Simple Tips to Quickly Improve Your Photography

At Learn Photography Company we always say that our interactive photography courses (in person AND online!) are the best way to learn. But really, these are just the start of your photographic journey. Here are the top 4 things you can do that will help your photography to improve almost immediately!

Tip 1: Practice

Practice is the biggest contributor to improvement of your photography! That’s why we always design our classes to be super duper hands-on. Not only do you receive lots of practice on your camera but you are constantly feeling more comfortable with either aperture priority or manual mode (a must for capturing what you see).

Great photographs are the capture of a moment. When you learn to use your camera naturally, we guarantee you better photographs as well as having more fun.

Practice is the #1 condition for improving your photography.

Tip 2: Predict the Photograph

Like the point above, practice provides the ability for you to see potential photographs. A lot of the time when we take our best photographs, we wait between 10-40 seconds until everything lines up (or people get out of the way!). Practice allows us to predict what a good shot should be, and where to stand.

In addition, prediction allows us to pre-set our ISO, focus point selection and also any over or underexposure. The end result? Your picture literally takes less than 1 second but because everything was already predicted and set you can the shot just the way you want!

This is amazing for street photography when you want to be as subtle as possible

Tip 3: AF-C

One of the first things that we go through in our Digital II – Action & Composition photography class is the use of the AF-C (or AI-Servo for you Canon photography people).

You can try it at home too. It’s one of my all time favourite tricks for getting really good shots on the go. Remember the point above about setting your ISO, focus point and under/over exposure? This point focuses right in with that (get the pun?).

Having your camera on constant focus allows you to have a degree of flexibility. Think about a person walking towards you, or you walking by something. AF-C will focus hunt quickly and be able to get the shot! Is it perfect? Of course not and every lens is slightly different but try a few rounds with AF-C (or AI-Servo) and it’s pretty addictive.

In fact it’s what we have on the camera 99% of the time. The only time we use single point static focus anymore is for things that don’t move too fast (think landscapes, rocks, food)…

Tip 4: Watch Your Composition

Ever been to Paris? If you have you will have seen the Eiffel Tower SOMEWHERE on your travels. While you may not have actually been there you will have seen it from a distance.

Have you ever noticed that when you round a corner and tourists see the Eiffel Tower they immediately take a photograph? It might be the smallest Eiffel Tower in a photograph ever but most people tend to take a photo the minute it comes into view whether or not it’s a good composition or not (and trust me, most times it is not).

This is where we tend to see a lot of people at the beginning of the journey – taking a photo of something that is novel vs taking something that is beautiful.

This photograph here from Hong Kong, what do you notice? It’s almost 100% perfectly centred. And because nobody was going past, I was able to take my time. Imagine it was even slightly off – think it would look as good? Probably not.

This photograph here from Hong Kong, what do you notice? It’s almost 100% perfectly centred. And because nobody was going past, I was able to take my time. Imagine it was even slightly off – think it would look as good? Probably not.

Or this picture from Yellowstone. Do you notice how straight the lines are and perfectly horizontal? This is the key point in beauty of this particular photograph.

Take your time, line up the shot, predict and then fire.

Now it’s your turn! Good luck out there!