Hi, everybody. Welcome to Episode 42 of the photography explained podcast. In this episode, what are the steps in photography? (or as I have written in my notes steps on photography? Good start.)
I'm your host, Rick, and each week I will try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 10 minutes without the irrelevant details.
My aim is to explain things in just enough detail to help you and I with our photography and no more. I have to tell you this. I can now say this in my sleep quite nicely. But when it comes to recording, I still have to read it from the script. Yes, there is a script.
Anyway, moving on. So who am I?
Well, I'm a professionally qualified photographer based in England with a lifetime of photographic experience, which I share with you on my podcast.
What are the steps in photography?
Here are my 10 steps, follow these and you will have a good grounding in photography.
Number 1, step 1 - Learn your camera.
If you check out photography explained podcast episode nine, I covered that nicely in “how can I learn to use my new camera?”
Now this is one of those fundamental things to me. We buy these fancy bits of kit. I shouldn’t say we (very presumptuous), but I have bought cameras and never learned how to use them properly. And it was a bit of an eye opener when I actually opened up the manual on my Canon 6D.
I mean, it's fine. When you get a new camera, take it out of the box, chuck a battery and a memory card in and go out and have some fun with it.
Of course we all do that and why wouldn't we. But at some point, you should really learn how to use it properly, you'll be amazed by what you might.
Number 2 - Learn composition.
Now, this is something which to me is so fundamental, that I covered this in episodes 12, 13, 14 and 15. Composition, if you think about it, is what the photograph is, this is the start middle and end of photography to me.
So take some time learn composition.
Once I started thinking about this and studied composition, my photographs got much better. And I took much less rubbish.
3 - Number three, step three, I'll get the hang of this, you never know what's worrying is my list goes to 12 even though the titles 10
Okay, we'll call them bonus ones.
Number three, learn about light. Photography, after all, is drawing with light.
So you need to become a student of light, learn what it does, how it interacts in the scene, how it makes things relate to each other, and how from moving from one point to another, you can change how the light is playing in a scene.
I'll say again, photography is drawing with light. Some say writing, I say drawing. I'm happy with that.
Step four, exposure.
Now you have to learn how to get the exposure correct. Again, this is something else I've covered in previous episodes (he says looking at his list, Episode 21 - What does exposure mean in photography?).
And then there are some other ones which were about aperture shutter and ISO. You can go to my Photography Explained Podcast website, check out the list. It's all there, all good stuff.
But you have to get your exposure correct. So learn exposure.
Next one, Step five, learn focus, get your focus nailed.
Get the bits you need in focus, get the bits you don't want in focus blurry. There's an art to this, it takes practice.
Number six, Step six is practice.
Now, I've said this more times than I care to remember - the number one way to improve your photography is to practice. Get out with the camera, take photos, practice, practice, practice.
The more I practice, the better I get.
The less I practice, the rustier I get and the less of an enjoyable experience it is.
So once you have got a digital camera it doesn't cost you any more to take 10 photos or 100 photos - it's not quite free but you know I mean? It's all going on a memory card.
So, practice. If you take one thing away from this, that is it. I do talk about this in some of the other episodes on the podcast.
Number seven, try things.
Now in recent episodes, I've gone through some of the different types of photography. I didn't do all of them, I did a list of the 20 most popular types and I went through. Well, the ones I know most about, and the ones I knew the least about, being wedding photography, and travel, not travel photography, street photography.
Travel photography, I have nailed. I'm happy with that.
So try all these things. And once you've had a go at them, which sounds quite onerous, doesn't it, after you have tried all these different photography things, different genres, styles, types, call them what you want.
When you have tried these things, I strongly advise that you do this.
Number eight, step eight, you niche down.
Or niche down depending on where you are. The saying in the online marketing world is “the riches are in the niches”. The word play does not work on the transcript about how we and others pronounce niche!
What do I mean by this?
Simple, I photograph buildings. That's it. I don't photograph anything else. I photograph anything in the built environment, any kind of building structure, installation, plant, you name it, anything.
I don't photograph animals, things that move, people fashion. All these other areas. I'm not interested in them. But I want to do the thing that I enjoy. As I make money doing that
So niche down.
Don't try to be the photographer who photographs everything for everybody, everywhere. Because if you do that, you'll be appealing to no one. You won't have a target audience, and you'll be spreading yourself too thin.
How do I know this?
Because I spent years doing it. I tried to cover all areas of photography, thinking I need to get as many jobs as possible. And yeah, it didn't work. Now I do one thing, it makes it much easier to focus on it, no pun intended, to market it, to work at it, to become excellent at it.
Step nine, editing.
I use Lightroom for 99% of my photos, I use Photoshop to remove things. That's it. I'm not a fan of Photoshop, I'm not clever enough. Lightroom is great. I've been with Lightroom since version one.
So choose some software, whatever it is, I'm not saying Lightroom - that's what I choose to use, and learn how to use it properly.
I've been using Lightroom since 2007. And I have been using it all the time for all the photos taken since then. And I've got to the point now where I'm doing less editing of images than ever, I've refined my workflow down to something quite simple and basic, but it's repeatable and gives me high quality images every time.
Step 10. Review your work, look at what you've done.
Be honest with yourself, critique your work, even better, get somebody else to critique it. I know it’s difficult to do. I did that when I joined the British Institute of Professional Photography. That was my first formal critique, and it was a revelation, an eye opener.
And it was a great leveller for me because I thought I was better than I was.
So get a critique - I'd even suggest you pay for one from somebody who's trustworthy, this kind of thing.
Step 11. Other gear.
Don't worry about gear too much. Get a camera, get a tripod, get a couple of lenses, get the basics that you need and learn how to use them. I used to spend all my time looking at gear, buying gear, not using gear, wasting money, not practising.
Forget the gear - that's not going to give you the great photos, the camera and what you point your camera at and how you take the photos is. Sure we need gear obviously, but don't obsess about it.
Number 12. Step 12. Enjoy photography.
I still love photography. I feel very fortunate that after all these years, I still love photography, and I want you to enjoy it as well. One of the best ways of enjoying photography is to get out and practice taking photos.
Keep it simple, and don't worry about the other noise around there because there's too much noise in this world for me.
My one line summary is this.
Follow my 10 steps in photography, and you will have an excellent grounding in photography. Let's keep it simple and enjoy it.
So what do I want you to do now?
Number one, just let me know your thoughts on Twitter.
You can get hold of me @rickphoto
Number two - to subscribe to my podcast
If you enjoyed this episode. This helps me
Three rate and review my podcast
if you enjoyed this episode, this helps me too
Four tell someone you know about my podcast.
This also helps me and if you want to tell more than one person I won't stop you!
Next episode?
Well I enjoyed this, which is a bit of a putting things together episode, so I think I'm going to do more steps, maybe steps to taking a photo step by step. I don't know. I’ll, think about it, and I'll record something later on.
So for now, I will say thank you for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast, check out my website, Rick McEvoy Photography where you can find out all about me and my architectural and construction photography work as well as my photography blog where you can learn lots more about photography.
And please also check out my Photography Explained Podcast website where you can find out how to ask me a question, find a list of episodes, and also things I'm going to explain in future episodes. You can also listen to the podcast from there.
This episode was brought to you very much by the power of spring optimism.
I've been Rick McEvoy. thanks again for listening to me and for giving me 12 minutes of your valuable time. See you on the next episode. Cheers from me, Rick.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
photography, photograph, step, lightroom, podcast, photos, learn, rick, number, gear, bits, episode, niche, camera, practice, work, mcevoy, critique, enjoy, script