With the advancement of cameras and other related tools and equipment in recent years, the field of photography has grown by leaps and bounds. Like every other field of life, if you want to be a successful photographer, you need to work hard and keep practicing to make progress with time.
So, if you are an aspiring photographer and want to enhance your understanding of the art of photography and its related skills, then this article is meant for you. Here have enlisted and discussed the 20 best photography tips for beginners.
Learn All the Rules
Providing a strong foundation to you to work on more advanced tips and tricks related to the art of taking photos, basic photography rules are essential.
Play by the rules first and only break them when you have more control over your creativity.
Learn from Your Mistakes
Don’t let your mistakes prevent you from picking up the camera again, instead, learn from them. Of course, no one is born with professional photography skills.
The real thing that could make a difference is when you turn your mistakes into lessons and use them to build even stronger skills.
So, never hold back from exploring a photography technique or style that you haven’t tried before, and make yourself realize that if you make a mistake, you don’t have to feel bad about it, just treat it as a lesson.
Focus on the Eyes
This is one of the most important photography tips for beginners. When you’re capturing portrait photographs, make sure to focus on the eyes.
Eyes are considered the focal point of connection between the subject and its surroundings, making a photo look more captivating.
Use a Wider Aperture for Portraits to Make Your Subject Pop
Aperture is a technical term used for the size of the opening through which light gets into the camera device. The larger the aperture numbers, the smaller the lens opening hole, which translates into clearer and sharper images.
Use a wide aperture size to make your subject stand out against its blurred-out background. You can experiment with even different aperture sizes, but make sure to keep the eyes in focus while taking photographs of your subjects.
Straighten And Crop When Editing
You should always rely on full-sized screen editing as a professional photographer. In fact, it is one of the most useful photography tips for beginners.
Of course, you can just rely on the small viewfinder or the preview images that are shown on the LCD of your DSLR and other types of professional cameras. Always straighten or crop images at a later stage using your PC/laptop before finalizing them.
Make Use of Reflections
Reflections uplift the charm of photography. They provide a lot of amazing opportunities to photographers if they pay attention where many people usually don’t. You can easily find reflections in a natural or man-made environment.
Look for puddles during the rainy days, lakes, reservoirs and even swimming pools. Where there is water, there will be reflections. Other than water, you can also try mirrors, shiny metallic surfaces, and even big glass windows to hunt for reflections.
Use the “Rule of Thirds” for Balanced Photos
One of the most useful photography tips for beginners is the use of “Rule of Third”. It will help you capture more balanced photos. With the help of visible grids, you can portray the subjects in your photos in a more compelling and skillful way. Other than photography, this technique is also used in other related fields, such as designing painting, and videography.
Use the Correct Shooting Mode for the Best Effect
There are usually different types of photography modes available in professional cameras. You can adjust them according to your requirement for the best results. For instance, you can use the “Aperture Priority” mode when you want more control over the depth of field or sharpness of your photos.
Similarly, the “Shutter Priority” mode helps you capture something in motion. On the other hand, the “Program” mode works the same as the fully automatic mode. The only difference is that you can adjust the combination of aperture and shutter settings for the best results.
Avoid Camera Shake
Camera shake can easily ruin a good shot, making the photo unusable. However, to avoid it to some extent, you can increase your ISO, which opens up the aperture and results in quicker shutter speeds. This will naturally reduce your chance of capturing blurry images.
Learn to hold your camera properly to avoid camera shake. You can always use a tripod to stabilize your focus in scenarios that require longer exposure to capture good-quality photos.
Create a Sense of Depth
It is also among the most useful photography tips that beginners need to focus on. You can create a sense of depth in your photos to make them look more captivating. It is like using your photography skills and compositional techniques to make the objects appear as if they have been captured in three dimensions in your two-dimensional photographs.
Use Simple Backgrounds
This is another very important photography tip that every beginner should keep in mind if they want their portfolio to stand out. Always look for a plain and simple background, which means try to avoid clutter and strong patterns that could overpower your subject in the photo. Using simple and less cluttered backgrounds will always make your subjects prominent.
Experiment with Shutter Speed
Shutter speed is basically the amount of time the shutter of your camera is open, exposing your sensor or film to light. Faster shutter speed means less light will hit your camera lens and slower shutter speed means more light gets through the lens into the camera. Experimenting with shutter speed will surely enhance your skills, allowing you to add more variety to your photography style.
Learn All the Settings Your Camera Has
One of the basic photography tips for beginners is to learn all the settings that your camera has. This will let you experiment more with your photography, letting you capture photos with different techniques, functionalities, and modes available in your camera settings.
Pay Attention to the Light
Of course, light is something that you simply cannot ignore when learning about photography. If your photos are overly exposed to light, they might not look good. In the same way, if you capturing a photograph without adequate lighting arrangement could also ruin it. Make sure to pay attention to the light if you want to maintain the right balance between the subject and its background.
Know When to Use Flash
Here comes another very important photography tip. If you don’t know when is the right time to use flash, then it could be very challenging for you to capture good images in low light conditions. Also, never use the built-in flash on your camera as the primary source of light. Without the presence of any other light source, it could result in very harsh or unpleasant-looking shadows in the background of your photo.
Clean Your Camera Lens
Make sure to keep your camera lens neat and clean. Even the smallest of particles could impact the quality of your pictures. Remove all the unwanted dust and dirt from the lens with a soft-bristled brush. Afterward, apply a cleaning solution to it using a lens tissue or very soft cloth.
Shoot a Lot and Experiment
They say practice makes a man perfect — and it’s absolutely true. The more you capture photographs, the more you enhance your photography skills. Don’t shy away from experimenting. Your photos will get better with time. In a nutshell, the more you spend your time enhancing your photography skills, the better your photos will get.
Shoot At Golden Hour
Dictating the field of texture and contrast, lighting has a very key role to play in photography as discussed. This is why we have added the photography ‘golden hour’ to our list of the best photography tips for beginners. The golden hour is usually a one-hour window right after sunrise or briefly before sunset. It allows you to capture some captivating images.
Learn How to Edit Your Photos
The editing software and tools have evolved a lot with time. You can process any raw picture in them and edit or modify them as you like by changing colors, textures and even adding more depth. The availability of different functionalities may vary from software to software. Adobe Photoshop, Skylum Luminar, Corel PaintShop Pro, Adobe Lightroom, Skylum Aurora HDR are some of the most commonly used photo editing software in today’s world.
Backup Your Photos as Soon as You Can
This is also a very important tip you need to keep in mind as a photographer. You may not want to lose all your hard work because of a malfunctioning hard drive. It is better to back up your photographs as soon as possible. You can buy an external hard drive or use any of the cloud storage like OneDrive by Microsoft and Google Drive.
There you have it — our pick of the 20 best photography tips for beginners. Keep in mind all the things we have discussed above if you want to enhance your photography knowledge and build up your confidence and skills in a step-by-step manner. These could be the very first few steps of a successful career as a professional photographer that lies ahead of you.
