Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 02:32:08 PM

Login with username, password and session length

How do you take a good photo?

Started by Neil, August 17, 2010, 02:12:25 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Neil

What basic rules do you follow when taking photos, give me some tips and stuff please.

Ginyard

Stick them under your jumper and run like fuck.

El Unicornio, mang

#2
I'm not a photography expert but I always found that lighting was one of the most important aspects, at least with black and white pics. How the light source creates shapes and shadows and drama in the picture.

NoSleep

Quote from: Neil on August 17, 2010, 02:12:25 AM
What basic rules do you follow when taking photos, give me some tips and stuff please.

Taking lots of photos is helpful. You never know what might have worked in hindsight. It's like the editing process after the improvisation of the shooting (assuming your shoot was out in the field, as opposed to a set).

Quote from: NoSleep on August 17, 2010, 09:12:07 AM
Taking lots of photos is helpful.

At first. Then it gets daunting when you have to cut them down and edit them. I took 650 the other day. Would have been lot more but I only had 6GB of memory cards on me, so was discarding on the fly. Well probably most of them were of a marathon, where there was a bit of a need to spray and pray at times. First run through at home, I probably deleted a third. After that I compare similar photos and try to just keep the best.

mook

what image are you trying to capture is the first question you need to ask. the second is probably, why do i want to do this.

Dusty Gozongas

Composition-wise, the rule of thirds generally gives pleasing results.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds

Shoulders?-Stomach!

^that

The source and direction of light are important as they can make or break a photo.

And try and discover what sort of photos your camera tends to produce naturally good results for and which don't work as well.

And if you find a good object or scene to take a photo of, take multiple to experiment, and make a note for each. That will over time help you filter out what doesn't work.

Milo

This is a surprisingly difficult question. I can't really find any definite rules that decide whether or not I like one of my photos. I just operate on what looks good to me.

Ignatius_S

I'd have a look online as there're some good guides out there – and rather fittingly, there's visual examples of why doing something actually works. Kodak always used to have some nice pointers.

Personally, I'm rather inclined with what NoSleep said – I certainly found this the case when I really started to enjoy photography. I'm not sure if using an analogue camera helped or not – although I was taking less that I had a digital camera, it probably made me take more that counted. The one I used was a Lomo LC-A, although it was a bit hit and miss to begin with (I guess that one-third of shots were no good), very soon, pretty much everyone was a winner and most of the time, I was thinking about it.

A couple of things I would suggest is:

Remove as much unnecessary background as possible.
Get in as close as you can.
Flash isn't just for outdoors and be aware of it's strength/effective distance.


Milo

Having only one-third of shots being no good is an extremely high hit rate.

Ignatius_S

Hmm, I guess me being a cheapskate and regretting a single wasted exposure made me think that was pretty awful!

Of course, it might be that I have very low standards when it comes to thinking a photo is acceptable!

NoSleep

There seem to be words missing from your previous post, ignatius. Are you physically leaning toward my post, or are you inclined to disagree with it?

Ignatius_S

Quote from: NoSleep on August 18, 2010, 04:06:07 PM
There seem to be words missing from your previous post, ignatius. Are you physically leaning toward my post, or are you inclined to disagree with it?
I don't think there were words missing, but it was quite gibbering. So I'll try again:

Personally, I'm rather inclined towards what NoSleep said – I certainly found taking lots of pictures helped when I really started to enjoy photography. I'm not sure if using an analogue camera helped or not, but I suspect it did – although I was taking lots of pictures, the number was far less than if I was using digital media, so I probably had to make each shot count a little more. That said, I was experimenting a lot and shooting from the hip - I think just getting feel for the device you're using counts for an awful lot – this certainly was the case with this camera and I would say I had a gut feeling whether something was going to work.

The one I used was a Lomo LC-A, although it was a bit hit and miss to begin with (I guess that one-third of shots were no good), very soon, pretty much everyone was a winner (well, I liked it).



mcbpete

Quote from: Milo on August 18, 2010, 02:59:11 PM
Having only one-third of shots being no good is an extremely high hit rate.
Yeah that's a pretty high hit rate. It's probably as I'm on digital so it doesn't really matter how many duplicate shots I take, but my hit rate for a decent photo is about 1 in 8 ~ 1 in 10.

sproggy

Depends what is meant by 'good'

One you like personally or one that other people will go 'wow!' and pay money for?

I've got loads of the former but very few of the latter, though the former give me much more pleasure.