Selecting Photos
This is starting at the end really, but it is also the simplest and most useful tip to improve your photography.
Tip - select only the best of your pictures to show to others and leave the rest in the drawer. Showing someone every picture you have taken dilutes the effect of the best pictures and gets very boring.
You may want to show twenty pictures of little Johnny at the park because they are all quite good and you can't decide which are the best but, trust me, you will be better off making that decision and showing only the few good ones.
Hey, you're thinking, I came here looking for a course in photography and I get this, this isn't photography.
Yes it is!
Presentation is an essential part of photography and what you don't present is an essential part of presentation. Follow the advice above and you will immediately be promoted from 'photo bore' to someone who looks like they know what they are doing.
Your friends and relatives will beg you to see the rest of the pictures, resist at all costs. If you give in to their demands, you can regret at leisure as you watch their initial enthusiasm lessen with each photo they turn over. You've already shown them the best, what do you expect?
This advice is not just for beginners, although old hands will probably have learned the hard way already. I have taken many tens of thousands of pictures over the years but, if I was asked to mount an exhibition of my best 100 photos, I would be thrown into a blind panic. As each new 'great shot' comes along, it moves the goalposts, and last year's great shots don't look so great any more. That's why this is such a great hobby, there is no finish line, even the best photographer in the world can still aspire to produce a better picture next time. Having said that, some of the shots I took over twenty years ago are still in my pile of favorites. Learning and improvement are not always linear.
A good place to start for complete beginners, the first few things you need to know.
A short piece of advice on showing your pictures to others.
How to hold the camera properly and why. Also illustrations of how not to hold the camera.
What is it? What does it look like? What causes it? How to avoid it.
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Learn Photography with Geoff Lawrence