Congrats! You got a new camera. Isn’t it shiny and awesome? Doesn’t it take great pictures of your cat? Yes and yes, but now it’s time to actually go out and use it.
Trillions of gallons of e-ink have been spent on online camera guides, which have become refined and rehashed into an art form. I’d rather avoid the genre altogether, and instead focus on actually taking the photos you want to take, which is (presumably) why you wanted a camera in the first place. I’ve always felt hands-on learning, especially with photography, is far more useful than reading anyway.
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Consider this a checklist of photo styles worth practicing on your road to photographic bliss. If you’re in need of a guide to help you parse menus, figure out what you need to buy, and decide on shooting RAW or JPEG, our friends at Gizmodo have a good place to start. Writing a definitive guide to any of these would require a book or two, so consider these some broad strokes to experiment with, and feel encouraged to share thoughts and questions.
Let’s breeze through the basics really quick: Your camera is nothing more than a tool for catching light, and it’s your job to control how much light gets in. That means mastering the three variables of exposure: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Guides like the aptly-named exposureguide.com are a good resource, but the TL;DR version is pretty straightforward if you remember that all you’re doing is regulating light:
- Shutter speed: A slower shutter speed means the camera’s shutter is open for longer, which means more light going in—key for darker scenes. But a slower shutter speed also means more blur from your shaky hands (use a tripod) or from moving subjects (nothing you can do there but use a faster shutter speed).
- ISO: ISO is a throwback to the film days, when it referenced the sensitivity of a film’s chemicals to light. A higher ISO is more sensitive to light, so high ISOs are for dark scenes, low ISOs for bright. High ISOs come with extra noise, so keeping ISO as low as possible is generally a good idea.
- Aperture: This is the f/ number on your camera. Setting aperture to a smaller number (f/1.8, say) means the lens’s aperture is more open, letting in more light; because of optical physics, it also has a smaller depth of field (less stuff is in focus). A higher f-stop (f/8) lets in less light, but has a larger depth of field (more stuff is in focus).
That’s a lot of stuff to remember to set and balance, but here’s the thing: Cameras these days are pretty darn smart across the board, so don’t feel bad about letting yours do the work for you. In most situations, shooting in full manual mode is a needless pain in the ass. (Do try it though! It will help you understand exposure more intuitively.) So how
That said, shooting in full automatic mode will get you balanced exposures, but will take you out of the equation, which is missing the point. Because your aperture tends to have the most impact on how your photos look by controlling the depth of field, I recommend shooting in aperture priority mode (“A” for Nikon and most others, “Av” for Canon). This way you can control depth of field, and the camera will do everything else for you.
Word to the wise: You’ll never have enough set-up time, no matter what you’re shooting, so anything you can do to avoid fiddling with knobs is a help. If I’m on an assignment or just wandering around, I tend to shoot on aperture priority with Auto ISO set to ensure my shutter speeds don’t get too low or let ISOs get too high.
In any case, the only way to get better is to practice. I’ve tried to stick to general advice that will work for any camera with a modicum of manual controls, and basic stuff about framing and style applies to anything from a cameraphone up. So rather than obsess over what lens you should buy next, or why one camera is better than another, or what Photoshop style is currently popular, let’s just go out and shoot.
(Full disclosure: I’m using pictures of mine because it’s easier to find what I’m looking for, not because I was looking for an excuse to share my amazing photos. Bleh.)
1. Portrait
D800, 50mm 1.8G, 1/2500, ƒ/1.8, ISO 100, 50 mm
The most important thing you’ll want to learn how to do well is shoot portraits, because the person with the shiny new camera always gets picked to take portraits. Here’s the basic recipe for a good portrait:
Shallow depth of field: A shallow depth of field, with a face in focus and the background blurry, is the “pro look” people want. There’s a reason for it: Keeping focus on people’s faces is the whole point of shooting portraits. In the photo of Nigel Ackland above, it’s clear that he’s standing on an NYC street, but your eye is drawn to him. If everything was in focus, he’d be lost. (His hand still is, thanks to the dark newsstand in the background. I should have been watching!)
Everyone goes through a crazy shallow depth of field phase, with all your photos shot at f/1.4 because it’s artsy, but good balance is key here. Shooting at f/2.5 or so will mean your subject’s whole face will be in focus; for a group, a smaller aperture (f/3.5, f/4) will help keep everyone in focus, as no group ever stands in a perfectly straight plane.
Zoom out: Use a longer lens for portraits. Somewhere between 50mm and 150mm equivalent is good. Longer lenses make an image appear flatter—compare a super wide-angle shot with a telephoto—which makes people look more attractive. Longer lenses also produce a shallower depth of field, which you can use to your advantage.
D800, Zeiss 85mm f/1.4, 1/800, ƒ/2.5, ISO 100, 85 mm
Good background, cropping, and light: More than anything, good portraits have backgrounds that a) make sense and b) aren’t distracting. I took the above photo of Bitinstant’s Charlie Shrem at his house and never used it; while the flowery background would be great for a family photo (flowers are happy!) it doesn’t really fit a Bitcoin story. The same goes for your family and friends. Also, whatever you do, pull them away from the wall or whatever’s behind them, this isn’t a mugshot.
I also cropped on Shrem’s hands, a big no-no I could have fixed in post by cropping tighter. There are natural places for cropping a portrait that are good to memorize; also, avoid leaving much space above a subject’s head.
As for light, shooting in full daylight never looks good. Shoot early or late in the day, or find a nice shady grove to stand in, and make sure you’re not shooting directly into the sun. Advanced techniques include bouncing light or a flash to add fill light, and using flash setups in general. For everything flash, I recommend The Strobist.
2. Candid
D800, 50mm f/1.8G, 1/30, ƒ/2, ISO 2200, 50 mm
Portraits are a great chance to hone your camera handling skills, as generally you’ll have more time to fiddle around than in other situations. Whether you’re an aspiring photojournalist or looking for good memories, moving past the portrait and into candid shots will help you document more meaningful scenes.
Good candids require capturing the mood and vibe of a scene, and not just a person’s face. Technically, that means balancing depth of field and thinking about your framing. This is a good time to review the rule of thirds, which says that, for some reason, photos look best if subjects are either in the middle, or lined up on imaginary lines that split the frame into thirds. Anywhere else and they feel out of place.
The above photo of graffiti artist Paolo Cirio was a challenge: It was at night on a crowded street, and Cirio was working quickly. I didn’t want to shoot with flash, because I felt it killed the street vibe, but also didn’t want to shoot wide open, as I wanted to keep as much of his work in focus as possible.
It’s a noisy photo with weird colors, but the end result—Cirio framed on the left third looking across the frame, keeping your eyes on his work in the center, with a random dude entering from the right—did a good job of capturing what it was like wandering around the streets with him.
D800, 24mm 2.8D, 1/50, ƒ/2.8, ISO 640, 24 mm
Remember, the key here is on capturing the vibe, not simply going for the most technically perfect photo of someone. While shooting wide and low is not ideal for a portrait—never shoot low for a portrait—getting an angle that isn’t simply your normal eye height is key to setting a mood.
Earlier this year, we met android creator Hiroshi Ishiguro in his hotel room as part of a hectic, revolving door of reporters, which is never ideal. It was late in the day, and Ishiguro (on the right) seemed pretty comfortable in his chair. Getting him up and moving furniture around for a portrait wouldn’t have made sense.
The framing isn’t perfect, and the background’s not thrown out of focus like in the portraits above, but the point of a candid shot is to not look staged. Using a wide, low shot helps the viewer feel more immersed in the scene, rather than watching from afar. Doing that effectively means making sure your subjects are comfortable, so if you’re shooting candids of your friends, I recommend not waving the camera around constantly. Look for well-framed, key moments, then grab the shot.
3. Street
D800, 50mm 1.8G, 1/400, ƒ/2.5, ISO 400, 50 mm
Street photography is essentially candid photography, but has a more sexy allure to it these days because somehow taking photos of homeless guys’ hands is more “gritty.” There’s certainly excellent street photography and street portraiture going on these days, but the days of Jamel Shabazz walking around with a flash setup have been displaced by millions of people Instagramming trash and a dedicated few channeling Bruce Gilden for ambush photography that just comes as dickish.
In case you haven’t guessed, I’m not a huge fan of a lot of street photos, but the ones that are good are some of the best photos around. The classic rule for street photos is to shoot at f/8 with a wide lens, anywhere from 24mm to 50mm equivalent. As you get more comfortable with your portrait and candid style, you can do whatever you want, but I do recommend staying wide if you’re doing walk-by photos of people; shooting people on the street with a long lens looks a bit stalkery.
Becoming a good street photographer requires gaining the confidence to shoot photos of people in public. Sounds simple, but it’s not an easy thing to do, which is why there are countless guides to help you. Mainly, you want to get a feeling for the flow of the city, and limit your photos to moments that you know are going to be good. Again, you want to be able to feel the vibe, essence, or whatever you want to call it, of the city in your photos. For example, the top photo is of some dude walking through Times Square. Sure, I stuck my camera in his face, so great street photo right? Not really. What’s it saying about NYC? That people walk through Times Square? Hardly new ground.
D800, 50mm 1.8G, 1/2500, ƒ/7.1, ISO 400, 50 mm
Make sure your camera is always set the way you want; speed is of the utmost essence, as you’ll miss a moment faster than you can blink. Also, remember that “street” photography doesn’t have to mean shoving a camera in someone’s face. Treating a city itself as a subject itself is great—although unless you’re shooting architecture, having humans in a photo is often a plus. I actually prefer the above photo, shot on the same day, because I got lucky with the pigeons, and I feel it better captures what it’s like to wander NYC on a frigid-ass day when not many people are braving Central Park.
4. Landscape
D800, 24mm 2.8D, 1/160, ƒ/9, ISO 100, 24 mm
I personally think shooting landscapes is the hardest style of photography, mostly because I’m not very good at it. Traditional landscapes involve wide angles (anything from 14mm to 35mm equivalent) with huge depths of field (tiny apertures, think f/12 to f/16) and using a tripod and perhaps a mirror lock-up to maximize sharpness.
The problem is that people, including yours truly, tend to use wide angles to fit everything into the frame, which produces a complicated mess. The above photo, taken somewhere in West Virgina, is a great example. It’s a pretty scene, and using a really wide lens certainly packed a lot in, but no feature really catches your eye.
Because you can take your time, landscapes should be taken with perfect technique—no jitters, poor framing, or high ISO silliness required by shots that need to be taken quickly. They’re also about far more than just clicking the shutter. The best landscapes require work to find. The bonus is shooting landscapes requires that you find beautiful views. Not bad, eh?
Don’t be afraid to use a slow shutter speed, especially around water; a waterfall shot at a shutter speed of a half-second or more will give the creamy, beautiful water look of the pros, and a river shot with an exposure of a few seconds will turn into glass.
D800, 24mm 2.8D, 1/50, ƒ/2.8, ISO 2800, 24 mm
Aside from technical brilliance—perfect exposures, calculating hyperfocal distances, and impeccable technique—the reason folks like Ansel Adams are so good is that they’re able to find landscape scenes that don’t feel cluttered or overwhelming. Figuring out what feels right takes time, as “right” is a fairly amorphous concept in this regard. The best thing to do is find yourself a beautiful landscape and take photos in good light, either really early in the AM or near the evening, and see what works best. That said, a “landscape” doesn’t have to be in nature. The same concepts can apply to large-scale shots of a cityscape, or the subway tunnel in the photo above.
5. Action
D800, 70-200 2.8 VRII, 1/1250, ƒ/3.5, ISO 100, 185 mm
Action photography, which could be sports or wildlife, is all about controlling speed. There’s a reason top-tier cameras shoot 11 frames a second now: When a subject is moving really quickly, having a camera that can keep up is helpful. From a technical standpoint, you want a fast shutter speed to kill motion blur, and because focusing is difficult, you’ll want to flip your autofocus mode to continuous if you’ve got it, and not go super shallow on the depth of field to allow a bit of wiggle room. (You don’t always have to use a fast shutter speed; a slower speed and controlled motion blur can add a sense of speed. Here’s a great guide on Speedhunters.)
Action photography is all about getting close. (Sensing a theme here? Good.) The reason the guys on the sidelines have enormous lenses in their hands is because you want to get into the action, not just see a field with a bunch of guys on it. Get low, too: Shooting at eye height loses drama; seeing someone towering up from ground angle is real hero stuff.
Prepare to use the longest lens you’ve got, and get in as close as you can. Getting the perfect shot means trying to anticipate what’s coming, tracking that movement with your camera to keep things in frame, then bursting off a shot or two when the time is right.
You don’t have to be able to shoot 11 FPS to get good action photos if you get your timing down (shooting with the lag of a point-and-shoot is pretty difficult, however) and aren’t afraid to take a lot of photos. At least we’re not using film anymore, right?
D800, 50mm 1.8G, 1/400, ƒ/4, ISO 100, 50 mm
Shooting action, be it sports or wildlife, is fun because it offers a lot of freedom to experiment. Think about the emotional aspect of your framing: Compare the photo of the bitchin’ wheelie above with the first motorcycle photo. In both cases, he’s riding to the left, but on the bottom one he’s framed (accidentally, I was hanging out of a car) to the left, which adds a bit of tension. It feels like he’s riding right out of the picture, even though he was actually going far slower than in the first photo.
Getting close and avoiding eye-angle shots is good advice for any type of shooting, but it’s harder with action shots because you can’t simply walk onto a football field or up to the nose of a tiger. Thankfully, there are options for long lenses that are far cheaper than a pro’s $10,000 behemoth, and there’s plenty of room for being creative. You’re not going to shoot pro-level photos at an NBA game unless you’re courtside and safaris are expensive, but getting to the edge of the field at your kid’s soccer game or a ticket to the zoo are far cheaper and easier methods of practicing your technique.
6. Long Exposures
D40x, 18-55mm, 30 sec, ƒ/18, ISO 200, 18 mm
This whole time we’ve been ignoring that shutter priority mode on your camera in favor of aperture priority, but there’s one case where’s it’s awesome to use: Long exposures. Shooting a long exposure at night and playing around with light-writing is a rewarding experience that makes owning a fancy camera feel worth it. The photo above was one of the first pictures I took with my first real DSLR, and it’s still one of my favorite photo memories.
If you’re in shutter priority mode, don’t be afraid to set an exposure time of 30 seconds or more; it’ll give you more time to fool around with your light (just about light source you can blink on and off will work) or will let you shoot a cityscape at night at a low ISO for a clean shot.
Shooting long exposures requires the techniques you started to fool around with when shooting landscapes. A tripod is essential, as is understanding how to shoot with a mirror lock-up and an exposure delay or remote release, both of which prevent you from shaking the camera as you hit the shutter button. The name of the game is keeping everything as stable as possible; any shaking, from the ground on up, will reduce the sharpness of the photo.
D800, 50mm 1.8G, 13 sec ƒ/8, ISO 200, 50 mm
That said, shooting longish exposures is possible with any flat surface. I shot the above photo by setting my camera on a flat railing, which produced pretty good results considering I didn’t have a tripod. (Notice how glassy the water is. Long exposures rule!) By this point, you should have a good idea of how you like to frame things, and what your lens selection offers you in terms of feel, so experiment away. Shooting at night is a rewarding experience, but one that means dealing with lots of errors.
Now that you’ve checked those six photos off your list, there’s an entire mountain of other photos to take, whether it’s getting into architecture, macro, studio photography, or whatever else you can come up with. But by now, hopefully you’ve got your camera set up the way you like it, have exposure and basic framing down, and are starting to feel comfortable in shooting different environments.
Where do you go from here? Well, we haven’t even broached post-processing, which another few guides altogether, and haven’t talked that much about gear. Both are topics the internet loves to obsess over, but neither is critical to getting out and taking photos you’re proud of. The main thing is to push yourself to try new shots, new styles, and experiment with what you’ve got. Oh, and have fun.
