taking better photos

by m. werneburg, 2006

My goal in my photography is to take interesting photos. Below are some insights, useful tricks and the good habits I've discovered.

the basics

If I had to summarize everything I've learned in the past twenty-odd years with a camera in a few simple concepts, they would be these:

enjoy yourself
carry your camera around all the time, practice a lot, and study your successes and mistakes
read everything you can find on photography
try to think of what you're seeing the way it would look as a photo
film is cheap, take redundant shots

enjoy yourself

This may sound obvious, but the trick is not to let yourself get too worked up about turning out perfect photos. Many people are full of all kinds of advice on starting out with certain (expensive) equipment, or taking courses or following certain rigid practices. I don't advise this. My suggestion is to start with whatever equipment, subject matter and pace you like. If nothing less than a hulking medium format camera will do, fine. If a point-and-shoot is more your speed, that's great, too.

I started out as a child with a Kodak instamatic, and still have some good photos from that time that mean something to me. I had no idea what I was doing, but I got results I liked. It was only many years later when I decided to push myself that I started to learn how to use all the features on my SLR. That, of course, is when I really started to waste film, but by that point I was ready to push myself and have some fun with the exploration.

But again, if exploration isn't your thing, you'll find that modern cameras do a great job using the "Program" mode, be it a point & shoot or a DSLR. Don't let anyone drag down the amount of actual enjoyment you're getting by criticizing equipment or technique.

practice

There is no substitute for success.

Equipment-wise, it's a matter of familiarity. Practise helps you learn your camera's controls, its behaviour, its strengths and weaknesses. The same applies for individual lenses and accessories like the flash unit. The more you get used to your equipment, the better able you'll be to making quick decisions if you need to make a quick shot. Even planning a photo expedition becomes easier once you've gained some experience with your equipment—you know what you're going to actually use, and what you can leave behind.

In conjuncture with what you may have learned from the camera's manual, from other written sources, from classes, or from friends, you learn by doing. "There is no substitute for experience."

Practice gives you the opportunity to study what's worked, and what's disapoointed. Through practice, you'll whittle down the ruined shots, and have more of which you're really proud.

read everything your can find

An excellent way of supplementing your photographic experience is through reading anything and everything that you can find.

Read your camera's manual. You don't need to read the manual for your car, vacuum cleaner, toaster oven or DVD-player. But you really have to read your camera's manual. Especially in this DSLR era, there really is no other way to learn how to use a camera than to read its instruction manual (unfortunately).

Broader technical concepts are taught quite well in any number of sources. There are a lot of worthwhile printed sources on the the mechanics of photography, and plenty online as well. Some sources include:

Understanding Exposure
The Tutorial section at photozone.de

More than this, though, is the subject of the feeling for photography. Some people write on photography by 'gut feeling', while others write on self-expression. When reading these many sources, you build a better understanding of the art and technique of photography. Some good sources that stray from a strictly technical perspective include:

Some sources cover all angles. One of my favourites at the moment—and the only magazine I susbscribe to—is the excellent PhotoLife.

In photograpy, there is no 'right way' to it. The more you read on the experiences of other photographers, the more you realise that everyone has their own objective in photography. Some look for certain technical achievement; other seek to make statements or to explore; many make record shots of travel or family get-togethers. The same applies for learning photographic style; everyone has a style of their own. Sometimes you see extremes, such as one photographer I met whose portfolio was almost entirely comprised of reflections.

You'll come to see that your style is unique, and that it will develop on its own. Absorbing the work of others helps in discovering where yours is going, I believe.

The point is, use these sources to further your goals in photography, and not to get distracted or discouraged (see point #1, above). Take what you can apply to your own work, and do not doubt yourself.

see what the camera sees

By this I mean rely on the image in viewfinder to compose your shot, not what you know the scene looks like. The human brain does a fantastic job of interpreting visual information—this is what makes photography possible. But it's also a potential pitfall, because without a bit of training, you can't turn off that interpretation while taking the photo.

In recording a photo to film or digital file, only a limited portion of what you see with the naked eye is actually captured. It's very important to make your decisions on what will actually be captured, not what you think you see when not looking through the camera's lens.

Other people have said this before, but it's important. Many of my early photos had the problems of improperly selected angle of view (taking in half a river when I really just wanted one crocodile on the far bank), failing to recognise bad lighting conditions, failing to include a nearby object when trying to capture a broad vista, and a host of others. Again, reading the advice of others is important, and we learn from what works and what doesn't, but learning to see what's in the viewfinder is critical to success.

take redundant shots

The photo at the top of this page is one of my favourite pics from my two weeks in Fiji. It was taken on the morning of our departure from the resort where we'd been staying, and was the second of two shots I took of the same scene. The first was taken

bracketing
There is a technique called bracketing whereby you take identical photos with the exposure manually set to override the camera's exposure computer. This is done when you're in doubt that you have a shot with the appropriate exposure. The ability to manually override exposure is a somewhat advanced feature typically found in SLR cameras but not in point-and-shoot models.

with the long axis along the horizon, rather than vertical as in the one above, but the I think the real difference lay in the position of the person, the line of waves along the beach, even the arrangement of the fronds. I have consistently been rewarded by this habit. Some times the first photo works out, sometimes another.

I'm not advocating that repeat shots be taken with all conditions the same. But even a slight change in perspective can have dramatic effects. A slight change in your position relative to the subject, a change in the subject itself, a change in the lighting, or a change in depth of field or focal length can make a real difference to your second and following photographs of the same subject.

And, really, there is no down side to this. You should already be committed to using a lot of film (if you even use a film camera, which I do), because you've committed to practicing a lot. The improved results you will get should be beyond such accounting in any case. The opportunity won't come around again.

the end

This page will grow with time, but these starting points are, I think, the most important.