Image via Complex Original
If you're a beginner photographer looking to step up your game, these tips are for you. What most amateurs don't know is that photography revolves around light, and most cameras have manual functions that allow you to manipulate how much light goes into your camera. By playing with these functions, you can make your photos look like they came straight out of National Geographic.
In Read This If You Want to Take Great Photos, Henry Carroll breaks down the basics of photography, including aperture, ISO speed, shutter speed, and more. We pulled the best bits of advice from Carroll's book to put together a list of 10 Expert Tips to Immediately Improve Your Photography. You can spend a lifetime perfecting different techniques, but there are basics every photographer needs to start with. If you're interested in further tips, you can purchase Carroll's book from Lawrence King here.
“Very often, nothing kills an image more than keeping your distance.”
To get a good photo, you're going to have to “risk thumbs, shouts, and dirty looks.” The closer you are to your subject, the more detail you will be able to capture. For instance, if you are close to someone's face, wrinkles will be more prominent, lips will appear smoother, and eyes will seem more intimate. Shooting from further away often means poorer quality.
“When you take a photograph, your camera's shutter speed opens, letting in light.”
Obviously, when you take a photo, your lens opens up. The amount of time your lens is open to take in light is called shutter speed. Cameras show shutter speed either as a fraction, for instance 1/500, or as a number (500). This fraction means that the camera will take in light for one five hundredths of a second. If you use a faster shutter speed, your camera has less time to take in light. You can compensate a fast shutter speed with ISO speed, but we'll get to that in a bit. Fast shutter speeds are a must when you’re shooting moving objects. Otherwise, your photo will come out blurry. Check out this photo here; a fast shutter speed made it possible for the photographer to capture each water droplet.
“Slow shutter speeds blur movement.”
If you want to make something abstract, then you might want to blur moving objects. To create a blurry effect, simply set your camera to a slower shutter speed. Keep in mind, if you use a slow shutter speed, you want your camera to be still. If your camera isn’t still, then the entire image (not just the moving object) will be blurry.
“The aperture is a hole in your lens that you can make smaller or larger to control how much light enters your camera.”
The aperture dictates how much light goes into your camera. The size of the aperture is measured in f-stops. Basically, the higher the f-stop, the narrower the hole; and the narrower the hole, the less light your camera will take in. Most cameras have an “aperture priority” mode that can be adjusted, usually labeled as A or Av. Aperture priority mode changes your shutter speed to account for the environment. If you have a high f-stop, your camera will automatically compensate with a slower shutter speed to retrieve more light. In addition, changing the aperture also affects the depth of field. The lower the f-stop, the more shallow your depth of field will be. A shallow depth of field will get rid of detail and put focus your subject.
“ISO controls how sensitive your camera is to light.”
ISO speed (Industrialized Organization for Standardization) controls just how sensitive your camera is to light. It's represented by numbers. For instance, 100 is a low ISO speed, which will make your camera less sensitive to light and produce a darker photo. 400 is a good ISO speed to use during a cloudy day. It's important to set your ISO speed first because your ISO speed dictates what sort of shutter speed and aperture you should use. Also, if you use a fast shutter speed (less light) to catch a moving object, you can compensate with a higher ISO speed (more light).
“Meet exposure compensation. This function allows you to make your entire image brighter or darker.”
Exposure compensation allows you to make an image darker brighter. Usually, this function is represented by numbers with plus (+) or minus (-) signs. If you want to make your image darker, you should move it towards a negative number. Exposure compensation is a good function to use when you don’t have time to manually input all the other functions (aperture, ISO speed, and shutter speed).
“To draw out detail in the shadows, use exposure compensation.”
If you’ve ever taken an indoor photo near a sunlit window, then you know that the bright light often makes whatever's inside look dark. This is because light from outside is brighter than artificial light. To get more detail inside, you should scroll your exposure towards the positive (+) numbers.
“To silhouette your back-lit subject, use exposure compensation.”
To create silhouettes in front of light, move your exposure compensation toward the negative (-) numbers. The more underexposed your image is, the darker the silhouettes will be. This is an awesome way to make some pretty abstract images.
“Don't look, see.”
It's helpful for photographers to just go around looking at objects. Looking at things will give you great ideas as to what sort of photos to take. For instance, this photo of Queen Elizabeth was taken when the photographer was inspired by one of her speeches. He saw how dramatic she looked with her eyes closed, so he recreated the pose with a hologram.
“True or false: good photographers nail it the first time?”
False! The first shot is rarely the right shot. Photographers shoot hundreds, sometimes thousands, of photos before getting the right shot. Even Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother was shot and staged several times before becoming one of the most iconic photos of the Great Depression. Additionally, the more you play with your camera's settings, the better you will be at obtaining the perfect shot.