11 Actionable Things You And I Can Do To Improve Our Photography in 2023 – Part 2. And also some more thoughts on the last episode, erm 11 Actionable Things You And I Can Do To Improve Our Photography in 2023 – Part 1.
Hi and welcome to Episode 149 of the Photography Explained podcast. I’m your host Rick, and in each episode I will try to explain one photographic to you in plain English, in less than 27 minutes (ish), without the irrelevant details. What I tell you is based on my lifetime of photographic experience. And not Google. Google not required for this episode, this is all in my head.
First - here is the answery bit
The 11 actionable things that you and I can do to improve our photography in 2023 are
- Get out more and take photos
- Learn to use all our gear properly
- Start all over again
- Simplify and get rid of distractions
- Really think about composition
- The one photo rule
- Learn one new thing
- Rethink how you edit your photos
- Get a critique
- Apply what you learn from that critique
- Reflect on all of this stuff
I covered 1-5 in the last episode, so I will get straight on with 6-11 in the talky bit.
These things don’t cost a penny, they don’t cost a cent, these are just ways of taking what we have, what we know, and thinking afresh about how to take better photos. Well there is the critique of course, which you might have to pay for. But other than that no, just stuff that you and I can do.
And before I start I want to say again, composition is king. What you include in a photo, and what you do not include in a photo, and how the things in a photo relate to each other, and what the light is doing, these are the things that make or break a photo. Make or break every photo. So with everything that you do, everything that I tell you, please remember this.
Composition is king.
Right let’s get back to the list.
The one photo rule
I love this. I really do. See I used to take loads of photos. And I mean loads of photos. I used to go out and capture anything and everything. And I mean anything and everything. And then I would get home, import the photos into Lightroom, and search for a decent photo to edit.
Does this sound familiar?
See my logic was this – if I photograph everything that I see I will capture everything, and there will be a load of great photos for me to edit. How amazing am I? I am such an amazing photographer that I just go out, take a load of stuff and I am done.
That kind of thing. Maybe not that bad but you get the idea.
Photograph everything and there must be a winner in there right?
Wrong.
I did this for years – I didn’t know any better.
And then I got a critique of my work. More on this in a bit.
And what changed? Dead simple. Thinking about the composition before taking a photo. And I mean really thinking about the composition.
When I am on a shoot for a client, if the brief is 30 photos, with specific mandatory shots, these are the photos that I take. Well ok, I don’t take 30 photos, edit 30 photos, and issue 30 photos. I am not that good. But before, where I used to take 3, 4, 5 photos of the same thing, all from slightly different positions, I now take 1 photo. I have the confidence that that one photo will do the job. And it does.
So, rather than taking 100 or more photos for a shoot with a 30 photo requirement, I take more like 30-50 photos.
And I have taken this a step further. When I am on holiday, a few times in a week, I will get up very early and head off to photograph the sunrise. Not the sunset, we are in a bar somewhere. Sunrises are my thing.
And I aim to get one photo. Just one photo. I set up my camera for the photo that I want to capture. I then take a number of photos, from when the light begins to change as the sun approaches where I am, to after the sun has risen. I take more than one photo for sure, but I am after one photo out of all of those that I take. There is just one composition that I am photographing, and I am capturing the wonderful changing light.
And when I get home I will choose the best photo and edit that photo. And I am so brutal these days that I will probably just delete the rest of the photos – well I don’t need them do I?!
Why does his help me?
Well, I am thinking about the photo that I am going to get before I press the shutter release. I am not photographing everything hoping to find something good later. No, I have gone full circle, and think long and hard about what I am taking a photo of.
Learn one new thing
I learned how to create a podcast. I decided that I wanted to do this and did it. I had no idea before I started what to do. But I wanted to do this and now look at me.
Now I am not saying that you should start a podcast, no. Well not unless you want to that is. And if you do drop me a line and I will help you.
Learn one new thing and see what it gives you. There might be something that you have thought of trying that you just never got round to doing. So why not just do it?
Not knowing how to do something you want to do is no longer a barrier to doing something, it is just something you need to get through.
So learn one new photography thing, and when you have done it, tell me!
Rethink how you edit your photos
It is very easy to get into a fixed way of working and just stick with it. And the more you edit photos the more this applies. I got used to editing in a certain way, I had very rigid, fixed workflows. Sure these were ultra-efficient, but as I told you in the last episode, they were boring. Well they still are boring.
But I have gone back and changed a few things. And I have given myself the license to play around more, which has reinvigorated me and led to me creating some new photos recently that are much better than the previous ones.
And once you have done this you can go back to older photos and breathe new life into them. I have just done this and I am absolutely loving it.
No boring workflow any more. Sure I need this to get the job done, but I also need to work outside what I have been doing, and to be more creative.
So, think about how you edit your photos and start again and see where it takes you.
While you are doing this you can give yourself a fixed amount of time to edit photos. Give yourself 5 minutes to edit one photo. And when you have done that give yourself 10 minutes to do a new edit of the same photo.
Try this and see what happens. I rarely spend anywhere near five minutes editing a photo, so when I gave myself 10 minutes it became a pleasure to do. And the results were great.
Get a critique
The game changer. And the one thing that might cost you some money. Why is this so important? Well, let me use me as an example of exactly why getting a critique can be a game changer.
I was applying to join the British Institute of Professional Photography, the BIPP for short. Now the BIPP is the oldest association for professional photographers. They would be lucky to have me right? Well I was brilliant way back then so all I need to do is apply and that is it, job done. They will take one look at my amazing photos and they will be almost begging me to join them.
That was what I thought. And then reality hit.
That was not the case. I was not as good as I thought I was. Nowhere near as good as I thought I was.
I presented my portfolio, 40 of my best photos, and watched them be sorted into three piles, I think it was three piles, it was a long time ago to be fair.
The three piles were
I think there was a maybe pile
And here are the numbers, the painful reality
That is how good I was. Or was not. And this is when the magic happened. Each photo was analysed quickly, and I was told the good and the bad, very quickly and very nicely it has to be said, by my mentor.
See I had been the only one looking at my photos, just me.
A critique is when someone who knows what they are doing tells you straight about your photos. All they have is what is in front of them. No back story, no dramatic tales of battling the odds to get the shot.
No, just the photos.
And this is how the rest of the world sees your photos. And this is why I recommend that every photographer who wants to take their photography seriously gets a critique.
But it needs to be from someone reputable, someone who is respected and knows what they are talking about.
And you have to be accept what you are told. Don’t get a critique and ignore what you are told.
I learned some very harsh lessons in my first critique. I probably learned more in that hour and a half than I did in the two years before it. And all the learning was from a highly respected professional photographer, and all that learning was directly on my photos.
I knew what was good and bad in the photos that I had presented, and most importantly why. For the first time I really got photography, and from this point on my photography improved massively. A few months later I had some new photos and a better portfolio and got accepted. Yeay a happy ending!
Apply what you learn from that critique
Yes, you have to take a critique on the chin. You have asked for the critique, so you have to accept what you are told and apply that going forwards in every photo that you take.
And this principle applies to other learnings. There is no point learning stuff and then not applying it – you might as well have not bothered.
That is why it is good to learn one thing at once. I have wasted so much time and money on learning things and not applying them, and getting nowhere in the process.
Get a critique and act on it – you won’t regret it.
Reflect on all of this stuff
Nothing too heavy, just think about what you are doing. I apply a lot of what I have talked about when I go back to photos taken many years ago, photos that I edited years ago that I have forgotten that I had, and certainly that I had forgotten taking.
Take all this good stuff and think about what you are doing and where you want to go with your photography.
Right – talky bit over - what if I use a phone and not a camera?
Same thing applies. As in the last episode. A phone is a device that you can use to take photos. A camera is another device that you can use to take photos.
So all of the above applies. You can do all 11 things and hopefully you will take better photos with your phone.
There is a tendency to think that photos taken on a phone are snaps, not that important, just phone pictures. But this is not the case. These days, with the quality of images that you can capture, a phone, I repeat, is just another device that you can use to take photos!
Sure there are benefits to using a camera, of course there are, but you can take rubbish photos just as easily with a camera or a phone.
It is not the camera that makes the photos great, it is how the photos are taken, and what is in them.
No more to say on that.
What do I do?
All of the above. And not just once, but certainly once a year I will stop and take stock and think about all these things that I have talked about here.
These two podcast episodes are actually the summary of what I have just done, which has given my photography a wonderful refresh. It is probably more than a year since I last did this, I have been so busy doing stuff that I have not given myself the time to think about what I am actually doing.
But having a rethink has given me some new things that I apply when I am taking photos, and also has reinvigorated my photo editing.
But more than anything, it has reminded me of the importance of everything up to the point of actually taking a photo. That is the important bit. What you or I are taking a photo of and why. What we are including in that composition, and what we are not including in a composition.
And I am talking here about that one photo that I am trying to get. Yes that one photo thing again. I take much fewer photos now than I ever have, and have got rid of the job that I hated, going through a load of photos to find a good one to edit.
And I have had my critique, well more than one to be fair. And I am an Associate of the British Institute of Professional Photography now.
Some thoughts from the last episode
“11 Actionable Things You And I Can Do To Improve Our Photography in 2023 – Part 1”
Well these are all related aren’t they. All I want to say here is that everything that I have told you, you and I can do. Most of them cost nothing other than time and brain power. But these things can help you and I to take better photos, to improve our photography.
And that has to be a good thing right?
Next episode
Episode 150, 150. Blimey! How Does A Camera Work? What You Need To Know And No More!
I first covered this in Episode 2 with the cunningly titled “How Does A Camera Work?”. I am going to go into more depth, and tell you which bits you need to know about, and which bits we just have to accept are what they are – clever techy things that we do not need to understand.
Episode 2 is the most downloaded episode to date, and I am looking forward to recording this episode so much. When I first recorded this episode I was restricted to 10 minutes, but no more. I now have the time to give a much fuller explanation, but only telling you the bits that you need to know and no more.
And now some stuff for you to do
First off, if you have a photography question you want me to answer in plain English, in less than 27minutes (ish) but still without the irrelevant details, just head over to PhotographyExplainedPodcast.com/start where you can find out what to do. Or just say hi. It would be lovely to hear from you.
And a favour
If you enjoyed this episode please write a nice review on your podcast provider of choice. And post it on your social feeds. And why not follow my podcast to make sure you get the next episode when it is released?
One last thing.
I enjoyed these two episodes, and I hope that you did too. These are things that I have done to give my photography a bit of a kick start, so my question to you is this – have you done any of the things that I have talked about dear listener? Are you going to do the stuff that I have talked about. Let me know your thoughts, and anything else that we can all do that I haven’t mentioned.
That’s all.
This episode was brought to you by, erm, a good old cheese and pickle sandwich and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps all washed down with a Diet Pepsi before I settled down in my home-made, acoustically cushioned recording emporium.
I’ve been Rick McEvoy, thanks again very much for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast (it says here), and for giving me 27 ish minutes of your valuable time. Yeah I think that this episode will be 27 minutes long.
Take care, stay safe
Cheers from me Rick