Ten Ways To Improve Your Craft. None of Them Involve Buying Gear
Ten Ways To Improve Your Craft. None of Them Involve Buying Gear
Ten Ways To Improve Your Craft. None of Them Involve Buying Gear
INTRODUCTION
Beginning with Moses, Top 10 lists have always been very popular. This is mine. I wrote this specifically to answer the question what can I do to make my photographs better? Which of course is a question profoundly impossible to answer. To answer that Id have to know what better means to you, and wed have to agree on that. We all start at different places and aim for different things. And there are, of course, way more than ten things within our craft that we can work on to improve our photographic expression. OK, heres my top ten: awaits anyone who practices a craft with passion and intention a stronger ability to do what you love in more compelling ways. our visual language, we begin to speak more clearly with less effort given to recalling the verbs and the grammar. It becomes intuitive, but never so deep beneath the surface that I dont think about them, play with them, and from time to time, go back to the books and study them in fresh ways.
1. Get Pickier 2. Better Contrast Creates Better Stories 3. Change My Perspective By Changing Yours 4. Create Depth 5. Get Balanced 6. Pay Attention to the Moment 7. Pay Attention to the Light 8. Use The Best Lens 9. Expose for Aesthetics 10. Put a Great Foreground in Front of a Great Background
But pretend for a moment that youd asked me that question and I had the time to answer in some detail, but limited to a random but important ten replies. This might be my answer, though not in any particular order. Look at this, not as a short course in photography, but as a syllabus. My goal here is to point you in ten different directions for study and practice, and to find that all ten directions lead back - with further study and practice - to better, stronger, images. Ive included exercises. Some of you will go out and try them, some will adapt them, others will roll their eyes and wonder if they can get their money back for this article. I dont promise the exercises will be easy or fun; theyll probably feel like homework. But for those that try them, or exercises like them, theres the same promise that
Those 10 things are more than enough to concentrate on for years, and they never ever stop being important. After 25 years on this photographic journey I am still learning this stuff, with greater nuance and better skill. With time these become part of
1 Get Pickier
Not everything in every light and at all moments will translate into a great image. There is a tendency when you first start out to shoot everything in sight. Do it. Shoot it all. There are shots we all need to take to get out of the way; they help us learn the basics and go towards the first 10,000 frames that it takes to get better at this craft. But eventually most of us have to slow down, take a breath, and get picky. Ive been standing in front of something that doesnt interest me, or something that does but in harsh light I find unappealing, and had people ask, How would you photograph that? My answer surprises them. I wouldnt. Or I would come back when the lights better. Ive got all the requisite shots and what Im looking for now is not a mediocre image of something great like
something potentially more mundane. But a great image. One that makes my heart quicken. And that doesnt happen every minute of everyday. One of the big mistakes of beginning landscape photographers is to shoot a mountain lake at midday and wonder why it doesnt look like a Darwin Wiggett or Bruce Percy image. People like Bruce and Darwin are very picky about where they shoot, and when. They get up at insane hours to trudge out of their tents and create incredible images.
Once the initial thrill of using a camera begins to wear off in exchange for the thrill of creating great images, and youve got all the requisite shots of cats and your own feet out of the way, start getting pickier, more selective. Dont waste your time shooting stuff that doesnt quicken the heart.
Lalibela, Ethiopia, 2005 Canon 20D, 40mm, 1/100 @ f/4, iso 400
CREATIVE EXERCISE
Head out with your camera for an hour and force yourself to shoot a hundred frames - push yourself creatively. Lots of people do this as a creative exercise. But now do the opposite. Go out and shoot only 3 frames. Dont shoot a burst of images.
Dont hedge your bets. Shoot less, not more. With each image really look at it. Has it translated into a two dimensional image the way you thought it would? Would you put this on your wall? No? Delete it. Try again. Is the light the way you wanted it? The framing? Is it the right
moment? No? Delete it. This is just an exercise, but a helpful one in training us to be more discerning. Theres a desperate need for most of us to shoot stronger images, not more images.
Ulaanbator, Mongolia, 2008 Canon 5D, 135mm, 1/125 @ f/8.0, iso 100
CREATIVE EXERCISE
Take your camera and one lens - this isnt about gear - and go for a walk. Look for scenes in which you can put conceptual contrasts into the frame. Start easy. Wet and Dry. Big and Small. Rough and Smooth. Young
and Old. Easy right? Now get a little more esoteric. See how far you can push this. You dont have to justify your choices - you just have to be able to identify two elements that, juxtaposed, create a contrast. Once
you get good and tired of this exercise go shoot the way you normally would and see if you can incorporate some of these contrasts.
Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2009 Canon 5D MkII, 32mm, 1/160 @ f/10, iso 100 The contrast of Asian rice farmers in front of North American teepees makes me laugh every time.
CREATIVE EXERCISE
Go shooting. Find something you love to photograph and take your best shot. Now look at that one good and hard. Got it? Good. What I want you to do now is create 20 more images from a different POV. Dont cheat and just walk in a circle while mashing the shutter button down. Work for it. Walk 30 feet back and
Old Havana, Cuba, 2009 Canon 5D MkII, 17mm, 1/30 @ f/4.0, iso 400 I was in the middle of the street on my hands and knees while trying not to get hit by mopeds, speaking bad spanish and trying to hold my hands still. But the low POV makes this shot where standing up would not.
shoot lying down with a 200mm lens. Get close with a 24mm lens and lie on your back and shoot up at it. Move left, move right. Create 20 intentionally different images. Now review the images. Compare them with each other, and then compare them with your first image. Are any of them stronger? Do any of them say something completely different about what youve photographed? Its all about point of view. Get used to seeking a new one.
4 Create depth
I touched on this in the last section, but depth can be really important to an image. Its there in real life, in three dimensions. But we get tricked into thinking that rendering a three dimensional image into two dimensions is just automatic. It isnt. Something gets lost in the flattening. You simply cant make 2 dimensions into 3. But you can create the sense, or illusion of depth.
the whole scene changes and takes on the illusion of greater depth? It wont work for every image, but when you want a feeling of more depth, this is one way to do it.
2. Pay attention to perspective. Even without a wide lens, perspective still affects images and can be used to imply depth. Oblique lines pull the eye into the image, so where a change in POV can make a straight
First, the caveat: you dont always want to create the feeling of depth, there are plenty of images that work because they lack depth or even go to pains to reduce it - mountain ranges shot with a telephoto lens to compress the scene is one example - but images with depth pull a viewer in, gives them an experience of being there, and brings back some of the sense of captured reality that draws so many of us to photography.
horizontal line into a diagonal, give it a try. Notice how pointing a lens up at tall buildings makes the lines of the buildings converge? Thats perspective and it works on the horizontal plane as much as the vertical, so dont be afraid to harness it. Look for great lines and perspective to pull the eye into the scene. Just be aware that if you dont want the eye of your viewer going in that direction - perhaps those lines lead away from your subject instead of to it - youll want to reign them in a little or change your POV to
Old Delhi, India, 2007 Canon 5D, 42mm, 1/125 @ f/5.0, iso 400 This guy had cool to spare. The wide angle lens and the strong receeding lines of the shutters create the sense of depth in this image
1. Use a wider lens and get in closer (see opposite). Wider lenses pull us into scenes in ways other optics
3. Use the Light. Painters in the renaissance discovered an effect they called chiaroscuro, which is Italian for light-dark and represents the way light feathers and falls off with distance. Chiaroscuro adds the implication or illusion of depth and is why photographers love subjects side lit with window light; it strikes the object but then gently falls off and does so because the object itself has dimension - depth. If you want a photograph with little or no perceived depth then straight-on light is a good way to get there.
CREATIVE EXERCISE
Head into the city and create a series of 10 images that use perspective to create a greater sense of depth. Try different lenses. How do those lenses change your feeling about the image? Does one pull you in more than another? If you brought your wider lens, put it on and play with getting closer than you normally would to your subject. Aside from bumping into things, what are the results of this playtime? The ability to look critically at your images and see - and verbalize the effect of your optics or a vanishing point on an image will get you one step closer to being able to use these tools intuitively to express yourself.
do not. They give the appearance of lengthened lines and exaggerated perspective. Where less perspective implies less depth, greater perspective implies more depth. Next time youre shooting something - anything - with a 50 to 85mm lens, put on something wider - a 17, 24, or 35mm and then push in closer to make up for the loss in perceived proximity. Get right in there. Notice the change in appearance? See how
5 Get balanced
While the rule of thirds is taught like a panacea for bad composition, its rare that anyone seems to teach why. So here it is. Its all about balance. Theres two kinds of balance. Static balance and dynamic balance. Put a person smack in the middle of the frame and its balanced. But Static. Boring. Put that same person in on the leftmost third and itll also be balanced, but dynamically so. Its like this with visual objects. An element in a photograph has more visual mass the more it pulls the eye. Its not a perfect analogy by any means but its been helpful to me. If I put an element with greater visual mass - like a human face, or elements that are lighter, sharper, warmer in cooler, or more recognizable than other elements Why? Its all about visual mass, which is important enough that I plan to dedicate to its own article, but heres the short explanation to get you thinking about it. in the frame - on the left third, it has two thirds of the frame with less visual mass to balance it out. The image is now balanced, and because its not central in the frame its balanced in a way that is dynamic. Lets talk for a moment about a physical object, and scientists in the room can overlook my insanely simplistic/inaccurate explanation. An object is said to have mass by the layman because it is heavy. But it is heavy because of its interaction with gravitational pull. The more the pull the heavier it feels. Now put two items on a Not every image should be balanced. If you are creating a photograph with the intention of showing imbalance or giving the viewer a feeling of tension, a visually imbalanced image is a great way to do it. But an unintentionally imbalanced image is hard to look at without feeling distracted or Balance is one of those things you might not consciously notice in an image but can certainly feel. Becoming more intentional about creating and playing with the balance in your images will help you create images that more intentionally express what you have to say. scale. One has more mass than the other and so the scale dips - unbalanced. tense and if youre intention is to create an image without those distractions, youll be working against your self.
CREATIVE EXERCISE
The best way to learn balance is to become conscious of it. Look at images - your own or those of others - and see how theyve balanced elements that have different visual mass, or pull, within the frame. Some frames will feel very balanced and static - like a particularily symmetrical image. Others will feel more dynamic - like the one here. Others still will not feel balanced at all. What is it about the placement of elements that does this in these images? Now go shooting and play with this - experiment. Forget for a moment about the Rule of Thirds, just play with balance. Im betting some of your more dynamically balanced images end up conforming to the Ro3 anyway.
Tunis, Tunisia, 2008 Canon 5D, 17mm, 1/1600 @ f/4.0, iso 800 The man on the left has a great deal of visual mass - from his dark suit to his scowl and his size in the frame. Placing him on the right third allows the space of the leftmost two thirds to balance him. Without the man on the cart I think Id like the image less but it would be an even more dynamically balanced image.
Cairo, Egypt, 2009 Canon 5D, 90mm, 1/160 @ f/2.8, iso 200 This image, like the one on the following spread relies on the moment to give it the gesture that makes the image. The man smoking his shisha was an OK subject but the frames I have without the smoke just dont have it.
CREATIVE EXERCISE
This one works best, I think, when photographing people or something where the context is fluid. Architectural and still-life photographers may see less value in this. Next time you go shooting put your camera in continuous or burst mode and for every frame take 3 to 5 images. Thats it. Just shoot more frames; the exercise comes next. Pull your images into your favourite browser and convert them all to black and white so youre not distracted by colors. Now look at each set of images, specifically looking at gesture within the image. Out of each burst is there one frame that is better than the others? Why is that; what about the moment captured in one makes it better than the moment captured in others? This is nothing more than an exercise in recognition, learning to see the difference between slivers of time and what makes one sliver stronger within the frame than others.
Delhi, India, 2008 Canon 5D, 24mm, 1/100 @ f/6.3, iso 400
Ladakh, India, 2008 Canon 5D, 70mm, 1/50 @ f/11. iso 200
CREATIVE EXERCISE
This one wil take 60 minutes of your time. Choose 12 of your favourite images - they can be yours or photographs of one of your favourite photographers, just make sure theyre different. Now sit down and look at each one for 5 minutes. I know, its a long time. Think of all the email you could be checking in that time. But log the time. Look at the images, explore them, and become familiar with them. On a sheet of paper make notes on each one. What is the light doing in this image? Where is it coming from? What kind of source is it? Is it hard or soft? What kind of shadows are there? Is there a catchlight in the eyes? Search out every sign of the play of light within the scene. Is there lens flare? A stray incandescant bulb warming part of an otherwise daylight-lit scene? Write it dowtn in point form. Now ask yourself how important the light is to this image. Would it still work in different light? Why? Why not? There arent any real right answers and Im not grading your work, but the time put in to becoming more aware of the light will put you in good stead. Now pick up your camera and go shoot something, chase the light.
CREATIVE EXERCISE
This works really well if you have a broadrange zoom like a 28-200mm but will work fine for you as long as you have a wide angle, standard, and telephoto lens of some kind. Go for a walk with your camera and shoot a dozen scenes or subjects. Shoot each subject with each of these focal lengths. Start with the 50mm and take the shot. Now put the wide lens on and move forward until the main subject is the same size in the frame as it was with the 50mm. Now put on the longer lens and back up until the subject is about the same size as the first two frames. Repeat this until youve shot a dozen scenes or subjects, then go get a coffee and look at the images. Specifically youre looking at the differences between the way the elements relate to each other, and more generally youre getting used to the way different focal lengths change the aesthetics of the image. Feel like a tougher exercise? Go out without your camera and choose a dozen different scenes. For each one take a mental picture and as you do so try to visualize what the scene would look like with each of the three different focal lengths. Learning to see the way your optics see a scene makes it easier for you to chose the optic that best serves your vision.
Cairo, Egypt, 2009 Canon 5D, 17mm, 1/80 @ f/22, iso 200 The Legendary H in front of the pyramids at Giza. Shot wide, pushed in tight. Youre too close when you get nose grease on your lens.
Havana, Cuba, 2009 Canon 5D, 200mm, 1/60 @ f/4.0, iso 100 To pull all of these cars together so tightly, I used my 200mm lens; wider lenses just didnt stack the scene tightly enough, felt too loose. Sometimes the best I can do is feel my way through a scene, and this one felt best at 200mm.
CREATIVE EXERCISE
Go to your happy place, that place you love to shoot without getting bored. Maybe its a place youve always wanted to shoot or a place you shot one of your best images. Now I want you to spend an hour there. For 15 minutes I want you to shoot only at the fastest shutter speed you can and create images that take advantage of the look only a fast shutter can provide, like freezing kids jumping in midair. Now do the opposite. Spend 15 making images that take advantage of the slowest shutter you can use in the light you have. But dont just make lots of blurry images, harness that slow shutter. Do some panning, put the camera on a tripod and let the crowd become an ethereal blur. Play. Now do the same with a deep and a wide aperture.
New Delhi, India, 2008 Canon 5D, 20mm, 1/13 @ f/22, iso 100
Your shutter speed and aperture do way more than allow you to finesse your exposures; each setting has an affect on the look - the aesthetic - of the image. Somehow I overlooked this for years. I mean, I knew it in my head but somehow figured none of it really mattered. Want to take your images to the next level? Begin to be very intentional about the shutter speed and aperture you choose, knowing that how you say something affects what you say.
This is why I nearly always shoot on Aperture (AV) or Manual (M) mode. For the bulk of my work it is the aperture that has the greatest effect on the look of my images. Or more accurately I want my images to have an aesthetic that is primarily controlled by how much depth my focus has, and thats a function of my aperture. Of course there are exceptions. When I am panning I generally move things over to Shutter Priority (TV, for Time Value) so I can select a specific panning speed. The goal is to become comfortable with the aesthetic affect of each of your exposure settings and to see them as creative collaborators, not merely exposure settings to get right. Getting a good exposure is easy, making a creative image takes more practice.
Every book on photography talks about this, but the internet - and my old shoe boxes of images from my film days - remain littered with images where merely getting a good exposure was clearly the top priority. Its not. Its only one priority of several, chief among which is the look of the image.
CREATIVE EXERCISE
This is the last one so Im letting you off easy and dismissing class early. Go shoot some great foregrounds with some great backgrounds. If the backgrounds suck, make it work. Thats it. Intentionally shoot some great foregrounds in front of some stellar backgrounds. Not as hard as it sounds, but you gotta work for it.
Ladakh, India, 2008 Canon 5D, 125mm, 1/3200 @ f/2.8, iso 100 My buddy Russ on his Royal Enfield
CONCLUSION
This short eBook is, like everything I write, not intended to be encyclopedic. There are, of course, more than ten ways to improve your craft. If I get around to it and theres enough demand, Ill write a follow up to this to fill in more of those gaps. These arent rules either - for every principle in any art there are reasons to abandon that principle. But you have to begin there, studying and mastering your craft before you can start flaunting the rules. Ive tried to do 3 things in each of these ten tips - to tell you why its important and how you can use that information, and to give you a place to begin exploring it in the form of a creative exercise. I hope it helps, that it propels you forward, opens your eyes, or makes a lightbulb go on. If youre like me one or two of these will grab you more immediately than others, and those will be the ones you play with for a while before something you do triggers you to come back to this list and find yourself drawn to another tip or two.
These are big pieces of a large puzzle. Im still working on all of them, still moving forward and learning to express myself in a medium thats always just shy of my vision. So take your time. Its art, not a race or a competition. Enjoy the journey.
And most of all, before this top ten is the rule above all rules. See with your eyes but shoot with your heart. We need more passionate photographs, not more perfect photographs.
If you found this helpful and are not already familiar with my first book, Within The Frame, The Journey of Photographic Vision, you can find it on Amazon.com. I can be found online at PixelatedImage.com and blogging most weekdays at PixelatedImage.com/blog.
Peace.
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Ten Ways to Improve Your Craft Without Buying Gear
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*Gear is good. Vision is better. But hey, who are we kidding? Yall are still going to lust after the latest lens, so at only $5 each, these books will allow you to have the best of both worlds. So, if you like, feel free to change that to: Improve your craft. (buy more gear). Whatever.