I have been enjoyed photography in some form my entire life. When I really began to get serious about photography I dove in the deep end. I learned a lot by trial and error. Now after several years of photography and I sit and reflect back on the things I would have done differently and the lessons that I have learned from my mistakes.
One thing that I learn early on was about your equipment. I was at the camera store and I ran into a seasoned photographer and we began to talk about equipment. He asked me what I was looking at in the camera section. I told him that I wanted a new camera. He asked me what I had and what lenses I had for the camera. He told me that the camera was a fine camera and that I needed to invest in glass (lenses). I didn’t buy a new camera that day I bought a new lens. The lesson that I learned is that most of the DSLR cameras are adequate for our needs in photography. To really improve your images get some new glass and I have been on this path since. When I did upgrade my camera the person I sold it to wanted to know why I would not sell the lens with the camera. The reason was that my Canon 40d body was worth about $300 but if I would put a lens with it I would have to sell it for at least $1000. Speaking of lenses I another lesson that I learned was about filters. When I started out I would buy a lens and then run to the camera store and buy a cheap filter to protect the glass. After doing some research I stumbled upon something. Why would you put a $15 piece of glass over a $1000 piece of glass? It made sense; the quality was being degraded by the filter. Now I only use high end filters or in many instances no filter at all. I just make sure that I am careful.
The next thing I learned was about controlling the quality of my images. The first thing was that white balance can really change the clarity of an image. Study it and make sure you know how to control it. It will make a huge difference. I shoot in RAW and edit most of my images afterwards which I would recommend you look into software like Lightroom or Aperture. The next thing was exposure. I learned that you can brighten a under exposed image but you can’t really fix an over exposed image. It is burned!! So if you can choose under exposure is better. The other component is ISO. The lower the ISO the less pixelated the image will come out. Shoot as low as you can to maintain enough light and enough quality.
The other thing is the most important. Practice! Practice! Practice! Get out and shoot. Try something new. Try shooting from a different angle. Like the example below. Shoot higher and shoot lower than eye level and see what happens to your images. Another thing to do is to shoot like I did when I was just starting out. Go out for a day of shooting and limit yourself to 24 images, one roll of film. Make every image count by taking your time.
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Have a wonderful day. Remember, I am not a writer so I am sorry for the grammatical errors.
Ben