Are you looking for a new hobby? Our world is covered in images nowadays. Everything from Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram have made photography highly important to us. Images tell us information in an instant. People want artistic photos of everything from babies, pets, and their lunch. Photography has taken us by storm. Start learning how to take expert photos with a few tips.
1. Buy A Moderate Camera: As you are learning, you don’t need the fanciest camera that money can buy. Get a decent camera that has basic functions and capabilities. As you grow in your experience and passion, then you’ll have a better understanding of the functions that you most often use and need in a camera. That’s when you can invest a large amount of money into the camera and all of its attachments. If not, you’ll end up wasting a bunch of money on something that you don’t know that you like or even need.
2. Photograph Everything: You’ve heard the term “practice makes perfect,” and it couldn’t be truer. The more you do, the better you’ll become. Don’t wait to photograph a specific landscape or a special backdrop. Start photographing everything around you. You’ll start to see things differently, and become interested in the mundane, everyday things. You’ll find the beauty in the small stuff. As you take more and more photos, you’ll hone your skills to make it worth it to set up a special shoot for a desired subject matter.
3. Research and Learn: As you play with your new camera, read online about all of its functionalities. Learn about the history of the camera and how it operates. You’ll find out about shutter speeds, aperture, lighting, etc. All of these things go into how the photo is captured. The more you know about how the camera functions, then the more you can manipulate it to do what you want.
4. Play With Settings: Don’t be shy to mess around with settings. Test out the different functions of pre-set modes that your camera comes with. Try motion, portrait, floral, and wide lens angles. Notice the difference between them, and how it changes the appearance on the final image.
5. Learn Composition: The final thing that makes a photograph an artform is the composition. There are several guidelines to composition techniques, such as the Rule of Thirds. If you were to draw 3 lines vertical and horizontal on the image, the most important subject matter should lie on a line or where the lines intersect. Have a clear focal point and drown out everything else. Negative space is also important as part of the composition. That means that there are purposely areas of empty space. The more negative space, the more important the subject matter becomes.
The camera doesn’t make the photo. It’s the person behind the lens that creates the perfect composition that everyone craves. As with anything, it’ll take some time and practice to become a good photographer, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun along the way. The more you do, the more you’ll learn, and the more you’ll enjoy it, too.
