Photography part I

2011-12-27 - In august 2011, I bought my first DSLR camera, a Canon EOS 550D, hoping to find a new hobby. Aside from rediscovering that I'm quite the nerd, this "photography thing" is still fun.

Being that nerd, I'm a bit obsessed with knowing how stuff (or, everything) works. I've already read quite a lot. Photography has around 200 years of history, so there's a lot of catching up to do.

My current status: a lot of my pictures still look like crap, but at least by now I understand why. There is a reason why 'photographer' is an occupation and why there are complete schools and educations dedicated to photography. Photography is art, and creating art is hard.

Ok, so a consequence of this article is that it makes me feel i'm obliged to show a few of my photos. So here are a few from my public Flickr stream.

www.flickr.com

Wait what? You just need to push the shutter button right?

Usually, your camera is set to an automatic mode where the device chooses how the picture should look. While giving decent pictures most of the time, it will also give you a lot of "average" exposures.

You see, the lightmeter in your camera decides the exposure based on measuring the amount of reflected light coming in, and calculates what it needs to do to record the same amount of light reflected by an 18% gray card.

To create outstanding pictures (for the moment both below and above-average!) you need to switch to manual mode.

Manual mode lets you decide the shutter speed (how long will the exposure last), aperture stop (light intensity and depth of field) and ISO speed (how fast do you want your sensor to "record" the light).

This is easier than you think, since each of those scales are arranged in "stops" where each stop causes half or double the amount of light coming in (so yes, putting aperture one stop higher, and shutter speed one stop lower will give you the same exposure value). Also, your camera contains a light meter indicator, and it will show you what it thinks is the correct exposure value:

If the indicator is on the left, your photo will be underexposed, if it's on the right, it will be overexposed (In Canon's case anyway. It could be the other way around for your camera). If it's in the center, as the image shows, it'll give you a correct exposure. Of course, that's according to the camera. You want to decide that for yourself don't you?

I can highly recommend Bryan Peterson's book titled "Understanding Exposure". It starts with explaining how to use the manual mode. You will "get it" in about 10 minutes. It really is that easy. Adjusting the settings to get your outstanding above-average shot though is a bit harder, but being able to shoot manually is already quite satisfying.

Many photographers consider the story a photo tells to be the most important aspect of a photo. I don't worry about that too much yet, I still focus on getting stuff under control, getting more comfortable shooting, and understanding everything.

Stuff worth reading

books

• Bryan Peterson - Understanding Exposure. Nice starting point
• Bryan Peterson - Learning to see creatively
• Bruce Barnbaum - The art of photography. Read it, and read it again. And again. This is very good
• Ansel Adams - The Camera (I haven't read the other parts of this series, but I trust those to be good as well: The Negative and The Print)
• Michael Freeman - The Photographer's Eye, an advanced book on composition

online articles

• Ken Rockwell - What makes a great photograph
• advanced: Fred Parker's Ultimate Exposure Computer, explaining how to expose without metering light. Too complex to begin with, but an interesting read!

other

• BBC's TV series "The genius of photography" contain a lot of historic information

A few practical tips from a fellow beginner

• Lots of people start with photography as a hobby and then just give up. Effect: there's lots of decent second hand photography gear for sale.
• There are lots of groups on flickr for beginners, and they often have things like "weekly challenges" . Those are really nice for giving you practical experience, and sometimes good feedback on your pictures. One example is the PictureChallenge reddit.
• Your photo tells a story. Think about what you want to say to people by showing the photo.
• Go out and shoot and then shoot more! But remember to think about your shots.
• Don't always center your subjects. Read up on and use the "rule of thirds".
• Look at what other photographers do. Study photos. My girlfriend gave me a book with pictures from Eugene Atget, it's wonderful to look at what people were able to create more than 100 years ago!
• Don't try to postprocess a bad picture into a good one.
• Use a prime lens, it's a good learning experience.
• Don't be afraid to use a high (800+) ISO value inside. Usually unsharpness is worse than a bit of grain, and newer camera's are quite good at higher ISO values.
• Use a tripod, and a decent one! Bad quality tripods give the same quality pictures. Also, turn OFF any shake reduction (image stabilization / vibrance reduction) features while on a tripod.
• Street photography is quite the hype these days.
• Old M42 lenses are very cheap, and with an AF confirm adapter they work very well (on Canon cameras at least). You have to focus manually, but it confirms when the image is sharp.
• Don't spend all your money on gear. Get to know what you have first (of course, i'm guilty myself of buying too much).
• Don't use the internal flash. Read up on indirect flashing.
• There's a lot of good software far cheaper than Adobe's offerings. Check out rawtherapee, Darktable (lightroom alternative) and Gimp.
• Some names to research: Henri Cartier Bresson, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Robert Adams, Eugene Atget, Bruce Barnbaum, Robert Capa, Anton Corbijn
• Most important: Make sure you have fun. Enjoy it!

A few of my photography bookmarks

• Reddit photography
• Reddit ITAP (I Took A Picture), feedback on photos
• Reddit PictureChallenge
• Reddit Photoclass 2012a hasn't started yet, but it will contain lessons and assignments (based on /r/photoclass).
• Ken Rockwell, I regularly arrive at his site via Google looking for answers to my questions. He has an extensive collection of well written pages (apparently since 1973!). Great gear reviews as well.
• CameraSim, a camera simulator which lets you practice your exposure skills. Awesome!
• Digital Photography School
• Fro knows photo, yep he does, and his site is fun and contains lots of information. Nice community as well.
• Strobist, everything you want to know about flash photography.
• American Suburb X, beware, some pics tend to be shocking or NSFW, but this site is a great resource.
• New York Times Photojournalism
• 500 photographers
• Lightbox - From the photographers of TIME
• DIYPhotography.net