11 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started In Photography

Hi everybody. Welcome to Episode 50 of the Photography Explained podcast.

I’m your host Rick McEvoy and I explain one photographic thing per episode in plain English in less that 10 minutes without the irrelevant detail. I have well over 30 years of experience in photography so I do know what I am talking about!

In this episode - PE50 - 11 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started In Photography

Here is my answer

Here are the 11 things I wish I knew when I started in photography.

1. Learn about composition.
2. Just get down take photos
3. learn to use the gear I have
4. Don't worry about other gear.
5. Learn one piece of software properly.
6. Try lots of things.
7. Then become excellent at the one thing you enjoy.
8. Get a critique.
9. Get out and take photos more.
10. Don't worry about stuff
11.  Lastly, be yourself and be true to yourself.

Listen for more, or check out the transcript and even the blog post - so many ways to find out more!

What’s next?
Episode 51 - What Is A Full Frame Camera?

Transcript

11 things I wish I knew when I started in photography. Hi, everybody, a very warm welcome to Episode 50 of the photography explained podcast. I'm your host, Rick, and in each episode I will explain one photographic thing in plain English in less than 10 minutes (ish) without the irrelevant details.

I explain things in just enough detail to help you and I with our photography.

And what I tell you is based on my lifetime of photographic experience, not Google searches.

Just thought I would put that one in there!

Episode 50, I've made it to Episode 50.
That's good. I didn't expect this to happen. Then again, why shouldn't it? Two episodes a week and I've got their rather quickly. So I'm delighted to be here.

In that thoroughly British way I am celebrating 50 episodes by trying to improve things and make things better and more interesting for you guys.

The format and the content have changed ever so slightly, trying to make it more the light informative and entertaining podcast I always intended it to be. I’m not saying that the episodes that I have already done are rubbish, I just wanted to tweak things a little bit.

So yeah, having spent 49 episodes not being able to read out the introduction properly or even remember it I really struggled to read the new one.

This is take six, hopefully the last take.

So let's tell you what those 11 things are.

One, no I'm not going to do the numbers, I'm just going to read them out, then I'm going to go through them one by one.

Here are the 11 things I wish I knew when I started in photography.

1. Learn about composition.
2. Just get down take photos
3. learn to use the gear I have
4. Don't worry about other gear.
5. Learn one piece of software properly.
6. Try lots of things.
7. Then become excellent at the one thing you enjoy.
8. Get a critique.
9. Get out and take photos more.
10. Don't worry about stuff
11. 11. Lastly, be yourself and be true to yourself.

Right then let's go through these quickly. One by one.

1 Learn about composition.
No one told me this. No one told me I needed to learn composition. That's my excuse. And I'm sticking to it. I think lots of people were telling me, lots of articles and info back in the day when I got into this seriously. But I didn't listen. I didn't learn about composition, I just went out and took photos. left, right and centre, got home with lots of stuff and went, hmmmm not great.

And guess what happened when I started to learn about composition? My photos got better. It's funny, isn't it?

Think about it.

Composition is what you put in a photo. If what you put in a photo is rubbish, you'll get a rubbish photo. So learn about composition. I did.

And it's made me a better photographer.

And that's why quite early in the podcast episodes, I covered composition, as I see it.

2 Just get out and take photos.
Get off your proverbial and take photos. If you go out and take photos, you're creating new things. If you sit at home, not taking photos, you're not creating new stuff. You might be in Photoshop, Lightroom or Luminar but you're not actually creating something new.

So you get out and take photos.

3 Learn to use the gear you have
I took me a long time to apply this one. I bought lots of gear in the past, just taken if out of the box and gone and use it, and have then been disappointed with it. In some instances I sold stuff without ever learning how to use it properly.

Now with my Canon 6D, I've actually gone through the manual start to end. There were some things I didn't read, because I didn't need to, there were things that weren't relevant to me. But I'm aware of them because I spent the time

Now my Canon 6D is like intuitive using it, I can virtually operate the camera with my eyes closed.

This applies to every other bit of gear you have. If you're going to buy something, take the time to learn it.

Which takes me nicely onto point four.

4 Don't worry about other gear.
Now I have a rule now. Two rules actually.

Number one is the one year rule. If I've got gear in my garage, and I haven't used it for a year, I sell it. It's that simple. I now have less gear than ever.

And I use less gear than I ever have done.

And you know what, do I miss all other stuff? No, not at all.

I actually enjoy not having a lot of gear and not having to worry about it. So that's a really, really effective thing, just get the gear you need.

Also, I didn't say what second rule was.

The second rule says, I will only buy new gear, if is if it is going to help me to take photos better or more easily. Or if it's to do something that I can't do at the moment, that's the only reasons I'll buy gear.

And I'm very strict on that.

5 Okay, number five, learn one piece of software properly.
I will say Lightroom is the best photo software in general terms. Now I'm a paying customer for the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan, I'm not being paid to say this.

I am a paying customer for Lightroom and Photoshop, but I'll go into that in another episode (which won't be called why I hate Photoshop. No, sorry, Adobe. I don't really like it though).

Yeah, Lightroom. I've been using Lightroom since version 1.0, which was released in 2007. And I've been using it ever since. And Lightroom is what I use all the time. I use Photoshop for a few bits, but don't really understand it. I use Luminar to replace the sky - I want to try Luminar more, but I've just not had the time.

And then there's other stuff, Affinity Photo, I bought that, Apple photo app, which is free, doesn't matter. Pick a piece of software, then learn to use it properly.

Don't do what I did and get all the software under the sun. Try it all, not learn it and not be any good at it. I'm quite slick at Lightroom.

I'd like to consider myself an expert in that, and I don't consider myself an expert in many things, but I'd say with Lightroom I'm quite happy with my knowledge.

6 Try lots of things.
What I mean by that is take photos of lots of different things. Just knock yourself out, go out there photograph, anything of interest, any subject matter anywhere. And when you've done that, have a think about what you enjoyed doing.

What did you like photographing? Which photographs do you like looking at?

7 Become excellent at that one thing.
The thing that you enjoy. I enjoy taking photographs of buildings, nice places and buildings in nice places. Almost a strap line there.

I don't want to photograph weddings. I don't want to do portraits of people - nothing against people. I love people. I don't want to photograph pets. I don't want to photograph cats, dogs. Llamas.

I'll stop there before I get ridiculous.

I don't want to do it really. So I'm not going to do it.

So I do one thing - I photograph buildings and the built environment. And that's it. And of course sunrises on holiday which is a different story.

But it's a similar discipline.

8 is a toughy - get a critique.
Show your photos to your family and they'll say they are great. Show your photos to your mates and they’ll say they are great.

What do they know?

Well, hopefully they love you. And they want you to feel good. So they're going to say that, aren't they? They are not going to say, actually, that photo is rubbish. It's very unlikely and if they do send them my way and they critique my work.

The first proper critique I got was when I was having my portfolio review for the BIPP, the British Institute of Professional Photography.

Boy, was that an eye opener. I wasn't as good as I thought I was. And it was pointed out to me - all very nicely, of course by a Hasselblad Master no less.

But yeah, that got the cogs whirring more than anything.

9 Get out and take photos more.
Yep, I might have already covered this, but I'm saying it again. I mean, get out and take photos more. Not get out and take more photos, get out and take photos more. There I’ve said it three times now.

I'll say this again as well.

The number one way to improve your photography is to get out more and take photos. Okay, I think I made the point there which was get out and take photos more and that applies to me.

I need to do this. I so need to do this. I'm looking forward to doing this when we all can again.

10 Might sound a bit vague - don't worry about stuff.
Relax, enjoy photography. It's meant to be enjoyable. Don't worry about stuff. What do I mean?

Likes social media, all that. I am not a fan of social media you might have gathered. I partake in it, but I don't worry about it.

So I don't really care.

Technical stuff. Yeah, don't worry too much about it. Learn it by all means. We've already spoken about learning how to use your camera properly. And that includes all that technical stuff, but don't worry about it.

If you want to take a photo using programme mode, there's no shame in that.

I use AV mode. I don't use manual mode – I can't be bothered as AV does it for me. I don't worry about it. I just get on.

Complicated stuff. Don't worry about complicated stuff, if it's complicated, just ignore it.

Or let me explain it here to you. Smooth move eh?

If you're worrying about something that's complicated, let me know and I will explain it to you in plain English in less than 10 minutes, sales pitch over.

Just don't worry about stuff. Photography is a thing to be enjoyed. It's meant to be a hobby, a joy.

I take photos professionally. And I love it. And I love it more when I'm not worrying about everything. One for another episode - why I don't worry when I'm taking photos.

11 Be yourself and be true to yourself.
Don't try to be something you not. Now. I think I've done this in the past. And now I just get down to doing what I want to do. I photograph what I want to photograph, I speak about what I want to speak about like this subject which you don't find in a Google search.

It's just what I wanted to talk about in Episode 50.

This is my way of celebrating and being true to myself. So be true to yourself.

Here we go then - my one line summary
I've been learning and practising photography for well over 30 years. And I still love it, I really mean that. I'm going to remember the things I have spoken about and get back into doing more of the fun stuff.

That's a little bit of a teaser for the next episode.

Oh, next episode, I'm going back to what my podcast was meant to be about. So I will tell you what a full frame camera is, and no more and that will be that.

Rather than trying to cram too much into 10 minutes, I'm going to spread out and fill the 10 minutes with one thing – and I cannot wait.

Things you can do to help me.
If you've enjoyed this episode, and you want to help me (which I hope you do), please leave a nice review and rating wherever you get your podcast from, subscribe so you don't miss an episode, and share my podcast with anyone you think might enjoy it.

Right well over the time here. And that's with my shortened intro and outro

Thank you
Thank you for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast.

Rick McEvoy Photography
Check out my website, Rick McEvoy Photography where you can find out more about me and my architectural and construction photography work. And also my photography blog. It's really good honest.

Photography Explained Podcast
And also the Photography Explained Podcast website where you can find out all about my podcast, what I'm going to answer and ask me a question of your own.

This episode was brought to you very much by the power of being happy to get to 50 episodes.

Sorry, it's been so long.

I've been Rick McEvoy. Thanks again very much for listening to me and for giving me less than 14 minutes of your valuable time. And I will see you on the next episode. Cheers from me, Rick.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

photos, photography, lightroom, worry, learn, episode, podcast, photograph, episodes, gear, photoshop, properly, composition, lots, critique, google search, enjoy, photographic, minutes, number