Are you interested in photography and ready to learn skills to up your game? Do you want to evolve from iPhone snapshots to crafting something intentional? Today my plan is to drop some photography-for-beginners tips onto your shutter finger.
Film photography. It’s coming back, and more and more photographers are dusting off their old film cameras or going out on a search to purchase one. Many people don’t see the appeal and feel quite comfortable with their phone camera. But for others, it’s becoming the only way they create images.
There's more to consider than focal length and price when buying a new lens. Lenses come with an assortment of features such as stabilization and weather sealing, plus issues like distortion and bokeh.
I think photography educators teach and talk about photography to beginners in an overly complicated way. It’s all concepts, jargon, theories, and numbers. It should be focused on composition and how to take ‘better’ photographs as this is what most beginners join courses to learn.
In the photographic arms race, mirrorless systems are on the rise, having pushed DSLRs into the history books. But, just as film isn’t dead, neither are rangefinders. This seemingly obsolete design remains sharp, fast, and challenging enough to suit even the most confident photographers.
When compared to the other components of the exposure triangle (shutter speed and aperture), ISO appears to be the most intuitive on the surface. It is also the most misunderstood component, and everything from its definition to its usage has been discussed extensively.
As perhaps the most important parameter to understand in photography, shutter speed should be one of your first considerations when making a photograph. It’s one of the biggest reasons that photographers might find themselves unhappy with their shots, and having a great understanding of it is crucial to making great images.
When using manual focus, it’s difficult to tell exactly where your plane of focus is. It’s possible to make a guess using your eye, but you can still be slightly off and end up with an image that is out of focus. Similar to how histograms take the guesswork out of exposure, focus peaking uses an algorithm and a simple visual aid to help take the guesswork out of manually focusing your lens.
Let’s talk about wedding photography flash and what you need to know. Shooting with flash can be intimidating if you’re just starting out but it can be freeing the more you know how to use it. There might be times when you need to use flash and there might be times when you choose to use flash.
Adobe Lightroom Classic is an incredibly powerful raw-processing tool, but it has so many layers and features it can take a long time for users, especially beginners, to discover them all.
If you didn’t believe your grade school math teachers when they said you’d use graphs in the real world, you’re about to. In photography, histograms can seem intimidating, but they are incredibly useful tools that are much easier to understand than they appear. Learning about histograms will help you understand exposure, post-processing, and the overall structure of a photograph.
“You don't take a photograph, you make it,” Ansel Adams once said. Great point, but let's take it a step further. An important thing to remember is that photographs are just a type of picture, and pictures are made of lines.
If you’ve been outside during a nice sunrise or sunset, chances are good you’ve heard the term “golden hour.” It’s one of the best times to do many types of photography and a beautiful time to be outside. This guide will help you understand golden hour, when it happens, and how to make the most of it through various types of photography.
The rule of thirds is widely considered to be one of the most important first techniques you can learn to create better compositions and help you progress from “taking pictures” to “making photographs.”
The neutral-density filter, or ND filter, is a powerful lens filter photographers use to reduce the amount of light entering a camera lens in order to select exposure combinations that would otherwise result in overexposed images. This article is a basic guide to ND filters and how they are used.
When you hear “long exposure,” you probably think of a shutter speed that’s too slow to hand-hold and produce a sharp image. It might be something like ¼”, or maybe as long as 30”, which is the most common slowest shutter speed in DSLR and mirrorless cameras. However, shutter speeds slower than 30” can be advantageous in many long-exposure scenarios.
Landscape photography is one of the most popular photographic genres. It's easy to get started with the genre, but it can take a lifetime to master landscape photography skills. You don't need a sophisticated camera or expensive lens, and the skills you learn when doing landscape photography translate to other types of photography.
Graduation portrait photography is an opportunity to develop your portrait skills, make photos that your client will treasure, and have fun. There are important logistics to keep in mind for a smooth and well-executed graduation portrait shoot, and this guide will help prepare you.
As photographers, when we hear the word "bokeh", we probably already have a visual in our mind of its meaning. Since bokeh can be somewhat abstract and subjective, describing it can be difficult.
Photography is full of baffling jargon and complex numbers to the uninitiated, and it can be daunting for beginning photographers. If you are just starting out, here is an introductory guide for fundamental things you need to have and know before you jump into the wonderful world of photography.