Mastering Digital Photography – What You Need To Know To Get Great Photos
Posted by on Aug 25, 2010
Mastering digital photography is about learning what you want people to see and being able to take such a photo that people can see straight away what you are trying to portray. There are so many different types of photography that in order to become a master, you must focus on an individual style and learn and practice that until you have improved your skills to a better level, then you can move onto the next style.
I am going to reveal to you today some incredible tips that will get your photos oozing with creative glory and splendor. Many people do not realize what mastering digital photography is really about, but for me it is about enjoyment of a hobby that I love and I hope I can share some of this with you today.
Tip 1 – Learn your camera – Photography is about recording light and your camera is an instrument that records light. In order to get better photographs you should first know what your camera is capable of and learn all of it’s features. It’s no good just reading through the manual once, you should be coherent with all of the features as you never know when you might need them! Especially some of the features you don’t use very often, e.g. aperture preview (many people don’t know what this is, let alone put it to good use). For the purpose of this article, you should read your camera manual at least once, and then start to really explore your camera. Take it out wherever you go and take photos of interesting things even if you think it may not come out very well, the more you practice the better you get. As time goes on you will develop your style and your creative eye will capture more and more beautiful scenes and subjects. Learning your camera is also about knowing its limitations e.g. how sensitive the ISO (or film speed) is, and how dark a scene you can shoot without getting too much grain, also you may have a camera with a lens that stabilizes movement and reduces vibrations when you are taking hand held photos, or if you have a standard camera with a normal lens, you need to know what the limitations are. By knowing the limitations of your camera, you are one step ahead of everybody else because if you know you can’t capture a scene in a particular way, you can always tweak a few settings to capture a perfect photo in a different way.
Tip 2 – Fill your frame - You should make good use of your frame and even with a high mega pixel camera, ensure you make use of the available pixels. Cropping equals loss of quality, therefore the less cropping you have to do when editing, the more pixels you have available and the better quality the photo will be. One great idea when taking photos of people is to glance around the edges of the viewfinder or screen and check everybody is within the photo, no feet or arms are chopped off and then check the photo after if possible to ensure you have got a full frame photo and not cut out anything that may mean the photo is not as good as it otherwise may have been. The other thing when filling your frame, is to ensure good use of foreground and background subjects, if there is a distracting background, zoom in or go closer to your subject so the background cannot be seen or is cut down so it is no longer a distraction, this is especially true with photographs of busy subjects like a carnival or fairground where there may be distractions behind the subject you want to draw the focus onto.
Tip 3 – What settings to use and when to use them – Tip 1 was to learn your digital camera controls, Tip 3 expands on that so you know how to take advantage of the features you have explored and can get some amazing photos you would have missed out on because you know what you can do with your camera now. For example, if you want to take a photo of a fast moving subject and there isn’t too much light around (e.g. evening / overcast), the shutter speed will be slower than in bright light. Something you can do to ensure you get a quick shutter speed, and therefore a sharp photo is to change the aperture (F Stop) of your camera to a wider aperture, something like f2.8 and this means more light can get into the camera, so a quicker shutter speed is achieved. Also you could increase the ISO (sensitivity) of the camera to get a quicker shutter speed – this can be useful but be careful because if you turn it up too high you can lose detail and get a posterised looking photo with loss of details, however most modern cameras have fantastic processing capabilities and reduce the noise to a level that it is not noticeable. This is especially useful for hand held shots in the evening or inside, e.g. if you have gone to a theatre and been told not to use flash photography, you can increase the ISO to around 1,200 and take a photo inside, with no flash and get a really nice atmospheric photo with all the emotion and characteristics the same as when you were there. And as the shutter speed is quicker than with a fine ISO (e.g. 200) you will get no blur on the photo and an end result that looks professional and you will be proud to have on your wall. Another setting you should get to know is the different modes on your camera, most cameras have an aperture priority, shutter priority, automatic, program and other modes e.g. portrait, sports etc. This is very useful and the one I personally prefer is aperture priority, because you can focus on getting the depth of field right (creative use of blur) and get a quicker shutter speed if needed and monitor the other settings as they automatically change.
I hope this has been a useful article for you, and that you will be able to take better photos as a result.
Simon E Henry.
