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Photography Tips: Five Tips for Beginning Photographers

By norman | February 22, 2010

So you’ve just picked up your first SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera. You have read the manual and surfed a few websites, and now you’re finally ready to get out there and shoot some pictures you’ll be proud to frame on your wall in a stunning black picture frame.  Right?  Sure! But before you hit the pavement with your camera in-hand and film rolls in your bag, take a moment to read over these five tips that can help push your work from great to amazing.

1.  Dump the Flash

While it’s true that professional photographers often do use a flash or complicated light rigs, you shouldn’t need a flash in most lighting conditions. Subjects taken in natural light often look more natural and have more detail and depth than pictures taken with a flash. Additionally, ditching the flash for the first week or so will make you intimately familiar with how your camera works with light – an invaluable skill for the beginning photographer.

2.   Turn Off Auto Focus

There’s no arguing that a camera that auto-focuses is infinitely handy and easy to use. However, learning how to focus on the fly is an important tool in any photographer’s tool box. Since cameras don’t understand your intent, it’s up to you to make sure you’re focused on the right thing at the right moment. It is incredible how unique and interesting an image can be when you allow the focus to move out of the direct center of the frame, so set this one to manual for a while.

3.  Take a Photo Class

You can buy all the books in the world and browse the internet for days, but the absolute best way to learn about photography is in a hands on environment. Find a class at a community college or local art school and see how understanding photography will improve your work for the better. As a bonus, your teacher will likely give you assignments based on individual elements of photography you may have never considered.

4.  Say Farewell to Color

Before you dive into color, buy a few rolls of T-Max 400 (great B&W film) and see if taking it back to the basics changes your interpretation of the world around you. You’ll know it’s time to upgrade to color when you can shoot and print a black and white image that has pure black, pure white, and every shade in between. Shooting in black and white will force your mind to think less about the “photo” and more about how light interacts with objects (the important part) in a frame.

5.  Shoot, Shoot, Shoot

This may seem obvious, but if you’re interested in becoming a “great” photographer, you’ll need to shoot lots and lots of photos. The more pictures you take, the better you will get. Photography is often as much about timing and luck as it is skill and equipment. Even “great” photographers only average 3-4 good photos at a time, so don’t worry about taking a lot of images. It’s far worse to miss a shot than take too many! Besides, you’ll only display the really good ones in a picture frame anyways.

There is no great secret to being an amazing photographer. The more you challenge yourself, the better you will become. If you start with a firm understanding of how your camera works and what it takes to make a good photograph, the rest will come in time. Your camera will never change, only your ability to manipulate it. So keep your camera close and extra film (or a memory card) on-hand. Never be afraid of experimenting with new ideas because there will always be more film or memory cards! And remember: The most important photograph in the world is the one you are about to take. And once you have that fantastic image, don’t forget to share it by displaying it on the wall in a hanging picture frame.


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