8 PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS FOR ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS

“The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.”- Andy Warhol

I would like to start this post by saying that this is by no mean a professional guide to photography neither I have any professional training. I am a self learned hobby photographer and don’t know any technical aspect of it. However, I have taught myself the basic photography and editing skills and I am finally quite happy with the results, you can see a few samples below. I even saved hundreds of dollars this year by doing my daughter’s 4th birthday photo shoot as I usually get them done by a professional photographer every year. So without further delay, I will quickly go over a few tips that has helped me to achieve a final product such are shown in this post.

1. KNOW SOME BASIC FUNCTIONS: I would assume whoever is reading this post either already owns a DSLR camera or in the process of investing in one. The most important thing to learn about your DSLR camera are the following three:

Aperture– This affects your background blurring, the smaller your aperture is, the blurrier your background will be. It usually is shown as f3, f3, f5, etc.. If you want a blurry background, choose the smallest aperture option in your camera.
Shutter Speed– This affects stability of a photo. Slower your shutter speed, the brighter and blurrier your picture will be, so if you want to take picture of a moving object increase your speed but also remember to take those shots in enough light as those pictures will also be quite dark. Shutter speed looks like, 1/800, 1/1200, 1/4000, etc in your camera options.
Iso– This affects the brightness of a photo. The higher the ISO is, the brighter your photo will be but high ISO also causes grainy pictures so you have to know the balance. Different ISO options are: 100, 200, 400, 800, 1200, 4000, etc. The brighter you want your picture, the highrer your ISO should be

2. PLAY AROUND WITH SETTINGS: A big DSLR camera can be intimidating especially the hundreds of options that come with it. But don’t be afraid yet don’t try to learn everything at once. Trust me, t’s impossible. Try and use a few pre-set mode and see which one works for the style of photo you want to take. Benefit of these modes are that they are already pre-set depending on the need of your pictures, some examples are: portrait mode, sports mode, automatic, landscape mode, and so on. If you get the hang of your aperture, shutter speed and ISO then go ahead and just use the manual mode later on. I use that for most of my pictures as I can customize the settings that way.

3. DON’T FORGET THE WHITE BALANCE: I absolutely hate it when I take a beautiful picture under clear sky but it looks yellow and dull, the culprit usually is your white balance. Depending on which option you choose, the overall tint of your picture can change. It is safe to use the auto mode. But when it is cloudy or where there is not enough light I use “daylight” option which gives it a bright look and on the days I don’t mind a yellow tone in my photos, I would use, “shade” option. Btw I have a 5 year old Canon T3i in case you were wondering. I almost never use the other options as I feel almost all of them makes the picture a but too tinted for my choice and the photo loses it’s natural hue.

4. CHOOSE YOUR LOCATION WISELY: This one is given, if you want nice, clean result you need to have a good clean background but depending on the style of your photography, this topic can have contradictory arguments since an abstract photographer would not mind a pile of laundry as a background whereas me who mostly takes travel or family photos would not like a messy background. Assuming you are looking to take some basic photos, I would say take photos outdoors. It is a fullproof method and helps taking great quality pictures almost 90% of the time.

5. TAKE CONSIDERATION OF LIGHTING: This part is more like an extension of the previous one. If you take your photos outdoors, you almost never have to worry about lighting unless it is cloudy or evening time. even then by playing with your ISO and White Balance you can still probably get some decent shots. Yes, it is possible to fix a lot of issues post production but if you don’t have a decent quality photo at the first place, it is hard to fix it especially if you are not a professional. Lastly, If you absolutely have to take photos indoors, make sure to take the photos during daytime when lots of natural light is available.

6. COMPOSITION: This is something that ensures the subject and background and other objects are all in sync. The sense of composition comes with practice. The more picture you take the better you will be at it. No matter how good your setting, lighting and background is, if the composition of the picture is not good, it will hardly be a good picture to look at.

7. THE MAGIC OF EDITING: I realised that a picture is incomplete without post production edits. I have been using standard editing apps on my Iphone like Visco or Snapseed. But lately I invested in some Lightroom Presets and it made a dramatic difference on my photos. Visco and Snapseed is good but Lightroom is just great! use it and you will know what I am talking about. I love how you can give the same photo so many different looks based on the presets. My recent favorites are, Glace, Americano and Vintage Pro Preset. I purchased them all on Etsy.

8. INVEST IN YOURSELF AND/OR ON PHOTOGRAPHY RELATED PRODUCTS: If you are serious about photography then invest on a few things like, a tripod, a better lense and some editing apps/softwares. This is the best investment you can make, if you are trying to achieve professional and good quality photos. Take photography courses to brush up on your skills, many a times it does not even cost anything for those beginner courses! There are plenty free webiners/courses online to choose from.

Lastly, if you are passionate about photography just keep taking photos. remember, practice makes a man perfect!

Good luck!