How My One Photo Rule Will Help You Take Better Photos

Have you ever heard of my one photo rule? Do you want to learn how to take better photos? And I am talking about a rule that costs you nothing and saves you heaps of time, effort, and frustration.

Take one photo. Do not take loads of photos from different angles and viewpoints. Stop, think, look around, and take the best photo possible. And then move on.

In this episode, I tell you.

• What the one photo rule is.
• How the one photo rule saves you time.
• How the one photo rule helps you to take better photos.
• How you can apply the one photo rule to your photography.
• What if I use a phone to take photos and not a camera?
• And finally, what I do.

All explained in plain English, without the irrelevant detail, in less than 27 (ish) minutes!

What is not to love?

Transcript

How My One Photo Rule Will Help You Take Better Photos

Hi and welcome to Episode 152 of the Photography Explained podcast. I’m your host Rick, and in each episode, I will try to explain one photographic thing 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. Not in this episode.

First - here is the answery bit
Take one photo. When you are looking at something you want to photograph take one photo. Do not take loads of photos from different angles and viewpoints. Do not take hundreds of photos and try to find the good one when you get back home. Stop, think, look around, and take the best one photo that you can. And then move on.

Blimey, that sounds harsh, let me explain in the talky bit

First off, this is what I said in episode 151

“My one photo rule.
Right. Shoot me down here but this is how I work. If I am working for a client, and they need 30 photos, I will try to take just 30 photos. It never happens, I am just not that good, but I do not do what I used to do.

And if I am photographing a sunrise, guess what, I am only after one photo. Do you know what, I am going to do a whole episode on my one-photo rule? Well, why not? And I have decided that this will be the next episode.

I am not saying to go out and only take one photo and then call it a day. No. But I am saying try to get one photo that is the best photo that you can of something. Don’t take hundreds of photos and try to find a good one on your computer.

Put all your efforts into getting one photo that is the best that you can do. Sorry I will come onto this in another episode. Shut, up Rick.”

OK – that was the last episode, and here I am now talking about my one photo rule. This is one of my many simple tips that will help you, and me, take better photos.

What is my one photo rule?
Well, it doesn’t mean only ever taking one photo. No, that would be ridiculous. It means this.

When you are taking a photo, spend the time and effort on just taking one photo of something. One photo that is the best photo that you can take. One photographic composition. Spend time arranging the different elements in a photo. Spend time trying to get the best photo that you can.

Where has this come from?
This has come from my own experiences. To explain I need to tell you what I used to do.

As an example, I am photographing a building for a client.
I would take a photo that looked ok, and then I would move to the left bit and take another photo. Then move to the right a bit and take another photo. I’ll just try one from higher, and one from lower. Oh hang on I am not sure if the first photo was Ok so I will take another photo just in case. Oh no, I could go back and bit and get a bit more in. And now that I have done that how about moving to the left a bit? And now let’s try one to the right. Now, which was the best shot?

I took some photos with a wide-angle lens - how about with a telephoto lens? a 17 mm lens gave one result, what about a 200 mm lens? I tried a small aperture, how about a wide aperture?

And so on and so on.

It's OK, I will sort all this out in Lightroom when I get back home. I will find the great photos in there somewhere. They have to be in there somewhere after all as I have taken so many photos.

This is how I worked.
Sure this might be a bit of an exaggeration, but this is how I worked. Does this sound at all familiar to you?

I would take say 10 photos of each composition, of the main subject, and then get back and sort them in Lightroom. And I would even change the camera settings just to make sure I had the right exposure in there somewhere.

And it must have taken me so long to take all these photos. So much time wasted.

And this is so easy to do with digital cameras these days.

I hate doing this
Yes, this is why I hate sorting photos in Lightroom. I could spend an hour or two just sorting out the images that I needed to edit. It is not easy to choose between 10 photos of the same thing, it might sound it but isn’t. Especially if you don’t really know what you are doing.

Yes, I would spend ages narrowing down those 10 photos, and many a time would end up with 2 or three images to edit, I just could not decide which was the best one.

Well, I wouldn’t would I if they were so similar?

Does this really matter?
Yes, I was wasting loads of time, and also using up loads of hard drive space. Imagine if I have to produce 30 photos of a building for a client, and I take 10 photos of each view. That is 300 photos to import and sort through. 300 photos clogging up my hard drive because I didn't have the confidence to delete the rubbish.

I am at least doubling my editing time, which for commercial work is simply lost money. And for my personal work is just wasting my time.

And this is the real kicker
I would say that 80-90% of the time I would use the photo that I took first. Yes really. I noticed a pattern emerging, as I was doing a lot of this work. I would import my far too many photos into Lightroom, file them and sort them like a good boy, and most of the time use the first photo that I took.

The others I just did not need. So I was taking 10 photos and using the first one. I say 10 photos but I didn’t take 10 photos of the same thing every time, I am just trying to make the point here.

My instinct was right
The first photo was the one that I used. So why did I take all those other photos? Lack of confidence and a lack of experience. And this is all fine. This is all part of the learning process. But by sharing this with you I want to help you and save you time, and get you through this phase more quickly than I did. For every new photo that I created, there were so many wasted images.

This was the first step in my realising something was not right.

This is what I do now
I will stick with photographing a building for a client. If the brief is 30 photos, I will try to take 30 photos and no more. This has not happened yet, I am not that good, not that disciplined. But rather than taking 200-300 photos I will now more likely take 30-50. And that is a massive improvement. No, thankfully I am a long way from what I used to do, that is a distant, if not so dim, memory.

How do I do this?
Simple. All that stuff that I did in the taking of loads of very similar photos of the same thing, all those different views, left, right, forwards, back, high, low. I do all that moving around before I take the photo. It really is that simple.
I take the time and effort to work out what the best composition is and then take one carefully composed, correctly exposed photo.

And having done this so many times I can do this and move on to the next photo with confidence.

That’s it – my one photo rule
There you go, this is my one photo rule in practice.

Since the dawn of the digital age, the ability to take unlimited photos at no extra expense has not necessarily been a good thing in my opinion. So let's get back to thinking about the photos that we take, thinking about getting one photo. After all back in the film days, we worked completely differently from how we do today.

And a few other things that I want to share with you

This really works
Since I have done this I have never missed a shot, and I have never had to go back to a location to take a photo that I missed. I have spent time getting the photo that I need.

And with all those other shoots where I took loads of photos?
I have never gone back and used one of the photos that I didn’t choose to edit. Never. I have never needed to. So I have started to delete all of those photos that I do not need from my Lightroom Catalogue.

It took me a while to get the confidence to do this, but it made me feel so much better and massively reduced the load on my hard drives. And this will help me going forwards.

Let’s apply this to sunrises as well
When I go on holiday I love to photograph the sunrise. I love to get up super early and capture the start of a new day. I love doing this. It is my holiday treat to myself. I love landscape photography.

This is what I used to do. I would get myself set up, and take a load of photos from different positions before the sun rose. And then I would try to get the sun popping up over the horizon, and then move somewhere else and get another photo.

Thinking back it was quite hard work! But I had loads of great photos right? I can get home, import all those amazing photos into Lightroom and churn out an endless number of great sunrise photos right?

Wrong.

It was the same as before. I had a load of photos to go through, and too much time sorting stuff, comparing analysing, rating, and flagging. I would spend a lot of time trying to find one photo to edit. This is where I learned to hate my landscape images for a while, as I spent so much time going through them trying to find a decent photo!

Hang on a minute? I would spend a lot of time trying to find one photo to edit.

Yep, this is what I did. I would spend ages and find the one photo that I wanted to edit. Once I had edited the photo I would leave the rest there for another time. And of course, that other time never came. I never went back.

So I was already practising the one-photo rule, just in the wrong way!

So this is what I do now.
I set up my camera for the one composition that I want. I set the camera up how I want it, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focus point, and focal length. I even go as far as to gaffer tape my lens in place. I compose the photo and arrange the key elements and the points of interest. I choose the appropriate focal point, all that good stuff. I spend time on the composition - I have spoken about this before. And I use the rule of thirds grid to help me get the composition that I want. That is my go-to rule of composition.

And my camera is mounted on a tripod, normally at eye level to give a natural-looking photo, a photo similar to how we see things with our own eyes.

And this is all the preparation to take that one photo. I can take my time as I am only after one photo. I need to sort out the main point of interest in the photo and think about the photo that I am taking. I compose using the viewfinder, the LCD screen and also just my eyes. My photo will after all be viewed by the human eye, so it needs to look right. I need to have the most important elements of a composition in the right place and make sure that the composition has a sense of depth and scale.

Sorry I could go on about this forever. Back to the taking of the sunrise photo.

I am all ready to get my one photo, I sit back, relax and watch the sunrise. This is a great way to take photos for me. No moving around, no trying to get the next great composition, just me relaxing and taking photos and watching the sunrise happen. Now I said photos then. I take more than one photo, but this is a good idea to do as the light is changing before, during and after sunrise. I might not want that one photo where the sun just clears the horizon, I might want a different part of the sunrise. I want the best of the light. I am greedy.

But I am still after one photo. One composition. One new image to edit and share with the world. And let's not forget, better compositions = better photos.

And as I am on holiday I have the luxury of being in the same place for more than one day so I can find a location the day before, work out where the sun will rise and find the best place to take a photo from.

This makes the whole process even better, as I don’t even have to worry about what I am photographing.

Is this one of the rules of photography?
Not really, but it should be! These are some of the established rules of photography

• Rule of thirds
• Horizontal lines
• Leading lines
• Vertical lines
• Negative space
• Intersection points
• Golden spiral
• Golden ratio
• Fibonacci sequence
• And now the one photo rule!

 Use these photography rules, these rules of composition to help you get a great photo. But use my one photo rule too!!! It is a very simple way to take better photos.

And yes, my one photo rule thing is now officially a thing!

OK – so how can you apply this to what you do?
Try to get one photo of whatever it is that you are photographing. If you are taking loads of photos of the same thing and finding the best photo later you definitely need to do this. I said this before, with digital photography this is so easy to do.

You don’t have to restrict yourself to taking one photo, of course you don’t. But spend the time, effort and care on thinking about what you are taking a photo of.

I don’t know how you approach your photography but just think about how this might help you in the future if you know that you only need to get one photo. Just thinking this way helped me to enjoy my photography more and take better photos.

And this is what photography should be all about – enjoying taking better photos.

And yes, this is really what I do.

Right – talky bit over - what if I use a phone and not a camera?
Well, all of this applies. I know that there is a temptation to take loads of photos with a phone as it is so easy, but do you ever look beyond the first one? I still take more than one photo with my phone, but if the first one is OK I don’t look at the others too closely. So the same applies to taking photos with a phone.

Mobile devices are tools that we can use to take photos. But why not think before you take that photo to share on social media - why not make it the best that you can?

What if I just want to take loads of photos?
That is fine of course, that is entirely up to you. Take as many photos as you want if that makes you happy.

What I am trying to tell you here though is that if you are going out taking loads of photos and finding the best ones later there is a better way.

If you are getting frustrated, and are not sure which photo to edit, doing this might help you. It might move your photography in the right direction.

It worked for me, and I have never looked back, so why not give it a try?

What do I do?
I think we know this. I enjoy my photography more. I take much fewer photos and spend even less time sorting through a load of average photos trying to find something to edit. I don’t do that anymore. And as I am taking many of my photos for commercial purposes this makes smart business sense too. For me, extra photos = extra cost, and I don't want that!

I take fewer photos and the photos that I create now are better than the ones that I used to take.

I will say this again, professional photographers take their time to get everything right in camera. If a professional photographer can take one shot and be done happy days!

Some thoughts from the last episode
The last episode was How To Take The Best Photos That You Can Every Time

Well these two are related, aren’t they? All I want to say here is that we photographers should all put our efforts into taking the best photos that we can. And with thought, time and care we can all do this.

Next episode
Episode 153, What Is Exposure In Photography? (A Beginner's Guide). Let’s get into some nuts and bolts photography stuff. I have talked about the taking photos side of taking photos, now I want to get into how we do this, starting with my old friend exposure. I tried covering this in less than 10 minutes some time ago, so am now excited to be able to do this with as much time as I need.

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 27 minutes (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?

That’s all.
This episode was brought to you by, erm, a cheese and pickle sandwich and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps all washed down with a nice cold Diet Pepsi, all consumed before I settled down in my homemade, 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