I started taking photos for fun, pointing my cheap 1.3 mega pixel camera at anything and everything. It began after going for walks in the countryside with my dad. You know that feeling of “ooo that’s nice” that happens somewhere in your middle when the sun comes up, or there’s a nice sunset? I wanted to capture that and put it on my PC or even my wall (this was before digital cameras became good enough to do A4 prints without costing the price of a small car).
My photos began kind of randomly, with not much of an understanding about what I was doing. I looked at the scenery, pointed my camera, pressed the button and hoped for the best. And that leads into my list…
- Keep all your photos, even the bad ones.
- Review your pictures. Which do you like, which do you hate?
- Sort them, categorise them, make it easy to find that really nice one you took last year in Scotland with the lake and the sun.
- Keep a photo album, you can use a commercial one or run your own
- Use a tripod. It doesn’t matter if your tripod is a beanbag balanced on a wall, still cameras take better pictures.
- Take hundreds of photos. You’re practising, and that means doing the same thing many times.
- No Photoshop! This is photography, not retouching or “bringing out the highlights”.
- Remember to charge your batteries!
- Press the shutter half way, wait, press it gently the rest of the way
- The Rule of Thirds is your friend
- Break the Rule of Thirds on purpose
- Buy a microfibre cloth and never touch the lens with your fingers
- Print the nice ones and put them on your walls
I deliberately made this list non technical. There’s too much photography prattle on the Internet about F-Stops, ISO ratings and things that are confusing to the beginner. The best thing I worked out was to understand my camera’s limitations – when is it too dark, too rainy or the scenery just… boring?
