I just had another birthday, it is a time I often look back on memories of growing up. I still have the camera I learned to photograph on. It was just an old 35mm my father owned. He pulled it out of his drawer when I showed some interest in photography. My father was a newspaper man and was the general manager of the local newspaper in my hometown of Fort Smith, AR. My dad bought me some film and showed me the sunny 16 guides you could find on the film box. He took me out around the neighborhood (mostly my yard) and we took a few pictures together. I learned it all from that and experimenting with this little 35mm camera. It has no battery, no built in meter, you just set everything manually. I took the camera and played with the shutter speeds, f-stops. I just spent severals rolls of film learning what a slow and fast shutter speed did. How my depth of field changed at different f-stops. Today like any good photographer I often get hear people saying “You must have a great camera” I often smile back and nicely say “yes it is”. I have to admit my camera equipment all together is worth more than the vehicle I drive, so I do have a nice camera. I know my father had no idea how much of a favor he was doing by giving me a completely manual camera, even though there were better cameras available at the time. It was just a great way to learn how a camera worked. He later bought me the canon AE-1 which was a good modern 35mm film camera at that time.
Want to learn how to take better photographs? Just use take that same technique of taking a lot of images at different settings and studying the results. I believe this is the best way to learn all the basics of photography. The thing about my manual camera was I not only had to learn them but I had to memorize them. This is also what you should do. Yes I am saying take that expensive digital camera and shoot everything on manual. The advantage today is you can bracket (shoot at different settings) and take as many images as you want without any extra expense. Do this until you know what moving water looks like at each shutter speed setting and have them memorized. That way you know real close what shutter speed you want for different effects. A fast shutter speed freezes things in motion a slow shutter speed lets it blur. Learn how depth of field works by experimenting with every f-stop. Depth of field is the amount, or better, the depth of sharp focus in a photograph. I often describe it as an imaginary walls, the part within the walls is sharp or in your depth of field, the area outside your depth of field walls is softer. Learn how your depth of field changes with different focal length lenses and different distances. The wider your lens is the more depth of field you have. The tighter or longer lenses have a shorter depth of field. As your subject gets closer to your lens your depth of field gets shallower. Know your cameras’ iso settings by shooting at them and seeing how much noise or graininess is added as your iso goes up. Know about where the cut off is where you just won’t be real happy if you go to high. Even professionals make mistakes all time with these settings. I do at least, you take a shot and look at it and say to yourself, my depth of field was to shallow. I missed my focus on that shot. I should of changed my iso for a longer of shorter shutter speed. The more you have these settings memorized the faster you can set those settings.
The technical part of photography is all about the camera settings, but that alone will not make you a good photographer. How do you learn to take beautiful photographs with beautiful unique composition? Well really there is not much truly new out there today. You just need to study other peoples work. With the internet there is an endless supply of images to study. Use that same technique I described with the camera settings and apply it to your compositions. Experiment with it of course but study other images you are drawn to. Do that until you have those images in your mind memorized. That way I can just see the images I want to take in my minds eye. They are there whenever I need inspiration or a reference. I have many landscape locations I want to photograph at different seasons or in different conditions in my minds eye. They are there for inspiration and I know I may not get some of them for years. Those images keep me inspired to continue shooing. These are some of the simple self taught techniques I use and how I learn the best. Yes it is basically learn by doing but like they say practice makes perfect.
