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| *SoulEyes Photography>>>Photography Tips |
What is/are your best photography tips/tricks? |
What is/are your best photography tips/tricks? My best tip is simple. Learn the basics, then master the basics. Learn how to compose and frame a shot. Learn how to use lighting -- highlight and shadow. Learn what an exposure value is and how f/ stops, shutter speeds, and film speeds effect an exposure. Learn how different focal length lenses change your framing. Learn what depth of field is and how to use it creatively. Once you gotten proficient with the basics, keep at them until you master them. In other words, know your craft as a photographer. Don't go out and take a few hundred shots in hopes that you'll have a half dozen good ones. Start to think in terms of the frame of your viewfinder and how to compose within that frame. Start to think "photographically." In other words, when you see something that might make an interesting subject, figure out how to compose a picture of that subject. Have an idea what your finished picture will look like before you ever put viewfinder to eye. There are no tricks to photography. It's a lot of work to get it right, but once you do, it is one of the most rewarding hobbies/vocations you can have. My best advice, puchase a professional copy of Adobe Photoshop for editing and learn it inside and out. It's my best and favorite tool. Tips? Read about photography. Read biographies and/or autobiographies about famous photographers. Margaret Bourke-White. Walker Evans. Edward Weston. Robert Capa. Dorothea Lange. Gordon Parks. Minor White (no relation to Bourke-White). W. Eugene Smith. Edward Steichen. Alfred Eisentaedt. David Muench. Ansel Adams. Read camera magazines. Study the art and craft of photography. Learn your camera so well you can operate it blindfolded. Study about light and ISO and f-stops and shutter speeds. Learn them until they become part of your subconscious and you no longer have to think about them - you just "know" what to do and when and how. Learn the "Rules of Composition" so you will know when and how to bend and/or break them. Stop looking at your surroundings and start seeing them. Give yourself assignments - take a series of photos about litter. Take one of old buildings. Document a day on a street in your town - from sunup until sundown, all the comings and goings. Pretend you only have 72 exposures and make each one count - as though there was no Photoshop. Find useful tools and buy them. Go to fotosharp.com and order their Day & Night Exposure Guide so you can take good photos in low light and at night. Go to expoimaging.net and order their ExpoAperture2 so you'll know about depth of field. Buy their ExpoDisc so you can achieve perfect white balance in mixed lighting. Slow down. Study the scene before you*. See it from different points of view. Kneel down. Climb up on a rock or tree. See any distractions like powerlines or litter or anything else that will detract from your photo and figure out how to eliminate them. Before releasing the shutter check your viewfinder. Is there a tree "growing out" of Aunt Millie's head? Is there a powerline "running through" your dad's head? Is there a dog relieving himself on a tree in the background? Are there beer bottles in the background? Stop making 300 exposures and hoping 20 or 30 will be worth saving*. Get the image right in the camera. Get it right in the camera. * Obviously there are times when this won't apply. If you see a plane on fire and about to crash or a tank truck spinning out of control its shoot! shoot! shoot! I have, on occasion, taken portraits of horses for clients. Full on side views were no problem, since most of the horse's body was, essentially, on the same plane. It was in taking 3/4 views that I discovered a problem. With my regular lens, I found that the horse's head loomed HUGE, while the body diminished in size, farther back. The result was very freaky looking, giant headed horsies! The solution was to mount my telephoto lens. (The 100mm worked fine) I stepped back, away from the horse, and the distortion went away. From a far enough distance, even the huge animal's entire body was, pretty much on the same relative plane. Think of fisheye lens in reverse. No distortion and happy, paying clients! Designer, Illustrator and Desktop Publisher for over 30 years |
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