's your time worth per hour, and you spend days and days editing, can you recoup that cost through selling your photographs? If you're charging thousands of pounds of dollars or euros, whatever, then maybe you can. But for most people, if you're earning 500 pounds to shoot a wedding, that cost in terms of your time disappears very quickly. So is it profitable? The answer is no. And basically it's not profitable. You've got a hobby, not a business. So, perhaps a little brutal, but there you go. So what we were taught was to do everything through the viewfinder, crop through the viewfinder, make sure you got your exposure right, make, sure it was sharp. So all of the basics, you would get all of that sorted out before you press the shutter button. And her attitude was that once you pressed the shutter button, that was it, that image was finished, that photograph was finished, it would then be printed. There was no additional work. Now with digital photography, I certainly believe in my own practices is that, you do need to do some post processing on, most images that you're going to use for something else. However, even with what I do, I generally don't spend more than two minutes on an image. I've got a particular way I like to post process. I put a lot of practice in a lot of hours. So to get the results I get, I don't spend a lot of time on an image as, say it's normally, a couple of minutes and that's it. So do try and get as much right through the viewfinder before you press the shutter button. yes, I'm going to talk about post processing as well in this, but you want to minimize what you're doing there. Okay. Number seven is to shoot raw. So I say this all the time, every time I talk about photography. If you don't know what RAW is, it's basically all of the image, all of the data, all the information that the camera was able to capture when you hit the shutter button. And the reason that you want to use RAW is that it's kind of like the negative from, a film camera. You have all the information there and you have as much resolution as that camera was capable of giving you. And then when you go to editing, you're editing With a lot of information, which means you can crop down if you want to, and hopefully still have an image that you can use for the purposes you have in mind. things like color adjustment, contrast, you've got a lot of information to work with there. If you shoot in jpeg, which is probably the format you're most familiar with, because it's used a lot with images, JPEG is compressed. What does that mean? It means that when that RAW file is converted to a JPEG file, a lot of that information that's in the RAW file is lost. It's basically dropped out and you get a kind of, let's say a truncated version of that image, which still looks okay as long as you don't dive in too deeply. And the reason that you would use a JPEG is that the file size is much, much smaller. So if you're using social media, for example, one of the key things on websites and that sort of thing, is that you want to fast download. And although the actual infrastructure is now much better, providing much higher speeds, when it comes to looking at websites and things, you certainly don't want to be sitting there waiting for a big file to download and come up. If you remember the days of dial up, that definitely dated me. but you might be sitting there waiting for an image to download. You kind of get one line at a time and it might take a minute or two to download all the way, or even worse if it'a bigger picture. So that's why you have jpeg. It's a compressed form, which means that it doesn't take up a lot of room and it will download quickly if you're using it in some sort of a media format where it's going to be downloaded. And that's obviously important. And even on websites, one of the measures that I've seen on websites is how quickly a page will download and you get scored on that. So that will tell you how good in terms of general ranking your website is. So that's why you would use JPEG to get those smaller files. And obviously it means you can store more on your camera card if that's an issue. And obviously in the early days of digital it was because we didn't have anything like the kind of storage capability we have today. but just be aware of that. So always shoot raw. That's the bottom line there. The next thing is post processing. And these days there are a lot of presets. So a lot of people Sell presets. A lot of the editing software companies will give you presets that you can buy. And look, they can be very good and they're very convenient because you just drop your image in, you run the preset through the editor and out pop something that looks pretty good. But just as with using automation on the camera, my recommendation to you is that you at least learn some manual post processing so that you understand certainly what you can do and what different aspects of post processing will give for you. But as you dive more into that, you can see the potential of post processing. And when it comes to creating a certain look, when you know what post processing can deliver whatever packages it is you're using, you can learn very quickly how to create that look for your images. And it might be chancesances are it will be different to what you can get in presets. So as with all of this, it's another tool and the more you understand how to get the best from that tool the better because it s really to me it's the next stage in photography. I use a four stage process and number two is a/ing the image. Number three is post processing. So those two are really important stages. So the more you understand what can be delivered by whatever it is you're using at each stage, the more creative control you have and the more creative potential you have as a photographer. And you can definitely start creating images with a look of your own. And if you aren t doing things commercially, often that's what people will go for. You'll find people who just love that look. Another thing that again I've spoken about if you've been to any of the webinars that I haven't done one for a while but something that I emphasize a lot when I talk about photography is to learn the rules. And it's not to be constrained by the rules. But to me the rules there are there to give you some structure. It's like a foundation. And once you understand the rules, they help you to become consistent. And that to me is the most important thing. Once you're consistent in your photography, in the look, in exposure and sharpness, all of those things, then to me you've got it down. That's the sign that you know exactly what you're doing and then go and break the rules. So that's something I love to do and go do something different because that's where the creative part comes. However, it's really important in my opinion that you know which rules you're breaking, because that, again, allows you to be consistent and get consistent results. And that, to me, is the sign of a good photographer. If you're not consistent, if you don't know what rules you're breaking, it's a little bit hit and miss. And that is, to me, definitely not the sign of a professional photographer, because I would expect a professional to come up with a consistent look to the images that they're producing for me if I hired them. number 10, you may well find that you reach a point where you get really dissatisfied with the images. You may even feel that they're getting worse. And, not necessarily looking back, because I think it's normal. well, pretty much every photographer I know, we all look back at our early work and kind of cringe a bit. And, it's simply because we've learned a lot more. Not only theoretically, we might have been inspired by ideas or other people, but we've also improved what we can do. One of the things about photography you are constantly learning, and if you do experience, a point where you suddenly feel quite depressed about what you're shooting, it's probably because you've just kind of plateaued a little bit. And the thing there that I recommend is just look at what's gone wrong. What do you think is wrong with the images if you're not satisfied with them, and maybe go back to basics. And this is again, really the purpose of this podcast. And although I said it primarily applies to beginners, it also applies to anyone because we all have these points where we start looking at work and thinking, okay, that's really awful. What went wrong there? So just go back to basics. Start taking the image apart. Okay, is it lighting, shutter speed, whatever it might be, but just go back to basics. Because as I said earlier, I'm certainly guilty of going down rabbit holes where I kind of get one thing. I get very fixated on a certain aspect of the photograph I'm shooting, then I miss something really basic. And then when I'm looking at the work'm, just sort of looking at and thinking, okay, what was going on there? And that's it. So if you do experience that, don't worry about it, it's just normal. But do just step, back. I think that's the thing to do and look at what's gone wrong. And then what steps can you take to get things back on track? I think another, thing to bear in mind is that we're not creating incredible artworks Every time we hit the shutter button, have fun. If you're not. The old phrase, if you're not enjoying it, you're not doing it right. And I think that applies very much to photography. To me photography is about experimenting. It's about on the one hand showing people a view of the world that they may not have seen before or may not have thought about before. And in terms of animals, I like to get in close, I like to do portraits. I might try something abstract every now and again. And it's also about shooting things that you like because if you you know, I can just picture a photographer shooting this stuff and every time it's, you know, they're kind of cringing and this'terrible. Well, you're not really going to carry on long if you shoot that way. So shoot stuff that you like, experiment, but have fun as well. Just shoot the day to day. because if you have family or you're at events or whatever it is, you want to keep a record of those too. So don't get the word that comes to mind is precious about it. but just shoot the day to day as well. Have fun. It doesn't have to be amazing artwork every time you hit the shutter button and just enjoy it. And that kind of leads on to the final point and that simply is that photography. Put my notes down. Photography to me is a journey and it doesn't actually end. And I've been taking photographs since I was 13 or 14 I think, somewhere around there. And that was quite a while ago and I've found it's been quite an interesting journey. I've invested in myself at different points as I did some time doing a course over several months with a top end portrait photographer. I've also trained as a photojournalist. I've invested in different aspects of photography. I've invested in courses and every time it's given me a different perspective on what I'm doing. And I've also worked with other photographers and watched how they work. I've looked at their work, I've asked them questions about what they were seeing, what they were doing. Sometimes it's about how they interact with people. I remember spending a bit of time with a photographer who did family portraits and was really good at working with kids. And I don't really rape myself working with kids. To be honest. I've never had my own children. and this guy was just amazing and he was doing simple little things that I picked up on and made that note. And that's something that I would use, that I have used, when I've been working with kids myself and taking photographs and getting. So to me, when you work with people, it's about getting natural looking photographs. If it's a portrait of somebody, I want what I'm going for there is when someone looks at the portrait, they're looking in that person's eyes, they see something, some aspect of who that person is. And another thing I've spoken about, which goes back more to the photojournalism training I did, is become a visual storyteller. So if you're going to take a photograph of something, why do you want to take a photograph of it? What is it about that situation, whatever it is that is motivating you to take that photograph? Is it something inspiring? Is it something you feel the world needs to know? but it's a story. It doesn't have to be a big story. But as, a spaceies, we love stories. If you go back to the earliest times, earliest records of when people were around, and, here I'm thinking kind of cave paintings, things like that. That's early art. But what is art? It's conveying a meaning, a story. It's, communicating to other people, maybe generations away from us in the future. So before I get too carried away with all of that, I guess the key point about this is to just take it step by step. Enjoy every step though. Have a look at what's around, look at Instagram, look, Google Photographers, see if there's a particular photography you like and try and work out how they got certain results. But it is a process of constantly learning. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to really understand the basics of photography in terms of how the camera works. Because once you understand, it's like any craftsperson. And I used to do woodworking at school and I learned how to. I used to actually like sculpture things. So I used different chisels for different things and I'd learn which ones were good for certain to get a certain result. And I think photography is the same. There are different aspects of the camera and how it works. And once you understand them, you have really, there's not much to stop you creating whatever you want. So that is where I'm going to leave this. I hope you found that useful. I hope you found some, helpful tips in there and I'll speak to you again in the next podcast. Bye for now. Just before I go. I wanted to remind you that, first of all, I have an offer running, with, my free download. So if you go on to the website and there's a link at the bottom of the description of this particular podcast, and that will take you to a link, to where you can give me your email, I will send you, a PDF which is 10 Simple Steps to improve your photography today. So it includes the kind of things that I talk about in the podcast. So it's all there in black and white with some examples. You can see what's going on. And also remember I offer, online photography courses. I do fine art. If you haven't checked out my galleries, please do. The links, are again below the description of the podcast and don't forget to help me out. So you're welcome to subscribe both to the podcast and you can become a member of my Patreon membership and, join me there. So in that membership you get, access to me, and also you get advance notice of things that are coming up. I'll tell you about other things that are going on that I don't share in my Facebook group or on Instagram or anywhere else really. So it is, just a membership where if you like what I do and you just want to be a part of it, the subscriptions are really low. It's just couple a cup of coffee a month. So, how much better could I be than that? So please take a look and, I'll speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now.