1-Exposure:
The first thing you're going to want to know is that
light is an elemental particle that exhibits wave-particle duality in
accordance with the laws of quantum phys... Just kidding. This is the easy
version. While you can spend literally your entire life studying the way light
moves through the universe, you budding photographers just need to concern
yourself with one concept: brightness.
Ever walk into a dark room after being outside on a
bright day? You know how your eyes have to adjust before you can see anything?
Your camera is the same way. The world varies from very bright to very dark and
your camera can only capture so much of this range in a single shot.
Controlling this range is very simple to do and can be a powerful way to change
the character of your photo.
The easiest way to do this is with your camera's
"exposure compensation" button, which is always signified with a +/-
symbol. It might be a dedicated dial, a button on the camera, or an option in
the menu. Whenever you shoot in an automatic mode on a camera, it tries to
figure out how bright the scene should be. But cameras are dumb, and sometimes
you have to nudge things in the right direction.
Have a sky that's way too bright? Slide that sucker
towards the negative. Trying to brighten up an area in the shadows? Move it to
the plus side. Play around with it until you get the idea. Congratulations! You
just figured out the most powerful concept in photography.
So now you kind of sort get how light are affecting your
shots. Now you want to go find it. Specifically, you want to find situations
where light is dramatic. The best time to do this is during something called the
“golden hour”. The golden hour is simply the hour right around dawn and right
before sunset. It’s named this for the beautiful golden color the sun often
takes on at these times of day.
The golden hour is also important because it tends to
create really wonderful shadows. While at noon shadows tend to be nonexistent
because the sun is directly above you, at sunrise/sunset the sun is low. This
low angle naturally creates shadows. That interplay between bright and dark
areas is called contrast, and it tends to drastically improve the look of your
shots. Carve out some time during the golden hour and you'll instantly see just
how quickly the changing light will improve your photos.
3-Perspective:
Most of us see the entire world from between
five and six feet off the ground. While there are entire books on the creative
use of perspective, how different lenses affect your perspective and other
wonderful tips, a beginner only needs to know one thing: experiment. Get lower,
get higher, get directly above your subject, or directly below them. Zoom in on
your subject, zoom out and show how your subject fits in the world around you.
The beauty of digital photography is that you can
constantly experiment. Stand in one place with a zoom lens and you can see the
world in a hundred different ways. Stand in a park and you can turn left and
see one landscape, or turn right and see another. You can get lower and see
things from a bug's view or aim downward and take a picture of your shoes.
Always try to think up a new way to see what's around you. Do this long enough
and you'll probably also see a crowd,
gawking at the odd person spinning in circles in the park.
4-Focus:
When you're trying to capture something in a photo, you want that
subject to be in focus so the details are crisp. On a smartphone this is easy;
you just tap whatever it is you're trying to shoot on the screen. For other
cameras it can be a little more complicated, but typically speaking if your
camera has a physical shutter button, you can focus by holding the button
halfway down. When the camera thinks it's locked in it'll usually surround the
subject in a green box of some sort and give a cheerful beep indicating
everything's good to go. Press the button the rest of the way and voila, you've
got an in-focus photo.
While there are lots of advanced things you can
do with selective focus, for starters just concentrate on getting what you want
in focus. With software these days you can fix nearly any problem you may have
with a shot, but you can't fix focus. That said, here are some simple things to
keep in mind: With landscapes you usually want everything in focus, which the camera sometimes
doesn't understand. Most cameras have a "landscape" scene mode for
just these occasions. Also, when capturing portraits of people or animals, it's
best to focus on the eyes above all else. They're the windows to the soul,
after all.
5-Composition:
Composition is
essentially three things: what you keep in the frame, what you leave out, and
where you put things that are in the frame. While the first two aspects are
fairly straightforward, the third is a bit trickier. When we're starting out as
photographers we tend to just put our subject in the center. This is fine, but
it also gets boring, quickly.
Our brains naturally break things down into patterns,
but having things slightly off-center is appealing. In photography there's
actually a very simple method of composing called the "Rule of
Thirds" that takes advantage of this. Basically, if you cut the frame up
into thirds horizontally and vertically, you'll get something that looks like
this:
Place your subject on one of the four points where the
lines cross and most of the time you'll have a nicely balanced composition. Why
does this look better to us? Because we're animals made of star
junk and our brains
defy logic. Just run with it. Most cameras can even lay the rule of thirds
guides over your screen so you can quickly and easily put your subjects there.
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