The first few days with a camera feel wonderful, and then something strange begins to happen: frustration kicks in. One image will be crisp and well composed, whereas the next will look flat, too dark, or poorly framed, and you may not know why. For beginners, this inconsistency is perhaps the toughest challenge in the early phases of photography. The issue isn’t typically lack of ability, but often, a lack of focus in practice. If every walk becomes a haphazard combination of portraits, windows, streets, pets, trees, and half-understood experiments with the camera’s buttons, then you have little to build upon. Intention, on the other hand, changes that. The goal isn’t to stumble upon a great shot, but to end every short session with one small goal in mind, looking for light placement, a straight horizon, or exploring how distance influences composition.
Begin by over-restricting yourself. Say you want to go for a 15-minute walk, but you decide to focus on one object and one technical point. You may shoot just doorways, and consider just exposure values. Or only coffee cups in front of a window, and look only at how shadows fall in each shot. Now each picture doesn’t have to be good. You aren’t hunting for masterpieces, you are learning mastery. When each shot is made, pause and think about what your goal was. Was it the details, the shapes, the light or shadow, or the background-to-foreground contrast? That question helps tie the settings in the camera to the results seen. Without that link, it’s simple to shoot and keep calling it “practice” when it’s actually just blind repetition.
One of the most common problems in the early stages is a lack of restraint over one’s experimentation. You’ll fire off a photo, move a few feet, change your angle, try a different exposure, zoom, change your posture, try again, and so on. If you notice that the second photo is better than the first one, you don’t know what caused the difference. The answer lies in experimenting with only one thing at a time. Shoot the same object from the same location three times with only changes in exposure, then shoot from only three different distances while using the same exposure settings, then try three different frames but the same spot and exposure.
This helps develop a clear understanding of which change caused which effects. Another early mistake is relying upon your camera’s LCD display when you are in bright light. Your picture might look fine outside, but you can discover a disappointment when you look back at it indoors. Get used to looking at each picture and ask yourself, is my subject sharp enough? Are any important areas blown out with highlights? Are there distracting elements on the sides of the frame?
If you feel stuck, it is better to stop than to drag out a practice session. Reduce the scope of the experiment. Try practicing composition by photographing only one object on a plain background. If you can’t seem to hold focus, stop trying to shoot moving subjects and shoot a still object like a mug or a chair, or a plant in front of a window. If your images look dull, shift your attention from subjects to just light and try shooting an object five times at different times of the day. The frustration that we often feel is often the result of experimenting at too large a scale. It is simpler to discover what we are struggling with with smaller, more manageable exercises than with a grand, overly ambitious experiment. Another helpful habit is to review your images with one specific question in mind rather than with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. Ask yourself: Does this photo communicate my perception of the scene? If not, the gap between perception and result becomes your next practice.
One approach for beginning students is the 15-minute practice. First, spend three minutes deciding on just one focus for the experiment. Then spend eight minutes trying a small series of shots, and stop to consider what happens when you move, change exposure, or simplify the frame. Use the final four minutes of the 15 minutes to consider the results, comparing the photos to one another, not to select a winner, but to note what you learned and what didn’t work. The short practice helps create a rhythm of observation, making, comparison, and correction. This sort of focused practice will help shift one’s view of photography from one of discovery to one of observation.
Photographs don’t improve from doing more, but from seeing something clearly and observing it with an eye to improvement for long enough that the subject is recognized in your environment. A puddle after a storm, rising vapor from your coffee, the golden light in late afternoon over a brick wall, the expression of a face as it peers into a window, any of those things can become the subject of an exercise, if we stop viewing every outing as a test. The more specific you become with your attention, the more you will become with your camera’s capabilities, and the more your photos will stop being random and instead feel intentional and repeatable.
