photography rites of passage

elven

I don't know why, but there seem to be certain things that we all do, when we pick up a camera and start getting into photography. I think it has an effect on the response to a lot of new people round here when they come and post their first few shots, and you could almost cut and paste the last C&C response you gave so it gets a bit wearing to repeat yourself over and over again.

I thought it might be a good resource if a few of us who have been shooting for a while can give some advice on some of the stuff we appreciated being told when we got started that helped us get beyond the first stage, or even some of the stuff we had to learn for ourselves... besides the technical basics, like 'what is depth of field, aperture, shutter speed' etc, because we've covered that elsewhere.

It could be seen as setting out 'rules' but even so, it's only a guideline (like the pirate's code ) and nobody's saying you have to follow them. But quite often, learning these conventional approaches can help you see how it can be done well in one way, then when you've mastered that, you can say 'screw it', and go your own way. There's a difference between doing something a particular way on purpose, and doing it mindlessly, not realising you could have done it differently.

Anyway, without further ado:

My number 1 piece of advice - figure out what drew your attention in the first place, and simplify, simplify, simplify. Get closer, use a longer lens, use shallow depth of field, just make sure that the photo shows exactly what you were looking at. What you need to learn to be able to do is look at a scene as if your eyes were a camera and lens. We see something interesting, and mentally 'zoom in' on it, ignoring stuff that's in the way, stuff that's distracting beside it, forgetting how far away it is - our brain ignores all that and concentrates on the item of interest. It filters out distractions, it fills in the blanks for what you can't actually see. But then you lift your camera with a wide angle lens on it to your eye from 20 feet away and take a picture. You look at the picture later and sure, what you saw is in there - but it's surrounded by stuff, it's small in the middle of the frame, it's not entirely obvious what you were actually trying to show in the picture. How often does stuff show up in a picture that you didn't notice at the time? Did you check all the edges and corners of the viewfinder, as well as the bit where you put your subject? Be very aware of everything you include in the picture, and make a conscious decision to have it there. it's handy to ask yourself questions when you're editing your own shots as if you're someone else - ask yourself (in a non-multiple-personality kind of way) why is that like that? Why is that in there, why is that over to the right/in the middle/at the top? What would it look like if it was different? Can you see what I was trying to capture when I saw this scene?

Most of photography is seeing I think, and then you have a small amount of learning how to use the camera to record that.

Whaddya think? Anyone else?

sineadw

Yep - like I said just there best piece of advice I ever got - look all around the viewfinder before you take a shot!

Hmmm...

I'd add to walk all around the object too (If possible - not that easy if its a moon shot for instance..). Try out all the different angles. Lie on the floor, go left, go right, go under and over. Sometimes the angle really makes the shot (plagiarising Calina here ).

lenco75

oh for the big viewfinders, I have a nikon D200- I certainly find it more relaxing to compose with the vf on my old nikon F3. Good advice - i'd love to try out a large format for that reason. Maybe that's another reason why large format photography is so considered.