Introduction
Photo by Yngve Leyn on Unsplash
Photography is a fun way to document things in life. Be it events, people, animals or still objects. There are many different ways to photograph an object or a person and creativity plays an important role in photography. As with any creative expression, amazing results come from understanding and mastering your tools. A painter needs to know his brushes and colors. A musician needs to master his instrument. This is no different in photography. Understanding the basics will help you take better pictures and you will ultimately enjoy the results more.
“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”
All the tech lingo might seem overwhelming at first, but once you go out and practice, you will get the hang of it really quick and it will be a lot of fun. Using the auto function on your camera or phone lets the camera choose the setting for you and this is handy if you don’t care about the results and just want to ‘point & shoot’. Creating different effects can only be done by understanding how to control your camera and not the other way around. Having gone through the entire learning curve myself, I highly recommend staring out with manual/ film photography since this forces you to really understand what you are doing. It is the best way to learn photography in my point of view!
A disclaimer - I tried to keep each chapter and topic as high level as possible with the intention to cover a broad range of topics in a very short time. I might have missed details here and there and I encourage the reader to do his own research in more detail. This is a beginner’s starting guide and not a comprehensive photography course.
You can download all chapters as pdf by clicking on the button below
Next chapter: Exposure triangle