3 EASY PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS every BEGINNER should know
big thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this
week's video so in this video I'm going to give you three really simple tips that will
give you consistently better photos [Music] morning everybody fantastic to see you all again
so there are two things in photography one is the technical aspect where you want to get everything
technically good you want to get the exposure right the Focus right that's really important
but the second thing and a lot of people forget about this is it's going to be aesthetically
good so the composition is going to be right and that's what I'm going to talk about in
this video and I'm going to give you three actionable things that will make a difference
straight away to your photography I promise so we're going to start with focal length and how
important focal length is pretty much everyone that gets a camera for the first time gets a
lens a bit like this 24 to 70 millimeter lens and you quite often when you get this lens shoot
at 24 millimeters or The Wider part of it because you think landscape photography is all about just
getting everything in and getting this amazing big scene in and that's great you can get some great
results but also you can get a lot of shots like this one here and this was a shot that I took a
long time ago and I thought this was brilliant but you can see there's a big area at
the bottom here that's not being used um the clouds are nice but there's not
a lot of focal point in it and the most important thing in photography is Simplicity
and drawing the the viewer into that simplicity and this image and a lot of images that I used
to take at that wider end just didn't have that but by zooming in a little bit by going to the
70 millimeter end you can make photography a lot easier if you think about it you're taking that
whole scene in and you've got a sort of arrange composition is arranging these elements in that
scene the more you have in the more elements you've got to arrange so the tighter you go in the
more you zoom in the more you're taking away a lot of those elements you've got to arrange and you're
focusing in and making the image simpler I'm going to give you some examples so this one you can just
straight away we can go into it and crop it and make this a much better photo so if we just crop
out a lot of the sky already it's looking better I've got a bit of a focus point there might maybe
even crop out that bit and we could probably have that in couldn't we so here now this is already
a much much better photo you know you can see this hill here you've got a nice diagonal line
I'm not saying that wide angle images aren't great so you know I've taken lots of great wide
angle images like this one here but it's a lot lot more difficult here I've got to think really
careful about this foreground I've got to think about this in the background these Stacks I've
got to think what's at the side because I've got a wider angle lens this was 40 millimeters so it's
including a locked um and it's just generally a lot more difficult you've got to think about focus
stacking quite often again with this one there's so much to think about this image it seems simple
it looks simple when you look at it but it was really difficult to take um and this is an example
of when I was getting a little bit better at wide angle shots but still I feel like I've gone just
too wide so again I can crop in I think and get rid of some of this and go to about here and yeah
this is already a better shot um you know I've not got a lot of wasted space in the corner here I've
got these rocks drawing your eye in so generally it's better to go and zoom in a bit again this
was a shot I took about 15 years ago and I thought this rock was really interesting at the time and
I see a lot of shots like this when I've judged competitions or when I'm helping people out that
are beginners I see a lot of shots like this where there's a lot of dead space again on this shot if
we just zoom in on this bit here we can get a shot like this which I think is much more powerful it's
simpler you know exactly what you're looking at this Ridge line and this Lake in the background
so try to simplify your images is is really important again another example here here we've
got a wide scene here and the problem is with a wide angle lens is that you're not just getting
more ground more elements in the scene but you're often getting more sky in and if the sky is a bit
boring like this then it's not great but just by zooming in a little bit um and and looking at this
shot here then this is a bit better and then I've zoomed in and gone portrait and taken this shot
and it just focuses the mind it makes the whole thing simpler so I'm not saying that every shot
needs to be zoomed in of course it doesn't there's a time for wide angle but if you're looking to
improve your photography then that's the first step that I'd say is just think about going to
the 70 millimeter end now out of Interest I'll just show you now some photos that I've taken
that are between 50 and 100 millimeters [Music] okay [Music] onto the second point and the second point
is something that um I've done myself so many times and I've talked about this before but
it's just don't put your camera on a tripod when you arrive at a location the best thing to do is
just sit down have an apple take everything in um but even then don't get your tripod out the
tripod should be the very very very last thing that you get out so get your camera and just walk
around and take shots and if you find something so first I got this scene here I was I was at this
location and I was thinking well this is okay a lot of people take this shot it's a nice shot but
there must be a better shot so rather than just putting my camera on my tripod and down I took my
camera and started to go around and I I sound this angle here so I walk down to these marshes and
found this angle and I almost made the mistake of setting my tripod up and doing this and I thought
oh no what I'll do is I'll just go a little bit closer and see if I can find anything else so then
I got to this shot here but I felt like that these grasses and this um tree were just a little
little bit too much in the line so um I tried to move around a little bit I couldn't and then
eventually I went a bit closer and moved around um and I got this shot here which was the final image
but that took a lot of sort of maneuvering like this getting my foot wet a little bit and going
up and down it just makes such a big difference I can promise you that if if you don't put your
camera on the tripod to begin with it will really improve your photography I promise okay on to the
third point and for that I've just got to go to this shot here and this shot was in the langdale's
and I Was preparing this video and I was going to show you this shot and I was going to show it in
different light but then I thought I'll make a model I don't know why I thought that so my son
helped me and we made a model of this which is quite a big model so as you can see this is
my model of of that scene and I thought it'd be good to do this because what I could show
you is I could show you like now can you see straight on that um that it's quite flat you
know you don't get a lot of modeling of the of the hillside very much but if I move it to
the side and shoot from that direction this way you can see now from this angle how much better
it is so you can see that there's modeling here um and it just looks a lot better basically
it's a big model just to demonstrate that point it's quite good actually um and it's it's
pretty good so this is the langdale's by the way um that's Harrison Harrison um stickle pretty good
thanks Sam so that is the scene you can see I've got this angle of light coming from the side and
light's so important I can't stress how important it is in photography if you can get the light
right then you're gonna get a miles better shot um and that you know thinking about shooting
into the light having the light coming from the sides rather from behind you and again this
isn't a rule this is generally what I do then you can get shots that are very different
so this was with the light slightly behind me of Yosemite this was the light coming
in from the side and back really and you can see just the difference that makes
to the scene it's it's huge it's so huge um again this is a good example so this was light
in Yosemite again where the light was it was sort of coming over my shoulder really and you can
see that man I don't think this is great because um it's sort of these trees sort of mix with um
half down in the background but you can see again it's okay it's sort of okay this but I feel like
the better shot was shot in the other direction when I'm shooting directly into the soil I get
something really dramatic it makes such a big difference that was One Direction that was the
other they were taking it almost the same time um and then this this shot I think
will work better when the sun went down um and we just had that sort of flatter light
so this was when the sun was almost gone off the trees compared with this one but light makes
such a big difference um again I'll just show you one more example here I've shown this before
but it's such a good example this was when the light was coming a little bit behind me and
as the light was going over to the left and set in then it produced this shot here which was much
better this was literally about an hour later and it made such a big difference so definitely think
about those three points before I go I'm going to announce the winner of the competition for the
print from last week before before I do that I just want to say thanks to this week's sponsor
and that is Squarespace now if you're looking when you've got some great shots and you've you
know started photography to share them with your friends and family or you're starting to run a
business you want to set up an online store then Squarespace is a fantastic platform I use them
all the time for my whole business I've used them for six years now I think and they've
just been amazing they've got 24 7 support and I can't recommend them enough so if you're
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Nigel you can get 10 off or use offer code Nigel okay onto the print winner so the print winner
from my spirit of Lusk entire series of films um was taken from all the comments that were um
Amazing by the way I just couldn't believe them but I picked a comment to win a print an A2 print
and that comment is from Kim Munch and now I did this randomly so um you're just going to trust
me on that I just scroll through them and then um point in my pen at the screen so Kim if you
contact me through my website I make sure that I get that print sent to you okay thanks ever
so much for watching I'm off to photograph some birds now I've got a 600 millimeter lens
I'm going to improve my bird photography I've got a weekend of doing that um with the
amazing Rachel Bixby and um there's gonna be a film all about that as well thanks ever
so much for watching until next Sunday bye [Music]
