First Three Steps for Aspiring Photographers
You are an aspiring photographer, your dream is to grow into a pro, but you got confused with a bunch of tips and tutorials you find online, in books and in magazines? Then start leaning photography and developing your skills with these three easy steps.
COPY MASTERPIECES
One of well-spread techniques used in teaching painting or graphics is making copies of works of recognized geniuses. When a learner looks at the masterpiece, s/he sees only the result and it doesn’t help him/her understand how it was created. When you copy an outstanding work of art, you realize what techniques the author used while creating it. Although, there can be many things in the masterpiece that seem obvious and well-leant (as composition, contrast, color solution), the attempt to copy offers you much more questions to answer.
This exercise can be used in photography as well. You want take a good portrait – look at works from a collection of a famous photographer or at least look through a magazine. Choose the portrait you like and try to copy it – imitate everything: pose, lighting, finishing.
When we go abroad to see new countries, we often find photos of interesting places in the Internet, or buy postcards. Then we create our own photos keeping in mind what looks good and what not in the photos we saw. Thus we use the experience of other photographers and learn from it and create our own original images.
Look through photo albums, visit photo galleries. Choose what you like and try to copy, but add something from yourself to each your ‘copy’. Thus you will learn a lot of new techniques and at the same time won’t stop developing your creativity. Don’t be afraid of copying in order to learn technical things, but don’t forget to STOP ONE DAY AND GO YOUR OWN WAY!
ANALYZE YOUR IMAGES
With digital cameras it is very easy to analyze your photos. The camera remembers all information about the image. You just have to look at your images and analyze them using the information about camera settings. The image is too dark? It can be the result of too large aperture, or small shutter speed. The image is noisy? The reason can be an automatic mode of the camera which shoot at a high ISO settings.
To put it simply, if you want to correct you mistakes and not to do the same mistakes the next time, you have to know what you did wrong. We are lucky that modern technologies make it very easy to find our mistakes, we just have to spend some time on it.
PRINT YOUR PHOTOS
Photography had always been associated with prints. But after digital technologies came into our life, we can easily avoid printing our images: we can use a computer or TV monitor to watch our photos.
Despite the fact that it is more convenient and cheaper to keep your images in your computer, I would highly recommend to print your best images. PHOTOS OFTEN LOOK DIFFERENT ON THE MONITOR AND ON PAPER. It could happen that prints are not so vivid and colorful as their electronic variant, but often photos look much more beautiful on paper. Many times I realized how good a photo is, only after I printed it and put in a suitable frame!
Besides, electronic images can’t go on the wall, or to your friend as a present. It also is easier to show printed photos. Art is art only if people can see it, so let other people see your images.
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