Introduction
A few tips on basic photography can help improve your photographs immeasurably. Learning to be a good photographer isn’t hard. Good habits, a keen eye and a camera are all you need.
This page offers an introduction to some of the keys of taking better photographs. Obviously, the other sections within the course deal with each topic in far more detail
Light, Camera, Action!
Light is obviously essential for any photograph, but, also obviously the quality of light varies throughout the day. The best times of day to photograph are usually early in the morning and late in the afternoon. Be careful of the midday sun as it is often too harsh and you will end up with washed-out colours and dark, black shadows.
Observe carefully the position of the sun. You will often find that the best results are when the sun is behind you, fully lighting your subject.
Fill the Frame
Get up close and personal with your subjects. Your subject should fill the image. Don’t have vast areas of nothing when, by moving closer or zooming in you could get a much more interesting result.
Keep an eye on what is behind your subject. If it is too ‘busy’ it will detract from the subject.
Hold It
Get the camera as still and steady as possible. Lock your elbows in by your side and watch your breathing. If you have a tripod use it. If not find something to brace yourself against. You will find your photographs come out crisp and sharp. This is especially true if you have a camera with a long (powerful) zoom lens.
Photographing People
My only real rule of portraiture is not to offend. When travelling you are a guest of the local population and as such you should make every effort to be courteous. I find the best way to take a portrait is to make it absolutely clear to the person that you would like to take their photograph, if you speak a common language ask, smile, show that you have a camera and if they hesitate or look in anyway uncomfortable then point the camera away immediately. If they don’t object, stay with them, observe them and then take the photograph. When you have finished be sure to thank them afterwards.
In some places people will expect to be paid for their photograph. If they ask for money and you take the photograph you must pay. As with any transaction, ensure the price is agreed beforehand. I don’t offer money for taking photographs in general, but certainly do pay where expected.
If people don’t expect to be paid and you feel you should give something, try and be a bit more creative and generous, and don’t turn yourself into a tourist and them into beggars. Children calling out ‘one pen’ in some countries is an example of well-meaning visitors turning whole towns of youngsters into beggars. Certainly do give generously, but go to the local school and let the teachers distribute the pens, donate to a charity or do some volunteer work.
Composition
Composition is about balancing the important parts of the image against each other. Key points to remember include:
- Fill the frame. Don’t have a lot of wasted space around the subject unless it adds to the shot.
- Photographing people in their natural environment is a great way to show more about a person than just what they look like.
- Use the Rule of Thirds (see the Introduction if you are unsure what this is). Move around. See what different angles and lens options will do.
Look at how other photographers compose their images. What do you like? How did they do that? You don’t need to copy what they do but it is a good exercise in observation.
Landscape Photography
Landscape is one of the easiest forms of photography to do reasonably as you often have time to think through your options of composition, lens, filters and so on. Obviously, to do this very well requires more skill, a good eye and some practice.
Composition is fundamental to taking a good landscape shot. Many people inadvertantly put the horizon in the middle of the photograph. This rarely looks good. Consider instead placing your subject and horizon using the ‘Rule of Thirds’.
Light always play an important role in a landscape photograph and will completely change the mood of the image. By being a good observer of light at certain times of day you can predict light conditions. Remember these will be effected by the weather.
Skyscapes and Sunsets
Sunrise and sunset are some of the most beautiful times to photograph. But the contrast range between the sun, the sky and the horizon provide some special challenges.
The easiest way to get the exposure right for the sky is to aim the camera at the sky right next to the sun, without the sun actually being in the frame. If your camera has an Exposure Lock (sometimes called ‘AE Lock’) then hold this down while you re-compose the photograph and move the sun back into your frame. The horizon will become silhouetted, but you will get good detail in the cloud and colour range through the sky.
Street Photography
Exploring a new place is one of the great things about travelling. By taking a camera you may become an even keener observer, and hopefully will keep you exploring for longer.
Often there will be people in your street scenes, so please be courteous and considerate at all times. See the People Section for more tips.
Photograph What You See
Street photography is exciting. You will rarely know what you are going to photograph and how you are going to shoot it. Usually you will find things by accident, scenes that suddenly grab you, scenarios that make you think.
By having your camera ready you will be able to photograph what you see. I like to keep my camera in my hand with the strap wrapped securely several times around my wrist and avoid the ‘camera around neck’ look.
Choose a good general purpose lens with a short focal-length, like a 28-70mm zoom lens. This gives you some flexibility and will let you quickly adapt your shot to the scene. You will probably discover a lens that you like. Stick with it. My personal favourite is a 24mm as it allows my to get it close but capture a whole scene.
Working with Available Light
Available light is in many ways the most convenient way to photograph. It requires the least equipment, but it also requires the keenest observational skills and, as a result is one of the most rewarding. It gives you an excuse to go and appreciate the everyday subtleties of light in your surroundings. The other great thing about working with available light is it is the least intrusive. You don’t have flashes going off, banks of lights or reflecting boards.
I hope if you are reading this section you instinctively know where the sun is, and ensure that the subject has the best possible light to suit you desired result. This doesn’t mean you aren’t photographing during the middle of the day, but you are very aware of the bright light, strong shadows and washed-out colours.
Remember, you can increase contrast and colour saturation by using a polarizing filter in some situations. Note that a polarizer is not a good all purpose filter and does not in any way replace a UV or Skylight filter on your SLR.
I strongly recommend looking at other photographer’s work and try and figure out where the sun is, have they used any other lights or reflectors? If there is a person you may be able to see the reflection in their eyes of a flash.
Understanding Exposure & the Zone System
Knowing how your camera works is the key to getting good exposures. No matter how sophisticated your camera is, the exposure system works on the same principle, and that is to take a reading of the light and then average it. This is fine if the scene being exposed has a lot of average tones reflecting an average amount of light. Problems occur when you want to take a picture like the one at the top of this page. There are very few average tones in the image.
So what happens when you rely on the camera’s exposure meter? Using the example below let’s see what happens if we take the photograph without any compensation.
The camera has tried to average the tones in the photograph and the result is a badly UNDER-EXPOSED photograph.
So how do you get the right exposure? Let’s say that you are taking the picture above and your camera says that the exposure should be 1/250th of a second at F11. If you took the picture at that setting your whites would turn out grey.
To get the whites to be white you need OVER-EXPOSE by around 2 stops. Many cameras have either a manual exposure setting or an exposure compensation feature. The common symbol for this is +/- . Using the camera’s meter reading of 1/250 @ F11 as an example you need to OVER-EXPOSE so that your new exposure setting is 1/250th @ F5.6 OR 1/60th @ F11 (you can change either the aperture or shutter speed, it doesn’t matter from an exposure point of view). So by opening the camera up 2 stops (letting more light in) you get white whites and bright, true colours. Your photograph would then hopefully turn out like the one below.
So what is a ’stop’?
A stop is simply a term to denote the halving or doubling of the exposure. For example, in the example above I said that you need to open up by 2 stops. Opening up one stop would mean that the exposure had doubled, your whites would now be twice as bright. Opening up two stops is a four-fold increase in the amount of light – a doubling of twice the original amount of light. You might think that twice as much light sounds like a lot. It isn’t.
Let us use an example of an exposure of F8 @ 1/125th and we want to open up a stop. We can use either the lens aperture or the shutter to control the amount of light, so let us open the shutter by an additional stop, so the shutter speed is now 1/60th while the F-stop remains the same. If we then open up a further stop we are at 1/30th – four times as much light as the original setting of 1/125th. Think it through a little, it might take a minute but it is really simple.
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