Have Fun - Getting Started in Photography
Photography is easy and photography should be fun. But if you are new to photography, everything - including this site - may sometimes seem a little daunting.
Many beginners are looking for a simple sets of instructions that will make them a great photographer, and for them there is both bad news and good. The bad is that photography really is just not like that, although there are quite a few hints and tips that you'll find on these pages that will help you. Including some in this feature.
Good photography comes largely from experience, and learning from that experience. It isn't an instant thing, and like most worthwhile activities you have to pay your dues. At first many things will be confusing, and all of us still make plenty of mistakes. Don't let it get you down; look up or ask about things you don't understand and try and learn from the things you mess up.
There is plenty of good news. Digital makes learning easier, faster and much cheaper. Modern camera systems can carry much of the technical strain for you, though you still need to learn to use them appropriately. But the best news is that as you learn more you find that photography is far more interesting and exciting than following a set of rules could ever be.
Learning to Think Photo
It's perhaps best to think of photography as being rather like learning to use a language. It's something we've all mastered, at least after a fashion. We seldom did it by reading sets of directions or following simple rules, although occasionally there may be a very real place for them. But just as you can speak very well without knowing the finer points of punctuation, so you can take good photographs without a great deal of detailed technical knowledge.
Automatic Cameras
Part of the good news about photography, is that modern cameras, and particularly digital cameras, make the technical side of it, at least at the basic level, very simple and straightforward. You can pick up a digital camera, and after just a few minutes reading the manual or being told what to do, go out and take pictures, secure in the knowledge that the camera will automatically look after exposure and focus for you. All you need to do is to point it in the right direction and press the button at the right moment. Its a very good way to start.
Getting Refined
Later on, you may want to refine the way these things are done by taking more control over them yourself, and there are features here which will take you through how you can do this. But the real business of learning photography is learning how to use the language, and that is largely a matter of getting out there and doing it and then learning both from your successes and mistakes. So the really important basic advice is simple - go out and take pictures. Lots of pictures.
Three Rules
1. Take Pictures, and take more pictures.
2. Photograph what interests you
3. Evaluate your work critically and edit ruthlessly
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