phewse photoblog

In no particular order, here are my top 5 ways to improve your photos that have definitely helped me in the past.

• Use a prime lens
  Get yourself a prime lens (one that doesn’t zoom), or, if you can’t switch lenses, set it to one focal length and don’t change it. This will force you to move around and try new angles and perspectives. It will push you out of your comfort zone, and it will give you a little different view on the world.
• Go somewhere new
  There are only so many times you can take photos of the flowers in your backyard—try going somewhere new for a change! Whether it’s the next neighborhood over, a new town, or a new continent, it will make you adjust your photography to accomodate new subjects and will give you a chance to break out of any habits you’ve gotten stuck in.
• Learn how to use your camera
  Now, this one may seem kind of stupid, but it’s not. Even the greatest cameras in the world won’t do a darn thing if you don’t know how to use them. Read your manual and know everything your camera does; that way, when you’re out in the field you don’t need to worry about pulling out your manual to, say, set your exposure compensation or set the aperture, you can just concentrate on taking photos.
• Pick a theme
  Pick something to take photos of, and do it! One book I read said that he had an ongoing theme of trying to find letters of the alphabet in nature. Maybe you can take pictures of red boats, or one room houses. Either way, by choosing one thing to take photos of, it will make you keep trying to find new ways to photograph it.
• Photograph, photograph, photograph
  With the advent of the digital age, it barely costs anything to take hundreds of photos as compared to one. Instead of taking one photo of a person, take fifty! By taking more photos, you’ll learn what you like and what you don’t and your photography skills will increase immensely.

A few years ago, I took a photography class at the local community center. It went over all the basics: composition, exposure, etc. The teacher was also very insistent that we used manual mode on the camera. I never really understood why you would want to use manual—it just seemed like a pain, especially when you can just set the camera to aperture/shutter priority mode and let the camera change half of the exposure while you control the other. But, yesterday, while shooting the photo to the left, the camera was changing the exposure far too much due to the many differing types and amounts of light. So, I switched to manual and took a shot, looked at the histogram, and I kept taking shots until I got the histogram to look like what I wanted—no blown highlights, no lost shadow detail. (A good look at histograms from dpreview.com is here) Then, I was free to take photos without touching the exposure, and it came out just like I wanted. Needless to say, I’ll be using manual a lot more from now on.