I remember starting out on my own photography journey was daunting, so many settings to learn!

But it doesn’t have to be this way. That’s why I have collated the top tips I wish I had known earlier to advance my early photography skills!

1. Shoot in Favourable Lighting Conditions (Golden Hour)

One of the most easy and simple things you can do as a beginner photographer is choosing the right conditions to shoot in, which can take your photos from looking amateur to high quality and professional!

Take this for example, the first photo was taken earlier in the day (around 4pm). The light was still a little harsh, but workable. The second photo was taken around 5.45pm. The glow really only started happening around this time making the skin warm, smooth and glowy.

There is no doubt about it, golden hour is the perfect time to shoot in across the board!

If this is your start in photography and you’ve been doing your research, you may have already heard this word!

At dawn and dusk, the light is the most diffused - meaning nice soft lighting! You’ll get soft shadows and a beautiful orange glow. You may see a lot of even regular insta users use this time of day often for their own personal pics! And there is the reason why!

Rule of thumb, I would highly recommend shooting at this time of day most often as you’ll more than likely get the perfect shot at these times of day.

2.   Shoot with your Composition in Mind

Composition is key!

Always try and shoot with your composition in mind. Rule of thirds is a great starting place for beginner photographers!

Here, the first image was one of the first ones I’d taken. It was feeling too messy and overcrowded, the flowers weren’t standing out! The blooms were also dead centre, which wasn’t doing me any favours.

In the second photo, I got a different angle that was less crowded, followed the Rule of Thirds, and chose a stem that had more blooms.

This allowed me to be able to capture the true beauty of the flowers.

Always try and shoot with your composition in mind. Rule of thirds is a great starting place for beginner photographers!

The rule theorises that if you place your point of focus on these lines/intersections that it creates a more aesthetically pleasing photo! If you want to learn more about rule of thirds I highly recommend taking a look at this other blog I composed right here.

This is definitely not for every scenario, but its good to know the rules before you break them! Give this a try with your upcoming work and see how it turns out!

3. Try Different Angles! Low and High Can Be Quite Interesting Perspectives

Trying different angles gives you room to experiment! You should always be looking at different ways to make your subject really stand out.

Get low to the ground for a more interesting perspective! Perhaps getting more of the sky in the shot which can be a more dreamy look.

Shooting eye-level to the subject is the easiest go to angle for most. Depending on what you’re shooting, this could work very well, but do move around to see other perspectives!

A high perspective can make the object appear smaller in a way, in this example it shows only the beautiful petals of the flower without the stem and blends it in with the foliage.

No perspective is right or wrong, and your own environment will dictate what works best for your scene.

In these examples, my favourite is the low angle as you get the beautiful light bokeh background which adds a nice perspective to the image and makes it feel more dreamy, which is what I love to encapsulate in my macro photography.

The whole purpose of photography is to bring light to things we don’t get to see everyday! And a new perspective is one of them! This is an essential tip for a beginner photographer.

4.     Shoot in Raw! (this will help beginners when it comes to editing)

This is something I wish I knew at the beginning of my photography journey! Once I did some research, I realised why all professional photographers shoot in this format.

Raw shooting basically encapsulates more data into the image you’ve taken, allowing for an easier and simplified edit. It means that if you were to accidentally underexpose or overexpose your image, it is easier adjust the shadows or highlights in editing to somewhat fix the image.

It saves and remembers data you could think is gone, like a blown out sky!

Here you can see just how much data the RAW format saves. I was able to recover this photo with details otherwise gone in file types like JPEG. This is a lifesaver, and will give you full creative control in the edit suite. I definitely recommend shooting in this setting.

5.     Study your Exposure Triangle!

Your exposure triangle is what is going to help you from switching from auto to manual!

The exposure triangle is made up using shutter speed, aperture, and iso.

If you learn these settings well, you’ll know how to create a well-balanced image and correctly exposed one!

Shutter speed:

Shutter speed controls how fast your shutter opens and closes, the lower you go, the more light your letting in, creating more motion blur. The higher it is, the faster the shutter opens and closes, creating a still image (think of sport photography and how the runners are captured in a still frame instead of being blurry - this is due to using a high shutter speed).

Aperture:

Aperture controls how much light is let into the lens and also the depth of field. The lower the aperture, the brighter and shallower depth factor you’ll get. The higher the aperture, the darker it will be, and you’ll get a longer range in focus (long depth of field)

ISO:

ISO is digital gain which enlarges pixels in the camera to make an image appear brighter! (Be careful with this one, see tip #8)

I recommend beginners to start on auto settings and look back later on what the settings the camera determined were the best for that photo. This will help guide you when you do come to using manual mode!

6.     Experiment With Your Aperture

Experimenting with your aperture will help you figure out what scenarios will best use a higher or lower aperture.

For example, with my macro photography, I like to use a lower aperture to get beautiful creamy bokeh.

But when it comes to landscape photography, I want more in focus, so I like to keep my aperture higher.

In this example to the right, you can see the difference in the higher and lower aperture pictures. The lower aperture separates the model from the background and draws more focus to the models face as opposed to the one with the higher aperture.

Personally for my portrait style, I prefer to keep my aperture low so it feels more dreamy - but this is all creative choice! I’ve seen plenty of styles (especially street photography that use high aperture - like Jordi Koalitic)

As a beginner, the more you experiment, the more you’ll learn.

7.     Get Comfortable With Your Equipment

Get to know your equipment well! You don’t have to have the latest and flashiest new camera to take high quality and professional photos. In this photo you can see me holding my beginner camera that I still use! Some of the best photos are taken on an entry level Nikon D5600 DSLR. I still only have an entry level DSLR and have learnt so much about how to take great photos without having the most expensive gear!

No camera is a bad camera, but you do have to take steps to learn about the creative techniques like rule of thirds and Diagonals.

Your exposure triangle will really help here! And composition!

8.     Use ISO Sparingly! This Can Really Mess With Your Photos and their Quality

Something else I wish I knew at the start was more about ISO. If you use it too much, when it gets to editing you’ll see a lot of what us photographers call “noise”.

In the images below, I used 2000 ISO. I got to my location late as the sun was setting, so I was losing natural light and in this scenario, I had to use ISO. You can clearly see in the second image that the ‘gain’ is showing up, and it does hurt the overall quality of the photo. Because the pixels are enlarged, it does give the photo a more blurred look.

In this situation, I had to use ISO, but if you can avoid it, I would highly recommend it. Even getting an affordable front light for your camera (or possibly your phone torch on your subject) will help significantly, and you can keep that ISO lower.

ISO is great if the lighting conditions aren’t perfect, and you need to bump it up a bit like I did here, but if you’re exceeding 1500 or even 2000 in ISO, there is a chance it will show up quite significantly in your pictures.

If you need to light up your scene more, I would suggest getting an affordable top light - doesn’t need to be anything fancy if you’re just trying to get some extra light on your flowers - try this Neewer 176 LED for 54.99AUD on amazon. Or if you are doing night photography, consider investing in a tripod and lowering your shutter-speed; which will control how long your shutter is open for, and controls how much light goes in your camera (exposure triangle will help!).

9.     Don’t Underestimate How Much Can Be Done in Editing!

Something I often saw in the beginning of my photography journey was that editing was ‘cheating’ and made images look fake.

Now I have come to realise that editing your photos is a form of artistic expression, and that isn’t a bad thing!

Don’t get me wrong, you can definitely overdo your images with editing, but when done right can create a new mood, or meaning to your image otherwise not shown in the unedited version.

I personally love changing the colours, white balance, and exposures to create something a little different!

All of my images are edited in a way I think creates a sense of magic and beauty within nature and people.

I personally believe the ratio with photography and editing is 50% shooting, and 50% editing. They are just as important as each other, one doesn’t go without the other! If you want some Lightroom editing tips, check this blog out.

10.     Shoot Often and Experiment!

One of the most easy and simple thing you can do to fast-track those skills is shoot as often as you can!

I started experimenting with a camera back in 2017, but only really became good last year because I had a heap of time to spare! (as all of us did), I used that time to really learn and grow as a photographer!

I learned so much in just a few months about how to shoot macro, what the best lighting is for it, and the best composition to make flowers really stand out! Not to mention Editing became my best-friend!

Although, as a beginner, don’t be afraid to just start in auto. Manual can be scary at first and you don’t want to overcomplicate it. When you’re using auto, you can go back and look at the photo properties, and see what the camera decided was the best settings for that particular photo. This way you can use that knowledge and apply it in similar situations using manual later down the track.

The best way to advance as a beginner is by taking your camera with you often when you leave the house, and shooting as much as you can. I take mine with me, just in case.

You never know what treasures you can find along the way. There is always room to grow! If you are constantly shooting different things in different environments, you’ll come to learn what you love shooting best, You’ll drastically improve your creative composition of your photos, and you’ll learn what times of day can make your photos look the best.

There is no limits here! Part of the fun of the creative process is just going out and shooting, without expectations.

Wanting more tips? check out my other blogs on Composition and Editing tips to get you started!

Happy shooting!