Your Background Is Talking. Are You Listening? ‹› Issue II
One of the fastest ways to improve your photography costs nothing, requires no new gear, and has nothing to do with your subject at all. It has everything to do with what is behind it. Your background is talking in every photograph you take. The question is whether you are listening.
Did I Use the Right Aperture?
The question that has taught me the most about photography does not happen before I press the shutter. It happens after. Not was this a good photograph. Just one simple thing. Did I use the right aperture? It sounds technical. It is really a storytelling question.
What Is Composition? Start Here. Come Back Often.
Composition was here long before cameras existed. Painters agonised over it. Sculptors carved around it. The principles that stopped you cold in front of a great image are the same ones Michelangelo used on a ceiling. You inherited all of that the moment you picked up a camera.
The Little Graph Nobody Looks At That Could Save Your Photos.
Your camera screen is lying to you. Not on purpose, but it is. The histogram never lies. Learn to read that little graph and you will never come home with a blown out sky or crushed shadows again.
Why Great Photographers See in Rectangles and You Probably Don't Yet
A camera does not see the way your eyes do. And your eyes does not see the way a camera does. Learning to see the way your camera sees, all the way to every corner and edge, is one of the most underrated skills in photography. And most people never fully develop it.
The Light Is Always Changing. Are You Paying Attention?
Good light doesn't stop at golden hour. It just changes. Learn to read natural light from dawn to dark and you'll never wait for the "perfect" moment again. The biggest shift isn't technical. It's learning to pay attention.
The Moment You Stop Trying to Make the Photo (and make it)
Before you touch a setting, learn to see the frame. Composition begins before the camera ever comes up.