Which Way Round

[smudge]

When starting out would you put more emphasis on taking technically good photo's of easy subjects, or work on composition and interesting photo's and let the technical aspect develop.

I spent an hour or so arranging three vases on my coffee table and shooting them from the same spot using different lenses and apertures and ISO etc and comparing them. As I always do I asked the wife what she thought, she said, that there was a great sunset outside I should shoot that. I told her she didn't know what she was on about and retired to the P.C.

Thinking afterwards having looked at the 50th shot of the vases, I wished I'd shot the sunset. Which way round do you approach your learning curve.

[Jon]

There's no reason you can't do both. You could have spent the same time working the sunset from the same spot using different lenses and apertures and ISO etc and comparing them and left the vases for a really lousy day.

[smudge]

TIME.. and really I was just wondering if one should precede the other I suppose.

[ChrisN]

Honestly, I would haev shot the sunset.

The goal of photography is to end up with an image to be proud to display to people.
Would you have accomplished that with a few pictures of a vase or a few pictures of the sun setting.

You might as well have something beautiful to look at while learning the ins and outs.

Oh, and always trust a womens intuition.... :lol:

[Scottes]

Well, I shoot a lot of birds, and some wildlife. My steps to photographing birds - developed over the course of months - went like this:

1) Find a bird
2) Get it in focus & shoot.
3) Find a bird that's closer.
4) Get it in focus & shoot.
5) Find a bird that is close enough to be recognizable in the frame, finally.
6) Get it in focus & shoot.
--- Steps 1-6 have about 2 weeks between them, so this was months of shooting.
7) Take thousands of shots like #5. Thousands.
--- Several more months.
8) Now work on getting the eye in focus.
--- A couple more months.
9) Realize that those thousands of shots have *no* composition whatsoever, so start working on composition.
--- Several more months.
10) Realize that these hundreds of finally well-composed shots are boring since the birds are just sitting there as a portrait. So work on shooting birds when they're actually *doing* something.
11) Realize that I don't have the patience to wait 3 hours (or even 5 minutes) for a bird to do something, so go back to #10 and be happy.
12) Learn to tell a plausible story, so that when I get a bird doing something interesting I can spin a tale of climbing mountains and crawling through muck for hours to get the shot.
:)


Seriously though, fo me it was a continually moving realization that the last composition wasn't so great, so I'd think a little more for the next shot. I don't think - for me at least - that spending a lot of time on thinking composition is wise for the beginner. There's too much going on, too many settings, etc, etc.

Don't get me wrong - composition is extremely important to a good photo. But as you go along you'll develop an eye for it, and it will become natural and not forced. If you force the composition you'll end up with "the rule of thirds" every time. While that's better than no composition at all it's not the only way to go. And you'll miss a lot of things, like leading lines and balance and color harmony and so on and on and on.

Shoot now, realize what you did wrong and how it could have been better, and think a little more next time. Save the vases for a rainy day.


This is just my opinion and it comes from shooting wildlife where you don't always have the best chance to compose properly. If your goal is to shoot portraits or landscapes then composition will be much more important to you, since a landscape without composition is probably going to look like crap. Yet a wild bald eagle without composition is still a wild bald eagle and quite a rush in it's own right.

[Jon]

I think what it comes down to is that you'll learn more if you find something you want to photograph, and really work that situation than if you take some text-book exercise that doesn't do anything for you otherwise. That's what I was trying to say above - photograph what you're interested in, and really beat it to death. You'll enjoy it more, be more likely to really see what works and doesn't (for you), and learn more for the next time.

[robertwgross]

...
12) Learn to tell a plausible story, so that when I get a bird doing something interesting I can spin a tale of climbing mountains and crawling through muck for hours to get the shot.
...


In August, I was ascending Mount Whitney and carrying my camera gear (of course). After starting at 1:30 a.m., I had reached up to almost 14,000 feet. Just then, an American Pika popped out of its burrow. Needless to say, I had my camera out and had it perfectly captured on about five frames of film within a minute. One was easily the best shot of a Pika that I had ever gotten in 25 years. After I finished the trip, I was showing some big prints of the little critter to some friends.

I said. "... and here is a shot of the American Pika, shot at about 14,000 feet elevation on the Mount Whitney Trail."

<silence>

Then somebody said, "Have you got any grizzly bears?"

Geez...

---Bob Gross---

[IndyJeff]

14,000 feet? Damn Bob could you see your house from there?

[aam1234]

What Scottes said is so true.

I might add that as a noob, when I see something interesting, all I've read and all the info in the brain just disappear.
With practice one would relax a little and start thinking.

(still a noob btw)

[robertwgross]

14,000 feet? darn Bob could you see your house from there?

My house? No. But I could see almost to Belmondo's house. His house has a flashing Canon sign in the window next to the Budweiser sign.

It's pretty neat up there. The sky is rather clear because most of the haze is below you. You look up and the sky is near-black.

---Bob Gross---

[Scottes]

I might add that as a noob, when I see something interesting, all I've read and all the info in the brain just disappear.

Isn't that amazing? You look at the shot and say "I shoulda done this or that, just like the book said!" And the next time around it sticks.


I do computers for a living and of course have a few certifications. There seem to be three ways to achieve a cert: read a lot, read some and practice, or read a little and implement it in real life. When it comes to a job, the guys who did it the first way generally know nothing, the ones who went the second way don't know much but might have hope, and the third seems to generate the most knowledgable certificate holders.

The funny thing is the scores generally reflect the study method, but backwards. The readers get the highest scores but know the least. Go figure.

[smudge]

It seems my chosen method is not the way most of you guy's would go.
I started taking phots of things I like, but quickly became dissapointed with the results, once I got past the Wow look at the quality of that, stage.

I read and then read some more, but I find the way it sticks is when I can, very slowly, go through the motons and see the results. At this stage that is all too much for me out on the ground. I've tried and the day I feel is wasted, see 'Trafalgar Square film crew' :cry:

Indoors with the vase scenario I can take 50 shots at varying settings, nothing moves the light is constant and I can say " ok so now I see the advantage of f1.8 in low light. " or " I see with this aperture my increased DOP means that all three vases are now in focus" etc etc. I just think that next time I go out I will have seen almost my own lab results prior and may be better armed than taking hundreds of duffers and accidently getting one good one.

Ultimately I think it depends on your personality, which you prefer. I'm a slowly slowly plodder so I'll continue with the controled experiments and occasionally test the findings on the public. BEWARE :x

[Moppie]

Im still in the early learning phase, and I use a combination of methods posted above.

I can sit with my camera and just fill the CF card with photos of the same thing useing as many differnt settings as I can possibly think of.
Iv done it with everything from a sunset to a bunch of roses. Iv even turned the camera and a reading light on myself and experimented with some shiloettes.
But I also read, see what other people have done, ask the odd random question if its in a forum, then go out and try the same thing useing the knowledge Iv gained.

Useing both methods means I won't get bored (I only shoot when I want to anyway) and it gives me what I hope is a well rounded general photographic education.

[12345Michael54321]

When starting out would you put more emphasis on taking technically good photo's of easy subjects, or work on composition and interesting photo's and let the technical aspect develop.

Well, when learning piano, one is generally advised to learn the technical aspects of how to play (scales, musical notation, etc.), before concentrating on developing a personal style or composing.

When learning to write, one is generally advised to learn the technical aspects of spelling, grammar, etc., before concentrating on establishing a literary voice.

When learning about architecture, one is generally advised to learn the technical aspects of how buildings are constructed, before turning one's attention to designing unique and original creations of one's own.

In short, I believe that in photography, one should first be solid on the fundamentals of the craft of photography - exposure, focus, depth of field, the relationship between ISO/shutter speed/aperture, etc. The notion that it's best to worry about composition and interesting subject, and somehow an understanding of the technical part will just sort of appear, isn't convincing to me.

Mind you, exceptions always exist. But they're just that - exceptions.

Nor do I see anything wrong with trying to improve one's eye even while learning the technical basics. It's not like it's purely an either/or situation.

I would add that most people who take pictures care little for technical understanding, much less technical perfection. The parent who snaps a picture of her child doing something cute usually doesn't have any interest in whether the picture would have been better had she opted for a larger aperture, so as to blur a distracting background. Nor does she have any interest in the fact that those harsh shadows could have been avoided had she opted for natural light or an off-camera flash, instead of her camera's built-in flash. No, all she cares about is that it's a picture of her little one, doing something cute.

There's a difference between being a snapshooter, who wants to take pictures of interesting things, and a photographer, who wants to make interesting pictures. I don't look down upon the snapshooter; I simply choose to approach photography from a different perspective than his, and have somewhat different aims and goals than he does.

[aam1234]

Noticed that just taking photos is very satisfying exercise, regardless of results. The sound of the shutter, the (little) thinking before snapping away is just too much fun.