Pros

Pros almost make you feel these guys were born with a camera in thier neck when they were born. With sufficient time and patience, you too can be like them or even better than them. why ? You have the power of internet with you.

Post processing

Although most pros do not support this, I am totally for it. If you are new to photography, you initial photos may not fetch you the ‘wows’ that you expect. In that case, the shortcut way is to post process them using any good software like Adobe Light room, photoshop or GIMP. This will ensure that your photos will stand out all the time. As you proceed in developing skills, you will find yourself using these tools lesser. But until then the following effects can help you

1. Color correction. The flower does not have the violet you wanted, why bother. Use the color slider bar to the fullest
2. Does your photo have morel light that it should. Use brightness and contrast correction to your advantage
3. Increasing sharpness.
4. Parts of image are blurred, thanks to third class focusing ? No problem. Blur it out more, to give an artistic touch or darkness the areas using one of the filter effects
5. You take two photos, and among them, one photo is underexposed and another one is overexposed. Don’t worry, HDR is here to help you ( google for more )

Learning

Make sure you spend at least two hours on reading and know about photography,every single day. This can come through books, internet, online forums. Check online shops about photography products and google and learn about them and how they are used and how they improve your overall photography. Visit flickr and 500px and look at the camera settings that they have posted. this will help you know the various settings used to get the various effects. Initially the plethora of information will make you are flooded with information. But don’t worry, keep spending more time

 

Spend time with your camera. When someone asked if I know all the settings in my camera and that would help me with my

During your initial days, you will hate your camera more than anything else. If you think, your new DSLR camera will help you take cinematic shots. YOU ARE TOTALLY WRONG. Make learning your best buddy, understand the 3 key concepts of photography ( as explain below ) Understand how light works. How shadows cast by other object ( for example how shadows help create more beautiful shapes for petals in case of flower photography ) Realize why composition is so important. Make use of available light. Most days, you look outside and you don’t feel anything. But your photographer eyes will quickly develop and you start realizing the real meaning of hard and soft shadows. the movement of the sun in the sky and how all the objects are lit up by this beautiful light. You will also start seeing beauty in everyday objects. If you do not, you better start noticing it. You will also know that, moon rises and sets at different time and differnet places on each day. The shape and size of the moon changes as its rises up in the horizon.

Most pro ass photographers will vouch for a ‘steady’ hand. I tell them bless you. Lot of ‘wisdom’ these people share, simple make people drive away from photography. Okay, let me be clear here. Yeah, its good to have a steady hand. But its not like you can’t take any photos with that. Why ? Because thanks to recent development in lenses and sensors ( VR for Nikkon lens and IS II for Canon) camera can handle reasonable shake. For uber close, close up photography, use a tripod and remote control

Do you have 5 lakh, lying around in your house ? What are you waiting for ? Go and get yourself a Nikon D4 or 5d Mark III. If not, then you have to start using your brain to compensate for all the features that are missing in your camera.

Things I was surprised

1. When you buy backdrop cloth ( the one used for background, for your photo session ) you are going to be surprised BIG TIME. Why ? They are going to give you really cheap transparent cloth, which cannot be used for anything ! Its so transparent that you can see through it like a net. So what out, before you buy. Take the cloth out of the cover and check thoroughly before you buy them. Check for material quality and make sure that its washable and lasts long

 

 

I realized that when I used to click photo with my cell phone or point and shoot camera, I waited until I clicked the photo and looked at the photo that I got. I only had a vague idea of how the photo would look, once I click it

But this changed when I started to look into photography seriously. Now I plan the shot before hand. Here are a few things I look out for

0. Having the right equipment

Wanna fly without wings ? Its impossible. If you are looking at a particular type or style of photography, you need to make sure you have the necessary equipment to start with.

Secondly, most stuff don’t work as you expect. Take the example of the humble of 0mm prime lens. While you find 100s of comments on amazon praising its useful, it was a full month before I realized its strength. I was even about to return the lens, since most of the photos that I had taken almost looked that they were out of an outdated cell phone. Later I realized that the things that I really need to take care of including the following factors that will effect the sharpness of the photos you take

1. Camera shake, thanks to not using tripod and remote control ( camera shakes when you press the button down )

2. Poor use of light ( if light is low, be ready for some amazing messed up photos with lots of grains and black dots in the dark areas )

3. ISO above 800

 

1. Lighting

This is the most important one.  I light up the object / person or use the light ( in case of sun light ) more effectively.

In case of sunlight I need to check the time of the day when the shoot will take place so that I can plan for the color of the light.

NOTE: The color of object lit by sun changes depending on the time of the day. This is called color temperature. You could find photography books contains photos taken of the subject taken at different time of the days, having different color and different feel to it.

And in case of home/ studio light I ensure that direction of the light is correct and the shadows fall, where I want them to. In case of object with water, glass or even water itself, I have to make sure that the light does not reflect back a lot like a mirror.

Remember that, all these have to be planned before hand

2. Background

Remove any unwanted distraction from the background. Change the background to darker colors or even black ( example this boiling water photo ) or even white ( like this juice glass photo )

3. Depth of field and focus

Keep what is necessary in focus. Make focal length your best friend and play with it. All these terms will be familiar to once you get into photography seriously

Make sure that you keep what you want in focus

 

4. Camera angle

Keeping your object above camera gives it more signficance whereas if the subject is below the camera level then you give it less prominence

5. Composition

There are tons of tutorials on youtube and the web about good compositions, the 2/3 rule and so on. So I wont cover them here. I will only cover things that help you as beginner photographer

Keep most of the important stuff at the center and leave out a litle bit space at the edges and sides

Why ?

1. Your eye is trained to look at the center for most of the photos and the eye movement happens from left to right. So if you have something in the center, that is the natural position for that object. There will be situations when you would want to break this rule and I will let you know about this
2. For many post processing effects like, rotations and skewing, you might loose some part of the image during the process. If your subject is too close to the sides of the photograph you may end up with a very close crop of the image and may give you unwanted results
3. For macro photography, where the capabilities of your lens gets pushed to the extreme, its important to remember that there might lens vignetting as well as slight distortions at the sides of the photographs. Although most lens and cameras do not have this problem( except for using a DX lens on a FX body and so on), its better to watch out

 

6. Lens cleaning

Before every major photo shoot, ensure that are no dust accumulate on your lens. You can find this out by taking a photograph of a white background and use the in camera zoom to look for any particles or blemished in the photograph. Do the same exercise against a black background. This ensures that your photographs come out clean without any marks or dots

WARNING : Please clean the lens with only a lens cleaner and not with your fingers or sharp objects as I did, and end up with a permanent scratch on my glass

 

Did you know ?

1. Every time you change a setting the camera moves a bit here and there. If you plan to do HDR photos, this is a major thing to keep in mind. If you regularly change settings, that has chances of shaking the camera, move the camera from the stand, do the setting and then put it back. Also make sure that you a sturdy tripod ( which tend to be heavy and also sometimes costly ) if you really want to avoid ANY KIND of camera shake
2. White balance is very important