15 Time-Saving Photography Tips To Take Better Photos. Hi, and a very warm welcome to Episode 185 of the Photography Explained podcast. I hope you are well. I'm your host, Rick, and In each episode, I 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
- Have a plan for what you are going to photograph
- Only take interesting photos
- Look before you take photos
- If I take this photo, will I be bothered to edit it?
- Camera settings for success
- Less gear is more
- My one-photo rule
- OK – the take fewer photos rule
- Portfolio swappers
- Cull like a pro
- Edit only what you need to
- The 5-minute edit rule
- Speed editing – find your sweet spot
- Copy and paste
- Really look at your photos and what you have created
Yes, these are all things you can do to save heaps of time and take better photos—and they don't cost you anything-what is not to love?
Let's go through them one by one.
1 Have a plan for what you are going to photograph
I used to be the expert in rocking up at a place and just wandering around trying to find something to photograph. Nothing is wrong with this, and I still love doing it. I love the spontaneity of discovering a new place, so I don't want to kill this joy completely. But now I also have a plan. I have a rough idea of what I will be looking for.
Create a plan. Have things in mind that you are looking to capture, or have a plan for where you are going and what you will look at.
And have a plan for how many great photos you want. My plan for every time I go out to take photos is in number 9.
2 Why you should only take interesting photos
Just having this thought in mind will stop you from taking photos that are, well, not interesting. I have taken photos more times than I care to admit that I shouldn't have. So many times, when I get home and look at them in Lightroom, I look at photos, ask myself why I took them, and then delete them. It is such a waste of my time and the planet's resources.
Find interesting things to photograph, and you will likely create more interesting photos. The main subject needs to be interesting—if not, what chance do you have?
And try to find interesting light. Study the light and determine what it is doing in a composition. Photography is drawing with light. Find and use interesting light, and you will transform your photos.
3 Look, look and look again before you take a photo
Look around before you take a photo. Don't take a load of photos of something and then try to find the good one later in post-processing. I spent years doing this. Now, I wander around looking for the best composition before I take a photo. I will leave my camera in my bag until I find something interesting. And once I have found something interesting, I will explore that more to find the best possible composition. I will also consider the light, the weather, things around that can contribute to a photo, and how they might work best together. I will explore different angles, different views, and different compositions. I will study the most important elements in a photo and how they relate.
Only once I have done that will I raise my camera to my eye and begin to refine a composition.
I do this using the viewfinder and the LCD screen. I use the rule of thirds to help me, and I check and re-check. I keep on looking.
And this doesn't have to take a long time, although it might sound like it! No, it can be a quick process with thought and practice.
4 If I take this photo, will I be bothered to edit it?
That's a great question. When you return to wherever you edit your photos, will you look at this photo and move on to something else? Can I be bothered to edit this? To start this thought process, look at the photos you have taken previously and work out how many of them have never been edited.
Can you stop doing this? I did this, which was a wake-up call for me—there are so many photos I have never edited, and these photos make the good ones more challenging to find!
Before you press the shutter button, ask yourself, "If I take this photo, will I be bothered to edit it?"
5 Camera settings to get great photos
Get the exposure bang on, get the focus point right, and get what you want in a photo sharp and what you do not want sharp—erm, not sharp. Doing all this when you take a photo will save you time editing. Get this stuff wrong, and you are creating work for yourself.
And if you want a blurry background, do this when you take a photo. Don't plan to add the effect afterwards.
Use a camera mode that will help you. It does not have to be manual mode. I use AV mode most of the time.
If you find that you are using a higher ISO and are getting noisy photos that need sorting and editing, stop using a high ISO!
If you need to use longer shutter speeds, get a tripod.
Think about what you are doing when you are editing photos. Are there any things you do in editing that could have been eliminated when you took the photos?
Great image quality starts with great image capture.
6 Photography gear - why less is more, much more
I have less gear now than ever.
I usually carry one camera body, two lenses, my tripod, and a few essential accessories in a small backpack.
I used to have a massive bag full of gear, of which I used probably 10% at a push. I had two camera bodies with me, all my lenses, and all sorts of other stuff.
Now, which of these is more conducive to taking better photos, do you think, dear listener?
Apart from the load on my back, all that other gear gave me options I could have done without that distracted from the important part, which is finding interesting things to photograph.
Do you really need all your gear?
Less is more, dear listener; less is more.
Never use the camera's built-in flash—you will get awful light. If you need a flash, get an external flash and a bracket. I prefer natural light myself.
7 How my one-photo rule can help you
Check out episode 152, How My One Photo Rule Will Help You Take Better Photos, for more. I will revisit this in a future episode, as my thoughts have developed since I published this episode in March 2023.
But the basic principle is this: Take one photo. Well, of course, it is. I am talking about a sunrise; get one photo. Do this, and you can enjoy that wonderful golden hour! Make that your aim when you get there. When photographing a building, I will take one photo of the front and then move on.
That is what I am talking about.
8 Ok – the take fewer photos rule
You might find the one-photo rule uncomfortable. I get that. So, make a conscious decision to take fewer photos than you would have done. Making this decision will help you start the thought process that leads you to take fewer but better photos. This is a journey, after all, from what we have been used to doing, and the best way to start this journey is to take fewer photos if taking one photo is too restricting. For now.
9 Portfolio swappers - always try to take a better photo
I have talked about how valuable portfolios are to photographers. I am not talking about anything fancy here; it is just a collection of your best photos. This needs an episode all of its own, so I have added it to the list.
But very quickly, create your portfolio of your best photos—the best of the best. How many photos? Well, I have online portfolios with 12 images. And the BIPP, my professional body, asks for 20 photos when you apply to become a member.
So choose your best 20 photos—no more. Every time you go out and take photos, aim to get one image that can go in your portfolio. You will have to remove one image to do this, so it has to be better.
10 Cull your photos like a pro
The fewer photos you take, the easier this is. And if you cull with the aim of getting just one photo to edit out of a load of photos, that helps. Culling photos is boring, and it can take ages. But all you need to do is choose the photos you like most quickly and move on. Don't overthink it; go with your instinct.
Culling photos needs to be a quick process. And if you don't delete all the photos you do not choose to edit, they are always there to go back to, so there is nothing to lose other than your own time.
11 Only edit the photos you need to edit
Don't edit every photo. Edit only the photos you are going to use. Edit the best shots only (if you have to edit more than one photo)! Leave the rest.
12 The 5-minute photo editing rule
I don't know how long you take to edit photos, and I am not trying to take away the joy of spending hours editing photos away from you, if that is what you love to do, if that is your thing.
But if you feel like you are spending forever editing photos and find this frustrating, do this.
Give yourself 5 minutes to edit a photo and see what happens. Did the world stop spinning, or was everything just fine? Give this a go and see what happens.
13 Speed photo editing – find your sweet spot
The next step is to edit photos in less than 5 minutes. Edit a photo in 1 minute, then edit it again, but give yourself 5 minutes. What is the difference? Have those extra four minutes unnecessarily added to a photo?
Do the same with another photo, but give yourself 2 minutes. Then edit the same photo, giving yourself the full 5 minutes.
Then, do the same for 3 and 4 minutes.
And what have you learned?
You might find that 1, 2, 3, or 4 minutes was enough rather than spending forever. If so, you have a new benchmark time to work within.
14 How copy and paste can make editing photos a breeze
When editing photos of a building, I want the photos to all look similar. So, for the external shots, I start by getting the composition right for all the photos, with the building level and vertical. Then, I make a number of adjustments in the basic panel to the first photo, and I copy and paste them to all the others. I will then tweak them so they are all correct and do the same with the internals.
Yes, copy and paste are friends of mine.
15 Really look at your photos and what you have created
What do you do with your photos when you have edited them? Do you really look at them? And I mean, really, look at them. Well, now you know you need a portfolio, hopefully you will start to do this.
It is so important to look at your photos critically. I have spoken about this many times—we can learn so much from the photos that we have created.
So, get to it by properly looking at our photos.
The talky bit
Thinking before taking a photo is a superpower we all need to develop. This is the very frequently recurring theme in this episode. And it makes sense. I used to take loads of photos of the same thing from various angles. And then agonised over which was the best photo later sat at my computer.
This is not what photography is meant to be all about.
If we go back to the film days, every photo cost money. We had 36 possible photos in a single roll of film. That was all we had. And we had to pay for the film to be processed and the prints to be printed. Every single photo had a cost to it.
Not anymore with digital. And no, I am not saying that things were better in the film days—far from it. But with digital cameras and digital photography, things are so different. It is easy to get carried away and take loads of photos, as it doesn't cost us any more.
It does cost us, actually, if only in hard drive or cloud storage space, which ultimately costs money.
But getting back to the point, a lot of what I talk about revolves around thinking about the photos that we're taking and being happy accepting that we are only after one or two new photos. Adopting this mindset will help you improve your photography. And if this happens, my work here is done!
This is how professional photographers work. And you can do the same - I am talking about being smarter and thinking more.
And one thing I didn't mention in the camera settings bit: Use auto white balance and take photos in RAW format, and you have all the adjustments you need—that, to me, is smart working.
Think before you share
This was on the list, but I removed it because I found something much more important. But I will mention this briefly here: Think before you share a photo on social media. I recommend only sharing your very best photos. Why would you want to share anything other than your best photos anyway?
Just saying.....
What if I use my phone to take photos and not a camera?
I have said this many times before. I find taking photos with my phone different to taking photos with my camera. If you only have a phone, try this. Create a new album, or folder, whatever it might be called on your device, and save any serious photos, you know what I mean, not photos of something you saw in a shop, your cat, dog, or other animal of choice. No, make a place for your proper photos, and when you are out taking photos, if you see something that you think would make a great photo, do everything that I have said and put that one photo in that folder.
We can adopt this mindset with our mobile devices. Smartphone cameras can take great photos, but you still have a bit of work to do.
Give this a go, and let me know how you get on.
What do I do?
I walk around, look, think, try to get one photo, and then move on. I don't use JPEG format; I take RAW files and do all the work myself. I don't spend a lot of time editing photos, even though RAW images look rubbish straight out of the camera. I edit photos taken with my Canon 6D, but I rarely edit photos taken with my iPhone 15 Pro!
That is what I do.
My Survey on phones and cameras
I have set up a survey on this subject. I would really appreciate it if you completed the survey, which will take 2 minutes to complete. Just head over to Photography Explained Podcast.com/survey2024.
I will pick up the survey results in a future episode, so thanks in anticipation for your assistance with this.
Some thoughts from the last episode
The episode was titled (And Not Worry About), but there wasn't too much about the not worrying thing, which I will address here.
It is very easy to worry about photo editing. But if we start from the position that all we are trying to do is make what we have to look better, then many of those worries should disappear. We are turning good photos into great photos. That is our aim. All we are doing is making what we have to look the best we can.
Stop worrying about everything else and enjoy making your photos look better.
What is the next episode of the Photography Explained Podcast?
Get out and practise more—but take fewer photos. How can I possibly talk about this for twenty seven minutes? I have no idea, but I will give it a go! I'm sure this won't be a problem!
Ask me a question for the Photography Explained Podcast
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.
Also, check out the questions page, where there is a big old list of things you can choose from.
And if you want to say hi, please do – it would be great to hear from you.
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Right, I'm done.
This episode was brought to you by cheese on toast washed down with coffee—I just fancied that as a mid-morning snack before I settled down in my homemade, acoustically cushioned recording emporium. 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 minutes of your valuable time. This episode will be about 28 minutes long after I have edited out the mistakes and other bad stuff.
See you in the next episode.
Take care and stay safe
Cheers from me, Rick
