Having the opportunity to seek advice from a professional photographer or photography teacher, most beginners ask about the “right” camera or the “best” lens, or the “top tip” on how to become 50 times better in one moment. Such questions seem quite logical when you pick up a camera for the first time.
But the aspiring amateur photographer should stay away from these questions... at least for a while. Photographic equipment is important and you will learn a lot from the pros useful tips, but it is necessary to keep paramount things in priority.
Follow these seven tips and start your photography journey with the right steps.
First train ride. Photo credit: Spragues
1. Education is primary, technology is secondary
You know what they say, "spend money on experiences, not things." Scientific research supports this statement. The fact is that even a fleeting experience will remain a part of your personality, and not just an object that you own.
This is not only great advice for life, but also a completely underrated recommendation for photographers. When choosing between a brand new camera or lens and a seminar or a trip to an amazing place, most beginners will prioritize technology. Don't make this mistake.
Attend good seminars or go on photo tours to unfamiliar places. famous photographer National Geographic Jim Richardson once said, "If you want to be the best photographer“Be where something interesting happens.”
The Canon EOS-1D X won't do you any good if you don't know how to use it...and unless you have something in your backyard that needs to be photographed at 14 fps. Spend money on education, gain experience, forget about photographic equipment for a while.
New profile photo. Author of the photo: Valentin Kouba
2. Shoot for yourself, not for others
If you are shooting with the goal of creating something similar to other popular images, collecting likes or comments, then you are not on the right track. This applies to all art forms, especially when you are a beginner. Your main audience is yourself.
Shoot what you love. Focus on the things that inspire you. It should bring joy first of all to you. People will notice and appreciate your creative potential and individuality.
Little photographer. Photo by: Jaromir Chalabala
3. Create artificial limits for yourself
One of better ways for a beginner to improve skills is to limit yourself. It is possible in the genre, but now we are talking about technology.
Try shooting exclusively with your smartphone for a month and see how your ability to visualize composition changes when you stop thinking about image quality. Or limit yourself to one lens for two or three months, and you will notice how your understanding of focal length grows by leaps and bounds.
Constraints are one of the best ways to grow. Intentional boundaries in the use of equipment, filming only in certain time days, black-and-white photography for a month are excellent options for artificial borders.
An effective way to develop mastery in yourself is to master new facets of the craft by setting limits for yourself.
Take me, photographer! Author of the photo: Vadim Trunov
4. Find your niche
This is the first piece of advice I give to every newbie, although they rarely listen to it.
Every aspiring photographer dreams that Jimmy Chin, Steve McCurry, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Paul Nicklen will simultaneously be embodied in his face. But you can't become a master of street and travel photography, portraiture and photography at the same time. wildlife... or you can, but sometime later, not right away.
Experiment in different areas of photography, you do not need to make a choice momentarily. But once you find what you like best, focus on that. You will be surprised how much faster your growth will be when you get rid of the compulsive need to do everything.
Define your specialization. Find your own niche and focus on it. Get to know the depth of your genre instead of covering everything superficially.
Nothing to lose. Photo by: Pedro Quintela
5. Slow down
One of those things that we have lost with rapid development digital photography is a recognition of the value of time spent. With up to 1,000 RAW images on a memory card, why not set it to burst mode and record at 14 frames per second, right? No, not right.
Yes, speed does sometimes help to capture a great shot, but this is reminiscent of the saying: “Even a blind squirrel can accidentally find an acorn.” Don't be a blind squirrel. Learn to breathe calmly, scout the area, carefully compose the frame, patiently shoot.
Pressing the shutter should be the culmination of thought and preparation. Are you planning a composition that you would like to capture? Scout the area in advance and determine the best time days or even a season to take a picture? Do you evaluate the filming potential of the scene you see, even without being on the set?
Digital photography has brought with it a lot of opportunities and we do not propose to refuse it. Just start shooting as if your camera were loaded with a 36-frame roll of film. Slow down, it's worth it.
Young Buddhist Monks. Author of the photo: Saravut Intarob
6. Join the community
Choose the community you like and join 500px or Facebook or Google+ or whatever.
Joining a group of amateur photographers has undeniable advantages. You are more likely to be pointed out to the mistakes that you made, or offered interesting perspectives that you yourself might not have guessed.
It's also incredibly rewarding to share your love of photography with other photographers and the whole world. Don't get bogged down in popularity competitions, keep shooting for yourself. But in the community, your professionalism will begin to grow faster.
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The main commandment of smartphoneography: no matter how cool the camera is, it is important who has it in their hands. And on the most luxurious DSLR you can take clear, but boring photos. Those that lie on the disk and no one opens them for years.
And you can do interesting photos on a smartphone, especially since this technique is always with you, you don’t need to uncover it for a long time and you won’t forget to remove the lens cap. And for the most part, smartphones are cheaper than DSLRs, which is also very pleasing.
website I've put together a few tips for you on how to take great photos with your smartphone.
Programs
A camera in a smartphone is, first of all, a program that maintains a lens and a matrix. Therefore, you should not dwell on what Android or iOS dictates to you. You may want to use different programs for different shooting situations. Some give a more interesting color reproduction, others - a little more close-ups: Pudding Camera, CameraMX, Photosynth, VSCO Cam, Slow shutter cam, Pro HDR, Camera+, etc. Why limit yourself when you have a choice?
Having chosen the program, it is worth delving into the settings. Set high resolution pictures, remember that in difficult cases you can play with white balance, ISO and turn off autofocus. And in general, to find out what a particular program can create interesting things.
zoom
Crop as a substitute for zoom.
The fact that the smartphone has a digital zoom, it is better to forget once and for all. Such an increase in most cases is achieved by serious losses in image quality. The best zoom is legs: get closer, move further.
If this is not possible, then it is more reasonable in the post-processing process to cut out the frame you need from a large photo. The cropping function is present even in the simplest programs. Plus, you don’t waste time adjusting the size, but just shoot. And already in a calm environment, you competently build a frame, not missing details that you could accidentally cut off, wielding zoom in the field.
Series
Take multiple shots of the same scene. Subsequently, you can choose the most successful picture and work with it. And, before deleting photos from your smartphone, it will not be superfluous to view them on a computer, since on the small screen of the phone you may not notice nice photos only because they appear overexposed or underexposed.
If it doesn’t turn out interesting, it’s worth changing the shooting angle.
When photographing something or someone, don't be afraid to change angles. You can take a picture head-on, or you can slightly change the angle and get an interesting shot. Moreover, the compact size of the smartphone allows you to take angles for which a photographer with a large camera will have to sweat a lot.
Light
Flash on a smartphone should be used very carefully. As a rule, it "deads" the photo, distorts colors and shadows. Flash is good only when you need to take pictures immediately, otherwise you will miss the moment.
At the same time, light is the main tool of the photographer. This is important for professional cameras, but for smartphones it is much more important. Therefore, always look for light, look at how it falls on the object, and you will have a frame.
Good light in the morning and evening. On a sunny afternoon, you will have to work with too high a contrast, which threatens with artifacts in the pictures. Luxurious effects are given by a pre-stormy sky.
Object shooting
On the left is a picture with a lack of lighting, on the right - with a flashlight.
If you want to take a picture of something or someone at home, the smartphone can become stubborn - there is rarely enough light in the room. But you can take a simple LED flashlight and a sheet of white paper to compensate for the too sharp shadow. Let's say a flashlight shines from the top right, on the left we bring a sheet of white paper that reflects the light of the flashlight and additionally highlights the object, and press the button on the phone.
Lens Cleanliness
Frame through fingerprint.
It would seem that the obvious thing is the purity of the lens, but smartphone lovers often come across it. The phone is used constantly, lies in your pocket, and when you take it to answer a call or SMS, the last thing you remember is that you left a fingerprint on the lens glass. When shooting, this print gives, of course, a slight mysterious blur, but, as a rule, you do not expect this effect in the intended picture.
Trip delay
It is important to take into account the fact that the shooting program in the smartphone in most cases works with a delay. You have already pressed the button, but the camera is still thinking before taking the picture. Therefore, it is important to think proactively, like a hunter who does not shoot at a hare, but at the place where, according to his assumption, the hare will be in the next moment.
Let's say you are photographing a flower in a field, and it's windy that day, you need to take into account the speed of the camera and at the same time catch the moment between gusts of wind. Difficult, but the result will be more valuable due to the effort spent.
Post-Processing Programs
Easiest editing on Instagram.
Post-processing of photos is done by most professional photographers, absolutely always in commercial photography, and for smartphone photography it is a vital necessity. You can't adjust shutter speed and aperture on a smartphone. This limitation is compensated by many post-processing programs. This is beyond the well-known Instagram and Flickr.
- VSCO Cam. Allows you to apply a variety of filters and settings. Distributed for free.
- Afterlight. Good for color correction. It costs 34 rubles.
- touch retouch. This simple tool allows you to remove small imperfections in the image and clone parts of the image. There are free and paid versions.
- snapseed. Great amount filters and effects such as tilt-shift and focus adjustment, sharpness and color adjustment. Distributed for free.
- Pixlr Express. Big choice filters, frames, effects. Completely free.
- Photoshop Express. It does not give any special settings, but there are a lot of different filters that make the processing process as fast as possible. Can work with RAW files. Conditionally free.
- Rookie. There are both free and paid features. The standard package of the application includes a lot of vintage filters adapted for different genres of photography: portraits, landscapes, city sketches, macro, etc.
- Phonto. Allows you to add any fonts you want to your photo. Distributed for free.
- Moldova. Free App in Russian, which allows you to make collages by combining up to 9 pictures.
- MultiExpo(for iOS). An interesting application for creating the multiple exposure effect. Distributed for free.
- Photo Grid. Free application for making collages. Can work with files in high resolution.
- Lens Light. The application allows you to add highlights, glows and bokeh effects to your photos. It costs 99 rubles.
Here are a few basic poses for posing and the main mistakes that most of us make.
Hands on hips is an aggressive posture. In addition, you hide your hands. Show your nails and pull your elbows back. Turn your head a little and you already have an intriguing pose, not an aggressive one.
Don't compress your waist, this will create creases in your clothes that ruin your look.
Watch the position of the hands - avoid tight or unnatural straight arms, as well as elbows exposed to the photographer. Remember to keep your wrists free and flexible.
A light touch to your face with your fingertips and a slightly open mouth can make you more attractive, if not carried away. Do not put pressure on the face, so as not to get the "toothache effect"
Yes, your hands should be free, but they should not hang with whips, you are not partisans on execution. Place one hand on your waist and slightly (slightly!) turn or tilt your head to emphasize the beauty of the face.
Do not bulge your eyes, it looks too deliberate and unnatural. Turn your head slightly, open your lips a little, and you can touch your face - this will be feminine.
Don't squint your eyes, you're not a mole. Your natural form the eye is the most beautiful.
Don't hide your face behind your hands. See what's the difference.
Beautiful poses for a photo shoot
Use your hand accents correctly. Where your hands are, there is the attention of the viewer. Instead of hands on the stomach, it is better to emphasize the beauty of the waist. And it is good to show the shoulders and chest with a more open gesture.
Looking down makes the lips look too big. Better try different angles of turning your head. And don't forget to look at the camera.
Unless you are the wife of an African tribal chief and don't have rings around your neck, don't lift your chin.
Hands should always be relaxed. Just compare these two photos and you will understand why.
When shooting in full height there is no point in artificially disturbing the natural vertical line. Any pose in which you have to strain to keep your balance, whether it's a squat, or a slight tilt to the side, will make you a broken doll in the picture.
How to take pictures correctly? Here's a little pose secret for good full-length photos: make sure your body curves like an "S": face the photographer and shift your body weight on one leg and put the other forward. Remember that the arms should be relaxed, the posture comfortable, and the chin slightly raised.
Good photos for you!
Translator's note: This article is an introductory material that gives brief description simple but critical items for professional photography. For beginners, such tips will help to avoid many mistakes and get closer to professionals faster, as well as push them to further study the necessary materials.
If you want to take good photos, these tips, tricks and techniques from top-notch photographer Tigz Rice will help you improve your skills.
Whether you want to take pictures for design work, photograph models for illustrations, or anything else, these tips will come in handy for everyone.
In the next 15 paragraphs, Tigz will cover gear, lighting and editing - everything you need to know to get the best photos.
1. Make a plan
Before you take the camera, make a couple of sketches or a storyboard of what you want to get. This will allow you to stick to a certain idea during the shooting.
2. Background
A solid background color in the studio will make sure that the subject is the focal point and will be easier to separate in case you need to create a composition.
Gray is a great color as it suits most situations well. You can also shoot against a white background for a lighter composition, or black for dark shots.
Whichever background you choose, make sure the background color doesn't match the subject's color.
3. Light sources
Also, if you plan to make a composite image, you need to make sure that all the objects/people in it are shot with the same light source(s).
Before pressing the camera shutter button, think about where the subject will be located and at what angle the light will fall on it. Perhaps it needs to be illuminated from above or below?
It is also worth considering the type and color of lighting. We will talk about this in the next steps.
4. Natural light: "golden hour"
Everyone can benefit from natural light, although its quality varies greatly depending on location, time of day and weather.
If you rely on natural light, the best time to shoot is during the so-called "golden hour". This is the last hour before sunset, when the sun is already close to the horizon.
5. Natural light: hard light
At noon, when the sun's rays fall almost perpendicular to the ground, hard shadows are obtained, especially under the eyes and chin. If you have to shoot at this time of day, place your subject in the shade or use a reflector to diffuse some of the light and soften the shadows.
Alternatively, you can try shooting indoors near a window, using mesh curtains to diffuse the light. However, hard light can be used to your advantage - great for capturing textures!
6. Artificial light
If natural lighting is not an option, you can always create it yourself. Light sources such as lamps can be a great help in illuminating areas of the frame and are probably always readily available.
If you don't want to tread on the beginner's level, a flash, along with wireless shutter releases, or even a set of portable lights, is a good investment.
7. Camera
Obviously, if you want the best results, a DSLR or a compact mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses is a must. Both views provide full control over settings. How to properly dispose of them - read in the following paragraphs.
There are plenty of camera options for every wallet, so you can always find the best model.
8. The right lens
To some, this point may also seem too simple, but it would still be nice to recall it. The lens is an important part of the camera and should be chosen wisely. Each lens has its own focal length, which ranges from wide (14mm) to telephoto (200 - 400mm).
50mm is the best option for most situations if you're just trying your hand at photography and want something cheap, simple, and better than a kit camera lens.
The next step is to invest in 85mm/135mm for portrait and detail shots, and 35mm for landscape photography.
9. Shoot in RAW
If you're using a DSLR or mirrorless, make sure you're shooting RAW and not JPEG.
This will allow the camera to shoot and process images without compression, leaving more room for processing in Lightroom or Photoshop in case you need to correct the exposure.
10. Working in the dark
Whether you're shooting with a DLSR or a compact mirrorless, you've got a lot of flexibility in how you control your sensor sensitivity with ISO control.
The higher the value, the more noise there will be in the picture, so try to set the ISO to the minimum allowable mark. Here are some examples for different situations.
- Outside in sunny weather: 100-200
- Outside on a cloudy day: 400
- In a well lit room: 800-1000
- In a dark room: 1600-2000
11. Depth of field
Aperture doesn't just adjust the size of the hole that lets in light, it also controls how much of the frame is in focus depending on the distance.
If you need sharp focus from foreground to background, shoot at f/8 or higher. Otherwise, if you want blurry backgrounds and a sense of depth, experiment with f/1.8.
12. High-speed shooting
Fast shutter speeds (1/200s or slower) are great when you need to freeze the moment, while slow shutter speeds (1s or more) can help convey a sense of movement or create a slow-motion effect.
When working with long exposure Remember to take a tripod and remote control with you to avoid camera shake.
13. Different options
Once you've got the shot you want, take a couple more shots, varying the data. The main challenge is posing, so once you're done, try shooting from different angles, settings, and lighting styles. If a lot of time is spent on framing a shot, then this approach can save a lot of time later.
14. Color harmony
If conditions are limited and you have to use different light sources, you may need to correct the colors to make the picture look harmonious.
This can be done with the tool white balance(White Balance) in the Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom module. Or you can read the tutorial.
15. Smart background cropping
After release Adobe Photoshop With CC 2015.5, it's even easier to cut out the background. Why not take advantage of this? Read about it in the article How to use the tools
With the advent of digital and SLR cameras, accessible to the general population, photography has become a very common hobby and even a source of income for many, so more and more people are wondering how to learn to photograph. We'll tell you what you need to do to go above and beyond family gatherings and sightseeing photos.
Start with the basics
Learn the basics of photography, which includes knowing about composition, exposure, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, etc. Information about this can be found in specialized literature or on Internet resources. We suggest watching the following video about the basics of photography.
Understand what features your camera has and how it works - read the user manual.
You need to learn how to hold the camera correctly. Usually, the body of the camera is held with the right hand, the index finger is within reach of the shutter button, and the lens is supported from below with the left hand to avoid shaking.
Genres of photography
The main genres include such as landscape, portrait, still life, reportage photography. Starting to photograph, decide what genre you like the most and develop in this direction.
Scenery
When looking at a good landscape shot, the viewer should have an understanding of what made the photographer stop at this particular frame and shoot this landscape.
Portrait
The most attractive object of shooting was and remains a person. Ideally, the task of a portrait photographer is not just to show a person, but to learn how to convey his image, mood, inner world.
Still life
This genre is designed to present various household items and art in an elegant form. And by depicting objects belonging to a particular person, you can reveal his inner world and character.
reportage photography
The photo essay is designed to capture the natural course of an event, enclosed in a certain time frame. Such shooting assumes the absence of a production, as a rule, a reportage is shot impromptu. You can shoot concerts, holidays, sports and much more.
A good photographer always thinks before pressing the shutter button, so everyone who wants to learn how to take pictures, regardless of the chosen genre, we advise you to pay attention to the following recommendations:
To learn how to take pictures, you need constant practice. Shoot every day. Take your camera with you everywhere and do not miss the opportunity to capture your favorite moment.
At first, you can take pictures of at least everything in a row, but after you get used to the camera, do not wait for a good subject to come to hand - look for this subject. When an idea pops into your head, find a way to bring it to life.
These tips will come in handy for those who want to learn how to take photos for themselves, and those who want to take a photo.
