15 Sureproof Ways to 10X Your Photography Skills

These bite-sized photography tips are easy to understand, covering everything from beginner camera technique to creativity and composition.

If you’re learning photography, these tips will be helpful to you along the way.

1. Work with Your Photography Composition

To take engaging photos, you need to be engaged with what you’re doing. Don’t just fly by on autopilot.

Instead, put thought into your composition and try to make your photos as good as possible. That starts with knowing the basics of how to take good photos.

Don’t cut off important parts of your subject with the edge of your frame. Keep your horizons level, and try to eliminate any distractions in your photo by adjusting your composition.

See if your photo has a sense of balance and simplicity.

And if the photo doesn’t look good on your first try, keep experimenting until you get it right.

2. Use The Camera You Already Have

Camera gear is not all that important. There are countless cameras, lenses, and other accessories on the market today, and it’s true that some are better than others (or better suited for a given job).

But once you’ve tested enough of them, the real takeaway is that pretty much everything today is excellent.

The differences are almost always minor, especially at a given price. So, it’s best to use the camera you already have and don’t look back.

Much more important are your creative skills and knowledge of camera settings.

Focus your effort on those, not on collecting camera equipment.

3. Learn Which Photography Settings Matter

There are a lot of camera settings, and it takes some practice to get them right, especially as a beginner.

Even advanced photographers won’t always do everything perfectly. But it’s worth learning how to set your camera properly, and which camera settings matter the most, so you have the best chance to take the photos you want.

First, try practicing with camera modes other than full Auto. You won’t learn anything if your camera is making all the decisions for you.

Shoot in RAW if you want to edit your photos, or think there’s any chance you’ll edit them in the future.

JPEGs look good out of the camera, but the files have much less latitude for post-processing. (If you aren’t sure, shoot RAW+JPEG, and keep the RAWs for later just in case.)

4. Don’t Overexpose Highlights

When you are picking your camera settings, it is critical to avoid overexposing highlights in a photo. The reason? It’s simply impossible to recover any detail from the white areas of a photo.

Personally, I prefer the sky in my photos to have nice texture and color, rather than being just a big, featureless blob, and I bet you do too.

5. Photography Light

Probably the single most important part of photography is light. If you take a photo with good light, you’ve taken a huge step toward getting a good picture.

But what counts as good light? It’s not all about sunsets. Often, the goal here is to balance the light’s intensity between your subject and background.

Even if you’re photographing an amazing sunset, the photo could be ruined by a completely dark and silhouetted foreground.

6. Take Your Time

It’s easy to make mistakes in photography if you aren’t careful.

The best way around this is to slow down and take your time whenever possible.

Double-check your camera settings. If you’re shooting outdoor portraits on a sunny day, but you’re using last night’s settings for photographing them, something is terribly wrong.

Slow down and take the time to get it right.

7. Move Your Feet

It’s easy to get stuck in one place while you’re taking pictures. Don’t fall into that trap.

Instead, move your feet (or your tripod) as much as possible. Climb on top of things, change the height of your camera, walk forward and backward, do whatever you need to do – but keep moving.

If you take a dozen photos from the same height, facing the same direction, without moving your feet or tripod at all, guess what? They won’t be very different.

8. Tripod

Tripods are one of the greatest inventions in photography.

They all but eliminate one of the trickiest problems there is – a lack of light.

With tripods, you can shoot multi-minute exposures and capture details so dark that they are invisible to the human eye.

Even in a brighter scene, tripods improve the stability of your composition and help you take sharper photos.

So, when should you use a tripod? If your subject is stationary, almost always.

That means landscape photographers, architectural photographers, and still, life photographers all use tripods unless there’s a better excuse.

9. Know When to Use a Flash

The flash isn’t just meant for dark environments. Flashes are useful outdoors, too, even in the middle of the day.

If you’ve ever heard of “fill flash,” this is why it’s so important.

You can fill in ugly shadows on your subject just by using a gentle flash – and most people looking at the photo won’t even be able to tell.

10. Shoot a Lot and Experiment

Practice, practice, practice. It’s a tip that will get you ahead in any skill, not just photography.

In short, the more time you spend on photography, the easier it will be to take the photos you have in mind.

11. Learn Basic Post-Processing In Photography

Post-processing isn’t very high on the typical photographer’s priority list, but it probably should be.

Sometimes, with the right post-processing, a good photo can turn into something truly exceptional.

Post-processing is about imparting a mood and guiding your viewer’s eye in an image. You’ll get better and better at this over time. My top recommendation? Be subtle.

You don’t want your photos to look over-processed. Photoshop is a good app to process your photos

12. Get Organized

Whether you’re an organized or messy person, it’s very important that your photos are easy to find.

It’s not just about speeding up your workflow; if you don’t remember how you’ve organized your hard drive, you might end up deleting a folder that contains important images without realizing it.

You can use Flickr to get things sorted on this part

13. Try Something New

The more you experiment with photography, the more interesting it becomes.

It’s easy to fall into a routine and take similar photos over and over, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s also important to try something new from time to time.

Usually, you’ll discover something – either a new technique or a personal preference – that you can bring back to your regular photography for good results.

Resource: Unsplash

14. Look at Your Old Photos

There are many reasons why your old, unused photos are some of the most valuable in your portfolio.

They help you fix your weak points. Just ask yourself, on average, why are your bad photos bad? Maybe you tend to focus incorrectly, expose too dark or bright, and compose awkwardly, and so on.

All of that is very useful information since it helps you improve the problem next time.

On top of that, you might find an old photo that truly sings – yet somehow you didn’t notice it the first time. Google Photos is a good place to keep your photos

15. Have Fun With Photography

Photography is supposed to be fun. Even professional photographers chose this career, almost without exception, because they enjoy photography.

Don’t let that spark die out. Instead, think about why you like taking pictures. It’s meaningful; it’s a way to see amazing sights and meet brilliant, creative people.

No surprise, the best photographers are always the ones who have the most fun with it.

Conclusion

Self-improvement is the key to all great performance. I hope this article gives you the push you need to put more effort into yourself.

However, if you would like to read more articles like this, our digital marketing blog is not far from your doorstep.  Before you leave, check out this link to one of our simple marketing skills articles.

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