Here’s a brief guide to achieving better results from your photography, I hope you find it useful:
1. Take a camera everywhere you go; in the car, walking the dog, family days out. If you see a picture, snap it. Here’s a shot of my son out walking the dog in the woods and playing on a farm gate. I got a great set of fun pictures because I had a little snappy camera in my pocket. Now it’s on a website - who’d have thought! The more photography you do, the better you get at it, Simple.
2. Look at your results. No, really look at them. Are they any good? If not, try and figure out why not. Is it your technical ability - in other words are they sharp, are they well exposed, did you focus the lens well? Is it your composition? Are they messy, boring, confused? Is it the lighting or the colour - are they dull? When you learn to recognise what’s wrong in your photos only then can you start to put them right. This is called “strengths & weaknesses analysis”. What’s good about your photos, what’s bad and what would you change if you did them again? You have to be honest if you’re going to get better.
3. Learn your camera inside out. Read the instruction book. Play with the controls, read internet forums about your kit. The camera must become second nature to you or you’ll spend all your time fiddling with controls instead of creating great images. Automation on modern digital SLR’s makes this easy. Shutter priority makes capturing fast action simple. Aperture priority is great for landscapes, program modes allow you to point and shoot all the time and auto focus is faster and more accurate than you are most of the time. Don’t be afraid of these tools - learn how to use them in the right place.
4. Look at other photographers work and use them as inspiration. That’s not the same as copying them. All photographers take inspiration from the work of others. Look at the way other photographers use composition, lighting, camera angles, lenses and all the rest. Try to get similar results. Then do step 2 - analysis! Some photographers say “I don’t want to be influenced, I want to be original!” Well, that’s like saying I want to be a great musician but I won’t listen to music!
5. Lighting is everything in photography.Once you’ve learned how to use your camera and you’ve started getting good at analysing your results you can begin to really learn to look at light. Light comes in many forms. Hard and contrasty, soft and flat, colourful sunsets and monotone cloudy days. All light is good for photography - the trick, which professionals have all learned, is matching the right subject to the right kind of light. Harsh, midday light is not good for much and most pros avoid it. I’ll tell you why. Imagine you get home from a hard day at the office. You walk into your lounge, putting on the main light as you go. Then you go round and switch on all the table lamps. Now you turn off the main light, sit down and relax, with nice, comfortable, mood lighting. Well photography is just like that. The midday sun is like your main, overhead light - harsh and glaring. The early morning sun and late afternoon sun is like your table lamps -soft, warm and comfortable. That’s when you get your best shots - particularly landscapes. Cloudy days are great for still life studies of flowers or waterfalls because there’s no dark shadows to block out the detail.
6. Now you need a great subject - a focal point. It’s great to have stunning light but to really use it you have to find an interesting subject. And you have to make sure the subject remains the focus of all the attention in your shot. It has to be the focal point. Most dull, uninteresting pictures are that way because they have no recognisable focal point and the lighting is dull. So find a great subject and wait for really interesting light to get the best out of it, or if you find great lighting, hunt out a subject good enough to make the most of it.
7. Composition. OK. So you’ve mastered your camera. You’ve practised and practised and spent time analysing your results. You’ve studied your favourite photographers work and tried to figure how to get similar shots yourself and you’ve begun to understand lighting so what’s next? Well, composition is important - but not necessarily the basic composition that is always talked about . Yes, the Rule of Thirds and Golden Section are important (you ought to read up on them if you’re not sure) but fundamentally we all use basic composition without really thinking about it. What we need as photographers is some guidelines that help us to compose really striking, dynamic pictures that stand out from the crowd. Here’s some ideas that professional photographers use all the time; Strong diagonals, leading lines, layers, strong colour contrast, bold foregrounds with wide angle lenses and compressed perspective with telephoto lenses, stepping stones to lead the eye, differential focusing, symmetry, repeating patterns, reflections and strong geometric shapes like stripes, triangles or interlocking diagonals...that’s just a short list of things that come to mind. Spend some time familiarising yourself with these ideas - there’s plenty of info on-line about all these concepts.
8. And here at number 8 on the list is fundamentally the most important lesson I have for you - KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid! If you do just one thing to improve your photography, make it this one. Simple pictures always work better than complicated ones. Pictures with lots of stuff in them are often confused, lack any sense of focus or idea of subject and appear dull as we struggle to interpret them. Great photography is always direct - and simple. I aim, whenever possible, to have no more than three elements in my photos; maybe a sky, a non-distracting foreground and a simple subject. Have another look at the photo at the top this page. Just three things: green bars of the gate (forming a convenient frame), subject (my son Toby) and non-distracting background of woodland, (rendered out of focus with a wide aperture/short depth of field). The colours are all sympathetic - Green and red/orange go really well together. The focal point is very clearly defined as Toby’s face - just what it should be. Remember this lessen - keep it simple and your photography will take off.
9. If you’ve got this far, well done, you’re obviously keen. Now go and be adventurous with your photography and experiment. Find out what happens if...What happens if I use a slow shutter speed, or low camera angle? What happens if I use some flash in daylight, what happens if I shoot into the sun... You’ll only find out if you try. Professional photographers are always looking for new ways to shoot subjects, to try and get an edge. You should do the same.
10. Finally then, we arrive at at my final pearl of wisdom. And it’s this. Use a tripod. I lifted this direct from the late, great Galen Rowell, (www.mountainlight.com) in his brilliant book “Mountain Light” which is still in print. He said that by using a tripod, he was forced to slow down, think about what he was doing and consider all the options. It gave him time to study the lighting, the shapes, textures and lines of the composition and made him work the same way as a photographer using large format cameras, even though he was shooting 35mm film. He also said that he’d seen very few pictures taken hand held that couldn’t have been improved if shot on a tripod. I think he was right. Using a tripod disciplines you and forces you to consider what you’re doing and why. I always use a tripod for landscapes just to make me slow down and wait for the light but I use one for other subjects too, just keep things disciplined. Try it.
Further reading:
I recommend the following books - they helped me
Mountain Light - In Search of the Dynamic Landscape by Galen Rowell available on Amazon at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mountain-Light-Search-Dynamic-Landscape/dp/0871563673
The Making of Landscape Photographs by Charlie Waite
http://www.amazon.co.uk
The Art of Nature Photography: Perfect Your Pictures In-camera and In-computer by Niall Benvie
http://www.amazon.co.uk
You may also want to look at a book that features my own work:
World’s Top Photographers’ Workshops: Sport & Action
by Andy Steele published by Rotovision available from my books page above
I hope you have found this page helpful and/or entertaining! Any comments on the content are welcomed