Almost everyone wishes they could take better photographs. Even though anyone with a smartphone can call themselves a professional if they so desire, truly exceptional images are made not with luck, but with learning and experience. One of the best things you can do for yourself if you’re looking to get serious is to enrol in a respected online photography course in order to learn the basics of things like aperture, shutter speed, lighting and composition.
But as well as getting invaluable skills like that, you also need to get out there and simply start shooting. Of course not every image will be perfect and of course you’ll make mistakes, and lots of them, but the point is that nothing can replace experience – so dive in and start practicing!
To give you a leg up and perhaps some extra inspiration to enrol on an online photography course, these three professional tips will help you transform your images from amateur to amazing.
Tip One: Change your perspective
This is truly one of the easiest ways to find that elusive ‘wow factor’. The reason professionals get the best images is because they don’t just look at a scene and point their camera at it. The world doesn’t happen at eye level and straight on (even though this can be a very strong portraiture pose) and you can absolutely transform what you see through your viewfinder by changing your perspective. That means getting high and shooting from above, getting low and aiming up, shooting from your hip, tilting your camera angle, getting closer (or further away), framing your image and using natural compositional lines within your frame to lead the viewer’s eye. In short, altering perspective means not being afraid to move around, change your viewpoint, experiment and think outside the box. If you do, you might just get the shot that everybody else misses.
Tip two: Take more than you think you need
In the old days of shooting film this tip was perhaps harder to adhere to, but with digital cameras the norm, there’s no excuse. No matter how much your gut is telling you you’ve nailed it and captured that perfect image, take more. Of course in some instances (particularly street photography) the window of opportunity could be fleeting, but whenever you can, even if you’ve checked the results on the camera LCD screen, take some back ups. It’s quite often not until you’re back home in front of your computer that you find out your prized image is out of focus or over/underexposed beyond help. Your killer shot could, in fact, be the next frame…
Tip three: Always look to the light
Light is the most fundamental and important aspect of taking a photograph – after all, no light, no image. While there’s really no such thing as ‘bad’ light in photography, it pays to understand exactly the effect different kinds of light will have on your final image. The key things to pay attention to are its direction and intensity. Harsh direct light provides an entirely different ambience than soft directional light, so this should be the very first thing you consider for every single image you compose, whether indoors or outside.
These three tips alone will help you take your own images to the next level, but if you really want to aim high, an online photography course is the ideal learning space to immerse in this fascinating creative world.
By Laura J.
