The new year has arrived and with it some new tips on how to improve your photographic habits. Remember, practice makes perfect. Prodigy photographer Blair Bunting taught himself how to be a professional advertising photographer simply by making sure he made 100 pictures every day even if it kept him up all night. So, set you own goals this new year and go for them!
Courtesy of the
Digital Photo magazine.
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| Source: Camco Gifts |
1. Start carrying your camera more. You’ll find yourself shooting more, which always leads to improvement. More than that, though, you’ll learn to shoot from the hip and you’ll wind up with a portfolio of moments the rest of us missed.
2. Try shooting RAW. Even if you don’t make the switch permanently, try shooting RAW captures and processing them in Photoshop, Aperture or Lightroom. You’ll start to see what all the buzz is about once you turn underexposures into perfect exposures, and once color, contrast and sharpness are ideal every time.
3. Stop shooting in Program mode. Your growth as a photographer is dependent on understanding your tools. So take some pictures in manual mode and see what you learn. Utilize the in-camera meter to set your exposure, then go beyond the basics to adjust for depth of field and sharpness issues.
4. Use a tripod. Take the time to put your camera on a tripod. More often than not it will translate into clearer, sharper photographs no matter what you’re shooting. And if nothing else, it will help you break a lazy habit that will definitely cost you a good picture someday.
5. Stop settling for okay. Push yourself to make great shots. Always shoot from eye level? Get up high or down low and find a new perspective. Always avoiding wide angles? Give them a shot this year.
6. Master your metadata. File naming and organization is key if you want to find digital files a year or more down the road. So this year, start off with an organizational system and file naming structure that will make that possible. The more information you associate with your images, the easier it will be to find them in a pinch.
7. Become a backup guru. Instead of risking your favorite photos on a single hard drive, develop a backup plan and put it in motion. An affordable external hard drive is a great place to start. Failing that, use the web or inexpensive DVDs to create duplicates of the best of the best from your archive.
8. Learn to light. That doesn’t mean you have to become a master of studio strobes. As usual, it just means you’ve got to break out of your comfort zone. If you always use flash, learn how to take advantage of ambient lighting. If you always rely on nice ambient lighting, go the extra mile and learn how to light with a flash. Good photography is often about control, and being able to control lighting (rather than having it control you) can be a huge picture-taking advantage.
9. Speaking of simple lighting fixes, this one’s big:
Get your flash off the camera. It’s unbelievably easy to settle for the convenience of a hot-shoe-mounted external flash providing flattening frontal fill. But nobody ever exclaimed, “What an acceptably illuminated photograph!” To make great pictures, you need great light.
10. If you resolve to do nothing else this year, make this one simple change:
take more pictures. Set a personal goal, and stick to it. Maybe it’s 10 shots a week or one new shoot per month. Whatever it is, the goal will help you. Every extra exposure will create a teachable moment.
