Steps To Learning Photography

Steps To Learning Photography

by William Lulow

With all the teaching I have been doing lately, I have been thinking about the steps I went through to learn some of the technical aspects of making good photographs on a consistent basis. As an amateur photographer, you allow yourself some extra measure of freedom to make images come out just the way you want. As a professional, you no longer have that freedom. You are expected to make reproducible images EVERY TIME. When you are hired to make an image for someone, it had better turn out as they expect or not only will they not hire you again, but you might not get paid for it at all. So, the constraints of the professional photographer (one who makes pictures for money) are far greater than if he were just making the images for himself. This article was inspired by a student I had a while ago who was an absolute rank beginner and somewhat anxious about the learning process. Let it be said that she took to it right away, paid close attention and promised to do some practicing. Because, after all, that’s how you get really good at something.

With this said, I was thinking about the steps necessary to learning the skills professionals use and I have broken them down as follows:

1. How the camera controls the amount of light it uses to make an image.
2. What the controls are and how they affect images.
3. Learning about light and how it behaves.
4. The use of the computer as it applies to photography, downloading and storing images.
5. The adding of artificial light to make many images possible to achieve.
6. Sophisticated lighting for most portraits and product photographs.
7. How to mix ambient light with artificial light for specific results.
8. Fine tuning the photographic process to create really stunning images.
9. The use of certain software packages to enhance digital photographs and create new artwork.
10. Looking at and exhibiting photographs in your home or elsewhere.

Light is all around us, as we know. We see it everyday. We wouldn’t be able to exist without it, yet some don’t even know that light rays from the sun are parallel or that they are bent by the earth’s atmosphere to render different colors in the mornings and evenings. (It’s what makes sunsets and sunrises so photogenic).

Or, many don’t realize that the intensity of artificial light varies with its distance from a subject. (It actually follows a complex formula). And, most do not know the intricacies of using multiple, artificial light sources to illuminate their subjects and really make them stand out.

Here, some artificial light from the camera’s built-in flash was added to make the flower’s color stand out:

Sometimes, you don’t really get to understand light and what it does until you begin to study artificial light. Then you will have an entirely different perspective on light and its effects. You will never be able to look at a photograph or a scene again without noticing the lighting. But, you have to study it first.

Camera controls are a separate issue. Most cameras work in similar ways, but designers often put the controls in different places. These days, the better digital cameras have separate dials for aperture and shutter speed controls. Some of the older models put one control in menu form which really slows down the taking of pictures in MANUAL mode.

Here, the computer was used to combine two images into one, to make a panoramic picture:

Computers are changing everyday. If you are going to make a lot of pictures, you need safe places to store them as well as a good system for keeping track of all of them. Today, you need “SOLID STATE DRIVES (SSDs) and some redundancy in order to make sure your images are safe:

Solid State Drives:

In the digital age just about everything revolves around the computer and software. You really don’t have any images if you can’t download them, manipulate them a bit and eventually make some prints you can hang on your wall or on someone else’s:

An image like this is often enhanced and made to look more dramatic by the addition of some simple tools available in Photoshop or other post-processing software.

Photographers have many more tools at their disposal these days and the learning curve has steepened somewhat over what it used to be. My own learning had to be re-invented when the digital age dawned and I have devoted an enormous amount of time learning the details of how the digital system works. Some, of course, is by trial and error – seeing what works and what doesn’t. And some from consulting other photographers. And yet more by reading appropriate materials. All of which has led me to want to teach others what I have learned. My blog articles are published each week with this goal in mind.

So even if you don’t do your photography for money, the real enjoyment comes from making images for yourself. I am continually amazed by the quality (and quantity) of the images I produce on a regular basis. Compared to those that I made early in my career, the equipment has gotten better as have the lenses, the procedures and finally the results.