Mastering the Basics: 5 Essential Tips for Beginner Photographers
- Lovely Jubley
- Apr 15, 2024
- 7 min read
When starting on your photography journey, everything can seem so new and exciting. You've gotten your hands on a camera and all you want to do is start shooting. Your mind is swimming with creative ideas, but it's also all a bit overwhelming. There are so many things to keep in mind.
Are my camera settings correct?
Am I composing the photo correctly?
Will I be able to change this in Photoshop?
Is this even a good picture?
Don't worry, you're not alone, everyone feels like this at first. Every good photographer makes mistakes, in fact, I think it's an integral part of the learning process. The important thing is to understand the mistakes and learn from them. However, learning from others can give you a quick head start in your photography journey. I've created this list to help improve your photography skills. Here's what I think are 7 important photography tips for beginner photographers.
Tip 1: Understanding Your Camera
The first thing to understand about photography is your camera. If you're shooting in auto mode, now is the time to switch it to manual! I'll walk you through the 3 most important settings on your camera: Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO.
APERTURE: In essence, this is the amount of light that you are letting into your camera.
You may have also heard this referred to as F stop (the number that tells you the aperture setting). So if I say "The aperture is set to F2.4." this, counterintuitively, means your low aperture setting is wide open and letting a lot of light into the camera. On the other hand, if the aperture is set to F22, the camera would have a smaller opening that allows very little light into the camera.
SHUTTER SPEED: This is the amount of time that your camera's sensor is exposed to light.
This is commonly talked about in fractions of a second. A setting such as "1/1000" is a fast shutter speed as you're allowing light onto the camera sensor for one-thousandth of a second. And, even though "1/2", being half a second, may still seem like a small amount of time, that's a fairly long shutter speed.
ISO: This is how sensitive the camera's sensor is to the light you allow it to see.
A setting like ISO 100 or 200 is on the lower end of the scale and ISO 6400 or 12800 is on the higher end. The higher the ISO the more sensitive the sensor is to light, and the less light you have to allow into the camera to expose a photo correctly. Yet, the more sensitive it is, the lower your camera quality will be and the pictures will have more "noise".
In essence, these three settings are what you need to balance to properly expose a photo. If this all sounds like too much to take on at once, many cameras have a shutter speed priority or aperture priority shooting mode. Instead of jumping from auto straight to manual, you can start with either of these two modes. They will allow you to manually change either the shutter speed or aperture and the camera will handle the other setting for you. It's a nice stepping stone on your way to full manual control.
Tip 2: Mastering Composition
Correct camera settings aren't the only thing that makes a good photo, we also need to master the art of composition too. This, thankfully, is far more intuitive than balancing the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. If you've got an eye for photography, you're probably already doing this, but there are also a few rules we can follow to help us compose. Here are three to try out yourself:
The rule of thirds:
Imagine your camera's view is split into 9 sections, three rows, and three columns. It would make a sort of grid with 4 intersections. Place the subject on any of these four crossing points, and now you're following the rule of thirds.
Vanishing points:
Place an imaginary dot roughly in the middle of the photo. This is your vanishing point. Try to have any lines in the photo converging to this point.
Frames within frames:
The edge of the photo is a frame, and you can quickly and easily add interest by shooting through objects in the foreground. You could use something structured like a window to create a frame. You could try something looser, like the foliage of a tree. Get creative and see what you can use as a frame.
Another way to create interesting compositions is to think about angles. For example, if you're shooting a portrait and want the subject of your picture to look important and powerful, you can get down low with the camera and shoot up at them. Another example: if you're shooting food photography and want the subject to look graphic, try shooting from overhead to flatten the picture. You can combine the angle with a composition technique for powerful results, for example getting low to the ground when shooting with a vanishing point can create dramatic photos.
The last thing to consider is the props in your photo. I won't go too much into it here, as props could easily be the subject of a blog post itself. In essence, you can use props to help with composition. If you're shooting a flat-lay of a dining table, consider where you could position a glass of water or a napkin to further play with these rules of composition.
Tip 3: Using Natural Light
Artificial light is used by lots of professional photographers, either as the only light source or in tandem with natural light to enhance what's already there. However, introducing lighting into your shoots also introduces more levels of complexity. When you're first starting out with photography it's easiest to use the natural light that's available to you. The easiest kind of lighting to work with is the sunlight of an overcast day. This is because the clouds soften and diffuse the light removing a lot of the hard edges and dark shadows.
If you are interested in experimenting with lighting, one of the first steps I recommend is to use a reflector. Photographic reflectors are often cheap and lightweight, so they're a low-cost introduction to lighting. You can get reflectors in many sizes, and they tend to come with a reversible cover that allows you 5-in-1 options: white, silver, gold, black, and a diffuser. You can use the white or silver side of the reflector to bounce more or less light back onto your subject. The white will return less light with a softer look, and the silver will bounce back more light with more contrast. You can use the black side to absorb light and increase contrast in the shadows. The gold will bounce a warm-toned colour back. Finally, the diffuser won't bounce back any light, but it will work like a cloud cover, reducing and softening the light it allows past. If you can't get hold of a photographic reflector, you could even start experimenting with white and black cards.
Tip 4: Editing Basics
Editing using software like Photoshop or Lightroom can seem daunting at first, but it is well worth learning as it will open up all kinds of creative possibilities in the future. With editing, I'm entirely self-taught but have gained a wealth of knowledge over 15 years of experience. I learned everything I know about Photoshop through experimentation and watching YouTube videos. If there's anything I ever need help with on Photoshop, I turn to YouTube to learn it. There are so many great teachers publishing videos on anything you'd ever want to know but I'm a big fan of Piximperfect. If you're a total beginner then I would start with his Photoshop for Complete Beginners | Lesson 1
If you're not ready to take the full Photoshop plunge just yet, then Lightroom is super user-friendly and still allows you a lot of creative control. I have worked for professional photographers who still use Lightroom as their main editing software, so it's not the lesser option. The main difference is that Photoshop allows you a greater depth of control through the larger number of tools it offers.
Tip 5: Practice Regularly, Seek Feedback and Learn from Others
The last tip is to get out there and take photos. Take photos of your friends, take photos of dogs at the park, take photos of yourself, take pictures of everything! The more time you have with your camera, the more you'll learn all its controls and features. Get creative and make mistakes. When you look through your photos, preferably on a large screen, think about what you could have done differently. Think critically about what you could have changed. If the photo is blurred by camera shake, try upping the shutter speed. If your subject is squinting into the sun, next time position them in the shade.
Feedback is the best way to learn from your mistakes, and even better than self-critiquing is asking other photographers for advice. There are communities online for this, Reddit's /r/photocritique is a great place to engage with other photographers and share your work. You don't even have to share your own at first, just reading suggestions about others' work can help your own photographs.
Have a look for local photography societies and groups too. Meeting up and hanging out with other photographers can really help improve your shooting.
The main thing is to get hands-on with your camera; start shooting and start experimenting.
In Conclusion
Here's a quick rundown of the tips:
Learn how your camera works, but don't feel you have to learn everything before you start. Just pay attention to the setting and notice what happens when you change them.
Think about the rules of composition, and how you can change the way your photo feels through the use of angles and props.
Start with natural light, and then introduce a reflector to get creative.
Editing doesn't have to be a big complicated beast, there are tools to make it easier and plenty of tutorials online to help unpick it.
Shoot, shoot, shoot. Keep practising and share your photos and ideas with others. Join or create a community and review your work.
If you start implementing these 5 photography tips, you'll be well on your way to mastering the art of photography!
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