Mistakes to avoid when starting your Photography Journey
During the Pandemic I picked up a mirrorless camera and started doing Landscape photography as a hobby. It has been a fun 2 years in this Journey. But looking back in this short period there are some things I wish I had done better or done sooner. These tips are for a hobbyist photographer who wants to become better at this craft.
Before you start going out and taking pictures understand your camera settings completely. I got my Fuji XT200 on a Saturday from Sammys camera and the next day I was out at the nearyby beach taking pictures using the landscape program mode. It was fun but here is the pitfall I encountered. That Sunday the sunrise was glorious and I got some wonderful pictures. I was convinced that I was a natural and did not bother using any other setting for a long time
Go Manual as soon as possible. Program settings like Aperture or Shutter priority are great and they are vital for certain types of Photography. But manual mode helps your understand the trinity of Photography (Shutter speed, ISO and Aperture) faster and that will help you become better faster.
Get a good kit lenss with your camera. A kit lens is a starter lens that comes with your camera. It is normally cheap and comes as a Zoom lens with a variable aperture. for Example my kit lens was the 15 to 45 mm F 3.5 to 5.6. What that means is that at 45 mm the widest aperture i had was 5.6. That is fine. It will help you understand Apertures and focal lenghts faster than if you are using a Prime lens.
Get a Manual prime as your next lense. People normally discount manual lenses since they are difficult to focus. But once you learn to do that you can pretty much set it and forget it. This is something that will work great for a street photogprahyy use case. The other advantage is that once you go manual you will be forced to rely on your skills and the tools in your camer a like highlight alerts etc and in the longer run it will make you become a better photograppher.
Stop going down You tube gear review rabbit holes. I do this all the time. I keep watching lens review videos after another and in general wasting my time. There are some wonderful content creators out there who take time to talk about composition and techniques. Watch them but do not waste your time on gear reviews. The best camera you need is the one you have on hand right now.
Get out and shoot more. I have found that taking pictures is a wonderful relaxing experience most of the time. Street photography is the one area where that is not true for me. But apart from that the more you go out and shoot the more you will get better.
Do not pigeon hole your selves into on genre of photography. I got interested in photogpraby because of some great landscape photography videos. So for a long time I did only long exposure landscape photographs. Looking back I should have been experimenting more.
Do this for you. If you are doing this for the dopamine hit of a Instagram then trust me this willl be a short phase. When I started I had dreams of becoming the next Peter Mckinnon. After a few months I realized that the end goal does not matter. On a lighter note I am also not that good. But it has been my realization that it is the journey that matters and not the destination.
Over the last couple of years this has been a wonderfuly fulfilling journey and one that looks set to continue for some time. If you are in the same boat as me I would love to hear from you on what mistakes you made and how you corrected them.
