Photography - An Amateur's Perspective

There are a few important things that all amateur photographers should know, which I have learned mainly through experience, being a (VERY) amateur photographer myself. (You probably won't be finding much of this in any handbook, it's just information and technique I've picked up throughout the course of my short career.) To start, I've found that one of the most important things to remember about photography is that you don't need to limit yourself to photographing the unusual. Anything, ANYthing, can be interesting. In fact, a big part of the art of photography is to flatter everyday things using a subtle combination of angle, lighting, focus, and composition. (The other half of photography is, in fact, finding unusual, exotic or out-of-the-ordinary subjects, and snapping photos of them frantically in order to save them. But we're not there right now.)

The second thing that you should know is that photography is extremely unpredictable. Anything can happen while you're snapping your photo. Learning to take a good picture is an art of balancing proper setup with the hundreds of variables that could possibly occur, an art which I have not mastered yet in the slightest. But I can hope to give you a little bit of advice, anyway, so here I go.

But before I launch into more explanation, the third and final thing that I have found important (and this one, I have heard from other people, too) is that NO photograph you take on the first shot will be what you want - unless you have an extreme amount of good luck. It takes dozens of photos of the same thing to get what you want. Don't snap one picture of a subject and then move on. As long as the subject stays in the same place, take up to ten - or more. It sucks when you go back and look at the photos later, and realize that one of them is just blurry enough to be distracting but would have been really good if it hadn't been - and that you don't have any more pictures of that subject.

Mostly, this post is about the topic of making things interesting - and about accidents that have turned out really good. (Those happen, sometimes, too.) For example, look at this lightbulb. I took this picture in my friend's kitchen. Would it normally be interesting? Absolutely not. But when I focused on it with my camera, the background turned from whitewashed walls and a kitchen counter to completely pitch-black. Now the photo looks cool.



Now, these rabbit tracks. I found these in the snow in the forest near our Winter Park house, when I was out tromping around looking for subjects. Rabbit footprints are not that interesting. But with the filtered lighting, it becomes more interesting. Also, the footprints hold enough contrast with the snow around them to stand out that much more.



My final example for you is an icicle. This picture came out way better than expected. I figured out how to focus the lens on the icicle instead of the background, and was snapping pictures like mad - but in this one, I caught that droplet of meltwater completely on accident. I still consider this one of my best pictures.



So there you go. When taking pictures, remember these things: anything can be interesting, accidents will happen (but may not turn out badly), and one picture (or even five pictures) is never enough. If I could, that's the photography advice I'd broadcast to everyone.

And, feel free to fault me if you want - I'm not exactly the next John Fielder at all, so I know pretty much next to nothing about what I'm saying. This all comes from experience. So if you disagree, let me know. You'll probably be more right than me anyway.