How To Take Better Photos - Part 1 - 11 Things For You To Do

Photography Explained Podcast Episode 172 - How To Take Better Photos - Part 1 - 11 Things For You To Do

This episode starts a series of episodes where I teach you how to take better photos. Nice and simple. And very important.

No matter where you are on your photographic journey, there are things that you and I can do that will help us to take better photos. Every time I take a photo, I try to take a better photo than last time. I will tell you how I do this in this series of episodes.

In this episode, I tell you.

·         What is the most important thing in photography?

·         11 things that you can do to help you take better photos.

·         What people care about when they look at your photo?

·         What people don’t know or don’t care about when they look at your photo?

·         What if I use a phone to take photos and not a camera?

·         What if I use a film camera?

·         And finally, what I do.

All explained in plain English, without the irrelevant detail, in less than 27 (ish) minutes!

What is not to love?

Transcript

Hi, and a very warm welcome to Episode 172 of the Photography Explained podcast. I'm your host, Rick, and in each episode, I will try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 27 minutes (ish) without the irrelevant details. I'm a professionally qualified photographer based in England with a lifetime of photographic experience, which I share with you in my podcast.

Answery bit

Here are 11 things you can work on to help you take better photos, whatever your current level. And I include myself in this.

1. What are you trying to do with your photography?
2. Composition – what you put in your photos
3. How to take photos – getting started
4. Camera gear – what to buy and how to use it
5. Camera settings – how to get image capture bang on
6. Phone or camera? Which do you use?
7. Learn from your photos and other photographers
8. Image processing – the stuff you need to know
9. How to save time but improve your photography
10. Get out and practise more – but take less photos
11. Become excellent at one photography thing 

Right, those are the 11 things, 11 photography tips; I will go through them quickly in this episode and then cover each one in a single episode.

1 - What are you trying to do with your photography?

Well, it’s an excellent place to start. Do you want to go pro? Do you want to make a living from your photography? Do you want to grow a massive online following with your photos?

Or do you want to learn how to create better photos as this is the thing you love to do, your hobby, and how you like to spend your free time?

All are fine, of course – I will go into this lot in more detail, which will set you off in the right direction.

2 - Composition – what you put in your photos

When someone else looks at your photos, they only know what they see. This makes composition rather important. Composition is what you include in a photo and also what you do not include in a photo. Composition is about how the elements within a photo relate and how the light relates to the content of the composition.

Good photos also need good light, natural light or artificial light. 

There are rules of composition that can help us; the rule of thirds is one of my favourites for my photos of buildings - it gives my photos a logical structure.

Professional photographers start with the best composition; that is the starting point, not the endpoint. Sorry, I could go on about this all day - more in that episode.

Composition is king, dear listener. Composition is king.

3 - How to take photos – getting started

How do you go about taking a photo? What is the process? There are things that you can do when you take photos that will help you to take better photos.

In this episode, I tell you how to take photos; explaining what you must do practically.

And the secret I will share with you now - walking around and looking. Yes, much of the work is done before you take a photo; there are different views, different angles, and different compositions.

This is one of those things that I didn’t think about for years and years, but when I did, I started to take fewer photos, and the photos I took were much better.

Fewer rubbish photos, this must be a good thing!

4 - Camera gear – what to buy and how to use it

I used to spend my time looking at the latest and greatest shiny new things. Gear was my thing. I had a massive camera bag packed full of everything that I could ever possibly need.

And I used probably 10-15% of it.

So, let’s not get that extra 85%-90% of gear; let's stick to the stuff we need.

Do you need a professional camera? What about a camera lens? Well, I have some great ideas on gear. But you don't necessarily need an expensive camera - oh no.

5 - Camera settings – how to get image capture bang on

There are so many camera settings and so many options. Where do you start? How do you decide which settings to use?

I change two things when I am out taking photos – that is it. Well, for 95% of my photos. I will tell you what I do and how you can work in the same way tto make camera settings a breeze.

6 - Phone or camera? Which do you use?

I use both for different reasons, things, and outcomes. Neither has replaced the other; they have distinct, separate uses. And I need both of them together.

So, for me, it is not a choice of camera or phone; it is making the best use of both devices to help me do what I do.

7 - Learn from your photos and other photographers

How can you take great photos if you don’t know what a great photo is? Well, there are many great photos by many great photographers, so let's learn from them. Everything is out there to help us. We just need to find them and really look at them and learn from them.

And equally important, we need to understand what a rubbish photo is.

8 - Image processing – the stuff you need to know

Again, there are so many options for image processing. There are so many apps out there that do amazing things. But do you want to do amazingly edited photos?

I don’t; I want to make my photos look the best they can. That is it. And I want to do this editing myself. I want some help from tech, but I want to decide what changes are made.

9 - How to save time but improve your photography

This is dead good. This is something that has taken me years to learn. Want to spend less time taking loads of photos? Want to spend even less time going through those photos on your computer trying to find something half-decent?

I have the answer to this. It costs nothing, will help you take photos, and will save you time.

10 - Get out and practise more – but take less photos

Yes. Get out more and take photos. I need to do this. And practise with what you have, get the best you can out of what you have. Experiment with your gear, try everything and see what you like. See how far you can push your gear. You might be surprised by what it can do.

But just getting out more doesn’t mean you need to take hundreds of photos. Would you rather have one great photo or one hundred average photos?

11 - Become excellent at one photography thing

Try everything, then see what you liked doing and what you enjoyed taking photos of. Once you know what that is, do that thing. Do all of the above but in that one thing. Become excellent at one thing.

You want to do something you enjoy, right?

If that one thing is photographing a glass lying on its side on top of a wall at sunset, do that.

If that one thing is photographing a squirrel eating a pineapple, do that.

If that one thing is photographing buildings, do that. That’s what I do.

Sorry, excuse the first two – but to be fair, they were the first things that came into my head. The original thought for the second one was a tiger eating a pineapple – I made it more doable by changing it to a squirrel.

Ok, that is the 11 things, tips, steps, call them what you want. These titles will change when writing each episode, but what they are about will not change.

The talky bit

Right. 11 things. I will take one episode per thing – I look forward to this. As to me explaining one photographic thing per episode, I can’t just continue explaining one thing; there are only so many times I can tell you what aperture is. Or shutter speed, which we now call exposure time, of course!

No, this is about taking better photos. You will hear me say this over and over. 

Someone is looking at your photo. What do they know?

What is in the photo? What they are looking at. 

That is it. No more. They don’t know the back story. Well, there are times when people will be able to look at a photo with the back storey there, but 99% of the time, the person looking at your photo does not know

1. The camera settings that you used.
2. That you used the fanciest mirrorless camera on the planet to take the photo.
3. That you used a light source that is more powerful than the sun.
4. Or that you used your phone to take the photo.
5. You used auto exposure bracketing to capture a high dynamic range.
6. That it took you 73 hours on your computer to create.
7. That you got 38 gazillion likes on social media.
8. That you walked for 38 miles in 50-degree heat in the jungle fighting off lions and tigers on the way to the foot of the mountain where the boiling lava was melting your eyebrows as you took the photo sat on the back of a very angry elephant trying to capture the last of golden hour.

You get the idea.

Very angry elephant. I know – it is how my mind works.

No, all anyone knows is what they are looking at. Most people will never care about any of the above.

So, this is where we should focus our efforts – on creating the best, most interesting photos we can. That is the point of photography – creating the best photos we can. Yes, the best way to create great pictures is to think about what we are taking photos of.

Working on our photography skills will help us take better photos - I do not doubt this.

I will stop here – I always said that each episode would be as long as needed, and I have said what I wanted to say.

The titles of the 11 things will change as I write the episodes, but this will not change what I am talking about.

What if I use my phone to take photos and not a camera?

I will cover that. Either way is fine. I use my phone and camera in my photography – they complement each other. But I still take commercial photos with my digital camera, my DSLR camera.

What if I use a film camera?

I will cover this in each episode as well. But film photographers have to execute photography skills every time; they have to get it right the first time every time. And I love that about film photography. No, I don't do it anymore, but I am still thinking about it.

What do I do?

Bang on about this stuff – this is what I do. I will cover what I do in each episode. But I have spent over 40 years working on taking better photos, and I share the good stuff that I can remember with you here on my podcast. Every day, I try to be a better photographer; every time I take a photo, I try to take a better photo, a more interesting photo, a photo with the best image quality.

When I started to work on my photos consciously, things happened. I found my thing, started getting work, started taking much higher-quality photos, and got a professional qualification that I am proud to hold today – an Associate of the British Institute of Professional Photography – ABIPP.

I am telling you what I do, what I have learned, and what you need to know. And I am thinking of a new section -  what you don’t need to worry about. That thought came to me as I wrote this – I will have a think about this.

Some thoughts from the last episode

OK – I have done with my stupid photography terms and put the world of photography right. As this episode goes out, I am emailing various manufacturers in the photography world, asking them what they think of my proposals to modernise photography.

Yes, I am doing this. And the very thought of doing this makes me smile. I will give updates as and when I get them, but the next 11 episodes are about what I have already spoken about. I am looking forward to doing this. Taking good pictures, taking great pictures, wherever we are in our photographic journey, we can improve our photography. 

And great photographs don't happen by accident.

Sorry, I was going on a bit there.

Next episode

Simple. Straight into number 1 - What are you trying to do with your photography? It’s a great question I could discuss for days – don’t worry, I won’t!

Ask me a question.

If you have a question you would like me to answer, email me at sales@rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk or head over to the podcast website - photographyexplainedpodcast.com/start.

If you want to say hi, please do – I love hearing from my listeners.

OK - I am done.

This episode was brought to you by, erm, ok, a New Year, a new me. I am having a healthy phase, so I eat fewer cheese and pickle sandwiches and no crisps. No crisps. I know. So, this episode was brought to you by a (homemade) chicken and mayo sandwich washed down with an ice-cold Diet Pepsi before I settled in my homemade, acoustically cushioned recording emporium. But no crisps.

I've been Rick McEvoy; thanks again very much for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast (it says here) and for giving me 27 ish minutes of your valuable time. This episode will be about 23 minutes long after I have edited out the mistakes and other bad stuff.

Take care and stay safe.

Cheers from me, Rick