Earlier this year I decided to take up photography. Let me be clear... Before I made this life changing decision I knew very little about taking pictures, all's I was concerned about was weather or not the photo was blurry. I'm still very much in the early stages of learning about photography but I thought I would share some of what I learn as I go, maybe you may find something useful for when you are taking your snaps and I will have some 'study notes'.
Unfortunately i'm not exactly cash rich at present so I can't run out and buy myself a nice SLR camera and start shooting. However i'm not going to be letting that stop me. Fan's of my personal blog will have read that I recently got my hands on the Iphone 4 which, as part of its many excellent features, has a very nice 5mp camera. The added benefit of using a low end camera such as this or a 'point and shoot' (none SLR camera's or pocket cameras) is that I can focus on one of the most important elements of photography... Composition.
Composition, the best way I can explain it, is how you line up and frame your shot. In photography there are many rules which can help guide you, but it is important always remember that these are NOT set in stone and when taking some photo's these rules will not apply. The 1st rule I learnt is arguably the most important and has had a dramatic impact on how good my photo's look. The rule is called the rule of thirds. Put simply it explains that as you are getting ready to take your photo and you are looking through the view finder or screen imagine it is split up into a grid of 9 squares. Then you use this to frame your shot. Rather than me attempt to explain this further and probably confuse you more I would suggest you google it, there are a crazy amount of articles on this and the rule of thirds is such a big topic you could talk for hours about it and when and when not to use it. By using the rule of thirds you photo's composition will look 10 times better without the need to run out and buy any expensive camera's or equipment, cool ay? I'm still very green in the world of photography but if there's one thing i've learnt it's that no matter how good your equipment is if you can't compose the shot your photo will look like you handed over your camera to a 5 year old to take the picture.
So there you have it, my 1st lesson in photography. As I go I'll share good sources of info that i've learnt from. To kick you off i'd like to direct you to where I started, it was a podcast on the pixelcorps.tv network called This week in photography. I started from the very 1st episode, each focuses on a different topic, I leant a lot from listening these and i'm only through about 20 shows.
As i'm mainly using an iphone to take photo's i'll also be using a number of iphone apps to aid my photography so keep an eye out on this blog for my reviews on thoughts and I'd love to hear if you are finding any of this usefully or if you have any hits or tips please comment bellow...
Happy Snapping
G