- You can’t please everyone!
- Learn Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO first. Stay on Manual. Shoot Raw. Shoot everyday. Study your results (including what shutter speed, ISO and aperture settings you used for your favorite shots).
- Practice until using the various settings becomes an automatic skill and then relax into the ‘art’ of photography. Lighting is your friend and your enemy, stay on its good side at all times.
- Composition is everything. Study the master painters (Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, etc) for inspiration in composition. Start to see things as a painter
- Don’t be afraid of taking bad pictures. Have fun experimenting!
- Hit us over the head with your subject. Make it obvious what we are supposed to be seeing. Remove the clutter.
- Fill the frame, as space is always exaggerated in a photograph.
- Change your perspective – Get Low, Get High, and Shoot at Angles…what haven’t you seen before?
- A 50mm f/1.8 lens will change your life, Spend time with it. Remember instead of a zoom lens, get closer!
- Take your camera with you. Everywhere. “Almost” all the time.
- Just because the vintage effect looks “nice,” doesn’t mean you have to use it on Every – Single – Picture.
- Take a picture everyday, challenge yourself. Read your manual! Learn your camera settings and how to use them.
- They are not all keepers, and just as a hammer doesn’t build an amazing house a camera doesn’t take an amazing photo. They are tools, think outside the box.
- You can’t fix everything in Photoshop. Pay attention to the background.
- Do not show people the bad stuff. Shoot 300, Show 1.
- Shoot black and white for a month, and then Sepia for a month.
- When you see action, turn around. Meaning, watch the people who are watching an event happen.
- Find the light, but don’t be afraid of shadows.
- Tell a story when you press the shutter…A picture says a 1,000 words.
- Get inspiration from other photographers work but never copy. Make your photos a reflection of what’s in your heart.
- Anytime you feel that your equipment is inadequate, it just means you need to master the basics better. The master photographers from 50 – 100 years ago didn’t have anything as fancy as you are holding in your hands, so claiming inadequate equipment isn’t a good excuse. Work on your skills.
