Five Things You Can Do To Take Better Pictures Without Expensive Gear
Contributed by: mitchellmasilun
A famous photographer is out having dinner with some friends. During the meal the chef comes out and says, "Your pictures are great, you must have a good camera." The photographer nods and continues eating. At the end of dinner, the photographer says to the chef, "This meal was great, you must have a good stove."
This is one of the fallacies of photography that I try to pound out of my students during every workshop. Because we are one of the few art forms that is wholly dependent on gear to craft an image, many get caught up in thinking that having the newest camera or biggest lens will make them a better photographer. They get what we photographers lovingly call GAS: Gear Acquisition Syndrome. So here are the first 5 tips I have for you that will better your photography without spending money on gear.
Know Your Camera
Take out your manual, go through it page by page, and find every feature on your camera and understand what it does. We touch on this in my workshops, and it still takes the majority of the morning because nobody has done it before.
The reason is simple: If you know what everything on you camera does and you can access it quickly, then you aren't worrying about it when shooting. By the time you try and figure out where something is, you picture is gone. This allows you to focus on the image, not the camera.
The two pictures you see are of a stage performance in Thailand. Both are taken within minutes of each other, give completely different looks, and were shot with completely different settings on my camera. If I had to struggle to figure out how to do this, the performance would already be over ...
Read More @ SourceChinese Cultural Traditions -- China Camp and Lion Dance
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