The first year of photography is by far the best! Find out why and how these tips can help your journey.
First year = Best year
The first year of photography will always be the best, there is a great deal of labour and pain involved in building the foundational knowledge to take good photos, however once a particular skilled is acquired the fruitful reward is twice as emotional compared to the growing pains.
Don't Be Boxed In
One of the most intriguing parts of photography is the different types of lanes available, almost reminds me of my time living in Melbourne where there are numerous laneways in the city that are hiding amazing cafe and restaurants. In photography there are numerous styles and it can be advantageous to explore all to discover what's right for you. For instance there is portrait photography, landscape, wildlife, wedding, street, boudoir. The other facet is using different types of cameras that produce a unique feel to the photo - i.e. the latest digital camera will produce high quality sharp photos, a polaroid film camera will blossom a vintage feel to the photo, there are also drones that can produce amazing ariel shots.
Eventually a photographer will specialise in one or a few areas, yet having experience in many different fields will help with the overall learning as each type of photography presents it's own challenges.
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Create your Own Photo filters
Picking up a professional camera and taking photos is more difficult than people imagine, and with the exhibition of quality photos that hang on social media it's easy to want to fast track and cut corners to success which can ultimately end up hurting rather than helping. Lightroom is the most popular editing software when using photo presets - a preset is a set of edits created by the user in a photo where the edits are saved and used on future photos. What benefited me a great deal was not buying photo presets and going through the painstaking effort of problem solving all the editing options to create presets that will be unique to my photography.
There may be instances where purchasing presets online can be beneficial - a wedding photographer who is delivering hundreds of photos to a client may find it more efficient to have a combination of purchased and self created presets.
The downside to purchasing pesets is the lack of learning taking place. A slightly better option than purchasing is to learn from Toutube tutorials that teaches how to create them. Yes is it's not self created however watching the tutorial will give you a background understanding on what is happening and why this newly edited photo looks the way it does.
Enjoy It
As noted the first year is the best year! It is the most adventurous year where you are discovering a variety of shooting techniques and acquiring new edit styles.
The first year is when a photographer will develop an identity or style through their photography. A style is not something that is planned but organically happens as most photos will generally be dragged though a similar editing process that works for the photographer.
The importance here is not to drown in misery when your photos do not look as good compared to well known photographers on Instagram, but to enjoy the journey and with each step that is taken forward eventually you will look back and think "wow I have came a long way".
SMile😀
Suffering Your way to a win
I first heard this phrase when I was watching a football match and the commentator pointed out that the team who had won the world championship previously continued to do well, however the pathway to success is always difficult, almost as if "they enjoy suffering their way to a win".
This holds true to my successes in photography whether that be committing to shooting all day as apposed to finishing later afternoon, the longer someone is taking photos in nature the higher chance they will walk away with a 1 in 1,000 shot. The struggle of solving a particular editing technique but after several attempts it just doesn't look the same as the person demonstrated it on Youtube. The hardest and most will breaking obstacle I found in my first year was mastering "dodge & burn" in photoshop. This involves evening out someone's skin in photoshop by brightening the dark patches and vice versa by using a curves adjustment. It was almost impossible to walk away with a polished looked and it appeared I could only harm the picture as apposed to enhance it. Eventually the suffering turns into success and this trait I believe separates the top photographers from the rest.
Manual Mode Is Easy
Learning to shoot in manual mode on a professional camera is like trying to drive a manual car, what appears to be easy from far away feels more difficult in the driver seat. It is tempting to shoot in auto mode however the camera will always be in control of the shot as apposed to a photographer's creative intelligent mind.
The key to shooting in manual mode is applying the "double your shutter speed" rule according to your focal length. The more zoomed in you are the more camera shake will occur. For instance when shooting at 200mm the ideal shutter speed would be 1/400fps. This is great for relatively still subjects, when capturing the movements of an animal or car a shutter speed of 3x or 4x (or higher) the focal length may be required depending on how fast the subject is moving.
With newly released cameras that have IBIS (in built image stabilisation) meaning the technology in the camera partly offsets camera shake leading to sharper photos, it is possible to set your shutter to slightly below 1/400 in reference to the example. This can prove handy in low light conditions where you would want to lower the shutter speed to compensate for the lack of light. In the scenario where it's a "shot of a lifetime" and the subject is still it may be safer to stick to doubling the shutter speed.
Once the frames per second setting is sorted the other 2 become easy to select - the aperture and ISO. ISO ideally you want low as possible, and only increase as a last resort when there isn't enough light in the shot.
Aperture can be a little tricky, when a shallow depth of field is required then perhaps f4 or f2.8 (possibly lower) is ideal, when you require the background in focus then something around the f8 mark is great. When shooting in a low light situation a lower f stop will help to bring in more light resulting in the affordability of keeping the ISO low and avoid visual noise that comes with a high ISO.
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