Photography is easy and photography should be fun. But if you are new to photography,
everything - including this site - may sometimes seem a little daunting.
Many beginners are looking for a simple sets of instructions that will make them
a great photographer, and for them there is both bad news and good. The bad is that
photography really is just not like that, although there are quite a few hints and
tips that you'll find on these pages that will help you. Including some in this
feature.
Good photography comes largely from experience, and learning from that experience.
It isn't an instant thing, and like most worthwhile activities you have to pay your
dues. At first many things will be confusing, and all of us still make plenty of
mistakes. Don't let it get you down; look up or ask about things you don't understand
and try and learn from the things you mess up.
There is plenty of good news. Digital makes learning easier, faster and much cheaper.
Modern camera systems can carry much of the technical strain for you, though you
still need to learn to use them appropriately. But the best news is that as you
learn more you find that photography is far more interesting and exciting than following
a set of rules could ever be.
It's perhaps best to think of photography as being rather like learning to use language.
It's something we've all mastered, at least after a fashion. We seldom did it by
reading sets of directions or following simple rules, although occasionally there
may be a very real place for them. But just as you can speak very well without knowing
the finer points of punctuation, so you can take good photographs without a great
deal of detailed technical knowledge.
Part of the good news about photography, is that modern cameras, and particularly
digital cameras, make the technical side of it, at least at the basic level, very
simple and straightforward. You can pick up a digital camera, and after just a few
minutes reading the manual or being told what to do, go out and take pictures, secure
in the knowledge that the camera will automatically look after exposure and focus
for you. All you need to do is to point it in the right direction and press the
button at the right moment. Its a very good way to start.
Later on, you may want to refine the way these things are done by taking more control
over them yourself, and there are features here which will take you through how
you can do this. But the real business of learning photography is learning how to
use the language, and that is largely a matter of getting out there and doing it
and then learning both from your successes and mistakes. So the really important
basic advice is simple - go out and take pictures. Lots of pictures.
You can find more about the real basics, the things you need to know to get started,
in the series 'First Steps in Photography', short features that deal simply
with things such as holding the camera still and getting your images from camera
to computer - see 'Suggested Reading' below.
Practice Makes Perfect
The first and vital element in learning photography is practice. It may not make
any of us perfect, but it does make all of us better.
Finding Subjects
The hardest thing for almost any photographer is deciding what to photograph. People
are often attracted to photography by pictures of famous people and exotic places
and somehow dream that buying a camera will allow them to take such images. Usually
it doesn't happen. So what should you photograph?
The short and simple answer: Whatever interests you.
To qualify a little, whatever interests you that you come across in your normal
life or have easy access to. One of the greatest of American photographers once
said that his best pictures were found within a few yards of his door. Much of the
more interesting photography isn't about the special or the exotic, but about seeing
ordinary things in a different way.
It's nice to have great holidays, and to photograph them, but you can take good
pictures every day or your life.
My First Photographs
It is best to photograph things you feel strongly about in some way, whether that
feeling is love, hate, amusement, interest or anything else. If you don't have a
feeling about your subject, how can you expect anyone viewing the image your create
to feel about it? I can still remember the first two subjects I really photographed,
over 40 years ago.
Loved Ones
Many people actually buy a camera to photograph the person who interests them most,
perhaps a child or lover. This is a great place to start, with subject matter that
means something to you and is ready to hand.
The first time I worked seriously with a camera was trying to capture on film something
of what I felt about one of my first girlfriends. They weren't great pictures (in
fact terrible cliches, posing her in a cherry tree and more), but there are two
very important words in that last sentence. You have to make photographs by working
at them, thinking about what you are doing, and secondly you need to feel something,
and to work to try and translate some of that feeling into visual terms on the flat
plane of the image you are making.
A Favorite Place
The first black and white film I took was in a park that I cycled round regularly
as a teenager. There were hills one could swoop down at a dangerously exhilarating
speed, but were not too high to be a strain to cycle up, and a circuit of around
five miles with relatively few cars on which I could try to race my previous best
times. Half way round, at the bottom of a slope where the track crossed a small
stream was a grove of ancient oaks, stretching away up a hill. Particularly in the
low sun of winter, they were an exciting site that gave my heart a lift as I sped
past. Eventually I saved the money for a black and white film (photography in those
days was very expensive) and went to photograph them. The results that came back
badly printed from the processors were not great, but they were pictures that meant
something to me at the time.
Getting Better Pictures
At least when you are starting in photography, it makes sense to take as much time
as you can when making pictures. Later, once these kind of things become second
nature, you can decide to try and do things quicker. But here is my '1,2,3' guide
to better pictures.
- Identify your subject. Clarify in your mind what you are interested in photographing
before you take a picture.
- Think 'Am I in the best place to take this picture'. If not, move if you can. Many
bad pictures are taken from too far away. If in doubt, get closer.
- Look around in the viewfinder or screen, checking subject and background are as
you want them.
Then you are ready to take the picture.
Exhaust the Subject
Photographers who work with film often had every exposure from the film printed
on a single sheet, called a 'proof' or 'contact' sheet. While beginners often produced
contact sheets with perhaps 36 very different subjects on them, most pros and experience
photographers would have sheets that showed them working on the same subject through
a whole series of exposures.
While amateurs took a snap and then went on to something else, experienced photographers
had learnt to keep taking pictures until they were sure that they had nailed down
their idea. Sometimes 2 or 3 pictures were enough, while other times it might take
more than a single roll of film.
A big advantage of digital is that you can see what you have taken more or less
immediately, zooming in if necessary to check sharpness and details such as expressions.
Try to remember to check if you have done things right after each picture, but also
to think if there are other and perhaps better ways to approach the subject and
try these. Don't be satisfied with a single shot if it is possible to take more.
Take More, Show Less
Evaluation - The Second Stage
Once you have begun to make pictures the vital next step is evaluation. Start by
evaluating and editing your own work yourself - probably the most important single
thing that separates good from poor photographers is the ability to be critical
about your own work.
Digital cameras make it cheap and easy to take lots of pictures, so you can get
plenty of practice in taking them. Where I might have been limited to 12, 24 or
36 exposures on a film, there is now no need to stop there, so take more.
Viewing Your Images
Some obvious failures you can spot and delete actually on the camera, but it isn't
really possible to see images clearly enough to make subtler judgments. Transfer
your images onto your computer and review them on the screen.
Rating Your Pictures
Many image viewing programs allow you to give images a rating, and I like to divide
my pictures into 3 categories:
- Keepers: (the pictures I'm sure that I want to keep and will show other people;)
- Possibles: (those I'm not sure about, and duplicates of those selected as 'keepers';)
- Trash: (those I'm fairly sure I don't want to keep.)
I like to keep all of these images on my hard drive, at least for a few days, then
return and view the categories again, to confirm my selections.
I then delete the 'trash', hide those pictures that remain as 'possibles' away in
reserve (perhaps storing them off-line on CD-R or DVD) and organize the remaining
'keepers' ready to show other people. I'd only ever make prints from these.
Other Views
Although it's vital to make your own choices and criticize your own work, you can
learn even more from the views of others. So show your work to other people, either
as prints or on screen or even over the web if you have a web site, and ask for
comments. You will soon come to appreciate which people can tell you something worth
knowing about your work, and to judging what people really think about it.
Be prepared for people to tell you what they don't like as well as what they do.
People who will say something negative about some of your work are likely to be
of use to you, while those who only praise are likely to be worthless.
Don't always take people's advice, but do try to listen to what they are saying,
and to think about whether you agree or disagree with them. As you take more pictures,
try to find people who have more to say about your work. Some of the best criticism
will come from other photographers, although unfortunately there seems to be a general
rule that those most vocal on most web forums are the least knowledgeable.
Comparisons and Inspiration
The most productive way to improve your own photography is to look at the work of
good photographers. Their work provides some kind of yardstick to judge your work
by, and also provides a marvelous and almost unlimited source of inspiration and
ideas.
About Photography has regular items on some great photographers on the front
page, along with links to examples of good photography in almost every feature.
There are also the directories of Notable Photographers and the many features
on them listed alphabetically in the History section. The Internet is a great
resource and this site aims to point you towards the best of it (and there is also
a great deal of rather poor work to be found.)
Learn From Others
As you practice your own photography more, you will find it easier to understand
how other photographers get the results they do. Trying to use the ideas that work
for other people is a good way to advance, although slavish imitation certainly
isn't; use their ideas to make your own pictures.
Look at pictures and learn from pictures wherever you can, whether you find them
on-line or in books or magazines, or in visits to galleries and museums. You can
of course learn a lot from paintings and drawings as well as from photographs.
Techniques
Many great photographers have managed with a relatively limited knowledge of techniques,
knowing exactly what they need to work the way they have decided and little more.
Others have had a great technical knowledge, such as Ansel Adams, who wrote
some of the best books on photographic techniques - including his Zone System
for practical control of exposure, development and printmaking which he thought
out in the 1940s. Technical knowledge can sometimes expand your ideas of what it
is possible to do, but for many photographers a basic knowledge is enough and they
find out more about things when they come across a need for them in their work.