Photography Tips - How To Actually Take A Photo

Would you like to know the best way to take a photo? As obvious as it might sound, there are things that you might not know. So, if you are still trying to figure out what to do or want help taking better photos, you are in the right place. I can help you with this.

You can do things when you take a photo to get the best results. In this episode, I tell you exactly what they are and what you need to do. How utterly splendid!

In this episode, I tell you.

• How to get the technical stuff sorted.
• What your camera might be telling you.
• How to actually take a photo.
• What to do if you are using a tripod.
• 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!

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Transcript

Photography Tips - How To Actually Take A Photo

Hi, and a very warm welcome to Episode 177 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.

Here is the answery bit

This is how to take a photo

1. Choose your composition carefully
2. Check your camera settings
3. Decide where you are going to focus
4. Take a meter reading
5. If all is good, get yourself steady
6. Hold the camera correctly
7. Breathe in
8. Breathe out slowly
9. Gently roll your finger over the shutter button, focus, meter, and take the photo.
10. And relax!
11. Check what you have got.
12. And hopefully, move on!

Simple. That is how you take a photo. I will cover these quickly now and then cover taking a photo with a tripod. I am assuming that you have got your camera set up sorted. More on this in the next episode. And let's not forget what this is all about - trying to take high-quality photos.

1 Choose your composition carefully

I think I have covered this already. Check out the previous episodes for lots more on this. You know what you are photographing, so it's time to get to work!

2 Check your camera settings

Exposure

This is essential—you must get the exposure correct. The exposure is a combination of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. If you're shooting in Program mode, that's fine. No one will criticise you for shooting in Program mode, and if they do, send them to me. The same applies to all those other automatic modes. My advice is to use them and learn from them, with the aim of being able to take photos in manual mode at some point.

I use a semi-automatic mode, Av. I set the aperture, and the camera sets the shutter speed to give me the correct exposure.

And to all those people who say, oh, if you don't shoot in manual, you're not a real photographer – to them, I say this – nonsense - if you shoot in manual mode and use the camera settings that it tells you to use, you're just doing what the camera tells you to anyway.

I would rather you enjoy your photography using the auto modes in your camera than feel pressured to use manual mode and struggle and not enjoy taking photos.

How do you get the correct exposure?

The exposure is a combination of the aperture and the shutter speed. The aperture determines how much light gets through to the sensor, and the shutter speed determines the amount of time that the sensor is exposed to light. The ISO changes the brightness of the image.

Look through the viewfinder, press the shutter button halfway, and some lights should appear in your viewfinder. I can't tell you what they all mean, but in general terms, you are good to go if nothing is flashing.

Take a photo and see what you get. Zoom in and make sure that everything is sharp. Again, if there is part of the photo that is underexposed or overexposed, the camera should tell you—those areas should be highlighted in some way. If all looks good, then you are OK as you are.

• If the photo is too dark, you need more light – use a larger aperture, slower shutter speed or higher ISO value.
• If the photo is too light, you need less light – use a smaller aperture, a faster shutter speed or a lower ISO value.

Changing each of these has consequences that you need to be aware of.

Next, I will quickly cover aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. If you are in auto mode, the camera will choose these for you.

Aperture

The aperture determines how much light gets through to the camera sensor and also the depth of field.

The aperture is a thing within the lens that makes the opening in the lens smaller. The aperture also controls the depth of field, or depth of sharpness, as I like to call it.

Use a large aperture (small aperture number) if you want to blur the background and/ or isolate details. Use a small aperture (larger aperture number) to get more depth of field.

Depth of field is the amount of a photo that is sharp from front to back. It has nothing to do with fields. That is why I call it depth of sharpness.

However, you need to remember that using the maximum or minimum apertures will result in some loss of image quality—the sharpest bit is somewhere in the middle.

Shutter Speed

The shutter speed is the amount of time that the shutter is open, exposing the camera sensor to light. A fast shutter speed can freeze a moving object, while a slow shutter speed can blur moving objects. Take a photo handheld with a slow shutter speed, and you will probably get a blurry photo. So, you need to choose a shutter speed that allows you to take sharp photos and also gives you the correct exposure.

If you are shooting handheld, your shutter speed should be the reciprocal of the focal length. Now, that's sort of how they say it, but this is how I understand it.

If I'm shooting at 100mm, I need to use a shutter speed of 1/125th second or faster. If I'm shooting at 50mm, I need to use a shutter speed of 1/60th second or faster. Hopefully, you get the idea.

ISO

ISO is the sensitivity of the camera sensor to light. The terms base and native ISO get mixed up and confused. So, which ISO should you use?

Well, taking my Canon 6D, for example, the camera manual states that the camera has an ISO range of 100 to 25,600. I use the lowest ISO, 100, which, in my opinion, gives me the highest image quality. Now, with my Canon 6D, I could use 200 or 400 and probably not know the difference. Canon states, "High ISO speeds will result in grainier images."

For the purposes of this episode, use the lowest ISO possible to get a sharp handheld photo.

So, if you're given a choice between a sharp photo with noise and a blurry photo with no noise, you choose the first.

The aperture and shutter speed, along with the ISO, determine the exposure of an image. And if you are using an automatic mode, the camera does this for you.

Either way, having worked out what we are taking a photo of and having the camera sorted, we need to decide where to focus. 

3 Decide where you are going to focus

Where you focus is important. Typically, you will focus on the subject. If that is a person, it will be their eyes. If it is a building, it will probably be the bit nearest to you. If it is a landscape, it will be some way away.

Focus on the subject—99 times out of 100, you will want the subject sharp. The aperture, in combination with the focal length, will determine how sharp the photo is from front to back. And that is a choice that you have.

4 Take a meter reading

Press the shutter button halfway, and you should see some lights appear. If nothing is flashing, you are usually good to go. If something is flashing, it depends on your camera, but the one we don't want is the shutter speed flashing, warning you that there is a risk of camera shake.

Check your shutter speed and adjust as I described above. Or put your camera on a tripod, of course!

5 If all is good, Get yourself steady

Stand naturally with your legs apart at 45-degree angles. Bend your knees slightly. Basically, get yourself standing as naturally stable as you can. Whatever the best way is for you to create your own stable base—like a human tripod!

6 Hold the camera correctly

This is what I do with my Canon 6D. I hold the camera in my right hand with the grip and cradle the bottom of the camera body and lens with my left hand. My finger is naturally near the shutter button. This is why I love taking photos with my camera; it fits like a glove in my hands. OK, not really like a glove, but you know what I mean? 

7 Breathe in. 

Yes, breathe in, a nice, slow, deep breath.

8 Breathe out slowly. 

Nice and slow now.

9 Gently roll your finger over the shutter button, focus, meter, and take the photo

Do this as you are breathing out.

10 And relax!

11 Check what you have got

Have a quick look at the screen on your camera.

12 And hopefully, move on!

Hopefully, you have that one photo that you were after. It's time to move on. You don't need to take another photo now, do you? Not from there, not of the same subject.

Why do I use a tripod when I take photos?

Simple. It helps me with my compositions and means I don't need to worry about the shutter speed, as my camera is rock solid on my tripod. I use the camera self-timer to take the photos, making sure I do not move my camera when I am taking a photo. This also means that I can use the lowest ISO for the Canon 6D, which is ISO100.

The talky bit

All I want to say here is that you should take time, thought, and care when taking a photo. When I say take time, we are talking a matter of seconds with practice. Get into the habit of doing all these things every time you take a photo, and your photos will improve.

All the small things I teach you all add together, and the sum of all these bits will materialise in your photos.

This is what a professional photographer does—they apply all these things to each photo they take.

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

There isn't as much checking of the settings, but you can do the rest of the above. Give this a go and see what happens.

If we view smartphone cameras as devices to take photos with, why would we not take the same time and care over taking photos? Just because a phone is an instant device does not mean you have to take every photo instantly. With time, thought and care, we can all take much better photos with our phones. Smartphone photography is photography to me. So, there's no reason not to take better pictures with your phone.

Of course, you can post your photos on social media straight away using a camera phone. I do not do this.

What if use a film camera?

All of the above applies. But you can't check what you have like you can with a digital camera, so you need to be super careful with your settings. And if you want to change the ISO, you have to change the film, which isn't a great idea, is it?

This is why I recommend to anyone who wants to learn photography that taking photos with a film camera is a great discipline. That is how I learned. But to be fair, when I started in photography, the word digital did not exist!

What do I do?

I have told you how I physically take photos. These best practices help me get sharp handheld photos. 

I compose using the rule of thirds—the grid lines help me capture a building's outline, the horizontal lines help me to get the building level, and the vertical lines help me to get the building upright.

I use natural light, plus the lights designed and built into buildings. These give me the best light for my work.

I use AV mode on my Canon 6D DSLR camera—I set the aperture, and the camera sets the shutter speed. 

I use the shutter speed that the camera chooses. On a tripod, I don't worry about the shutter speed unless there are fast-moving clouds, trees, rivers, or other similar objects. I take 99% of my photos with my camera on a tripod, so I don't need to worry about the shutter speed.

I use auto-bracketing, taking three photos with different exposures, which I merge together in Lightroom (this is also called high dynamic range photography). I photograph buildings that are not moving—at least, I hope they aren't!

I also use auto white balance and RAW format.

For my architectural photography work, I tend to focus a third into the scene, using an aperture of F8 or F16 and a 17mm focal length. I have other camera lenses but tend to stick with my Canon 17-40mm lens. Focusing a third in is not a bad rule of thumb. It's not that precise, but it gives you a start if you're not sure.

I use ISO 100. I only change from ISO 100 if I am taking handheld photos, and the only way to get a shutter speed that is fast enough is to use a higher ISO. I have never used an ISO value of more than 1600, but I still use the lowest ISO value that I can for every photo.

I take other photos with my iPhone, using the default camera app. But I use my Canon 6D for my client work - this is the best camera I have ever owned, even though it is ten years old now! It doesn't have that many camera features, but this is part of why I love it.

I love landscape photography; this is my taking photos for me time.

I aim to produce high-quality images every time I take photos, and the fewer photos I take, the better. If I can get one or two great photos, I am happy. I don't take a lot of photos anymore—I haven't done that for a long time.

Blimey, that was a big what do I do!

This is what I do.

Thoughts from the last episode

My one-photo rule. I want to say something about that. When I say take one photo, I really mean it. But if you want to take more than one photo of something, then that is, of course, up to you. I know that there is always more than one composition of anything and that just taking one photo sounds really restrictive.

But what I used to do was take loads of photos of the same thing and then try to find a decent composition in Lightroom afterwards. This is the wrong way around. Now I am happy just getting one photo, and being completely honest, I cannot think of a time when I wish I had taken another photo from a different angle or position.

No, I am happy to spend the time getting the best photo I can.

Next episode

Camera gear—what to buy and how to use it. This is a biggy. It might be a two-parter. In fact, as I write this, I know that it will be. So I am going to say here that I am going to cover what to buy in the next episode. The main part of this will be what not to buy. You don't need the latest, greatest, expensive camera.

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.

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

Get an email from me.

If you would like to receive a weekly email from me where I tell you what I am thinking about, fill out the form on the podcast website, and every Friday, you will get a lovely email from me.

OK - I am done.

This episode was brought to you by a homemade—wait for it—chicken sandwich washed down with an ice-cold Diet Pepsi before I settled in my homemade, acoustically cushioned recording emporium. Still, 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.

I hope to see you on the next episode.

Take care and stay safe.

Cheers from me, Rick