5 free ways to improve your photography

I have been shooting photographs for a fair while know, and I remember the struggles of first starting. I remember wondering why my images where not turning out like all the amazing ones I was seeing on instagram. Do I need to spend thousands of dollars on camera gear, or am I just doing something wrong? In the end camera gear is only a small factor when it comes to shooting good images. Here are 5 easy ways to drastically improve your photography without spending money. Wether you have just brought a camera and are wanting to start producing high quality images or just trying to improve your Iphone images for instagram, these tips will help give your photographs a far more aesthetic look.

Avoiding harsh light
The first thing you need to understand about photography is light. When shooting in basically every situation you are going to want to avoid harsh light. Harsh light is bright light, overly bright light when trying to shoot images makes life very hard. You will have very bright parts to the image along with very dark shadows and your camera is not going to be able to capture good images. Harsh light is very unflattering for portraiture and basically any other type of photography you may be wanting to do. If you are shooting portraits on a very sunny day it would pay to shoot in some shade or anywhere you can find a nice balanced exposure. A balanced exposure means nice even light, even light makes shooting photographs far easier and is far more flattering.

The second image with my MATTE SATURATED Lightroom preset

2. Golden hour and Blue hour

The best time of day to take photographs is either during golden hours or blue hours. Golden hour is the hour after the sun rises or the hour before the sun sets. This means the sun is producing far less harsh light, everything will also be side lighten which is far more flattering. This is a great time to take portraits and landscape photographs. Blue hour is the hour before sunrise and the hour after sunset, Blue hour offers a very defused light meaning you can catch some great evenly exposed images. When shooting landscapes these times of day also mean you can add a colourful sky to your images. Shooting outdoors on a sunny day rarely gets good results. The exception to this is on stormy or very over cast days, when there is a lot of cloud around the light is often very soft meaning you can get excellent results during the day.

At golden our you will get golden side lighting. This can be extremely flattering to a landscape.

Blue hour offers soft colours and even lighting. This shot was shot roughly 45 minutes after sunset.

3. Manual settings

Using manual settings on your camera will give you full control and make a massive difference. Personally I only shoot manual settings and I find it is the best way to get quality images. If you are shooting on your phone you may not be able change most of your settings, but I believe there are apps you can download that let you use the settings manually on some phones. Manual settings might take a bit to learn but once you figure out the basics your images will improve drastically. There are only really 3 main settings you need to get an understanding for when starting out. The shutter speed which controls how fast the image is taken that will also contribute to the amount of light entering your shot. The ISO which controls how sensitive your camera is to light. And finally aperture, Aperture controls the depth of field and again how much light is being let into your camera. Shooting manually is just a juggling act between these 3 major settings, I will be making an in depth post soon about how to shoot manual and all about each setting. It sounds a lot harder than it is and the easiest way I find is to keep your ISO down to the lowest number possible and same with the aperture, then just compensate the exposure by adjusting your shutter speed.

The 3 main settings you need to now. Shutter on the left at 1/160, Aperture at F1.8 and keeping Iso as low as possible at 50.

4. Planning your shots

Planning your images is a massive part of photography, especially when it comes to landscape or travel style images. Some of the images I have shot have involved months of planning and waiting for the right conditions, these images would have not come about with out the planning. If you are thinking of shooting something like a waterfall there can be a lot of planning that can be the difference between getting a great shot or just an average shot. You want to plan to be at your destination when the light and conditions will be good and you will want to avoid crowds. The better your plan the more likely things will work out. Planning portrait and other shoots is also important, being where the light is good is literally half of the challenge that comes with photography. I personally use the Photopills App to plan a lot of my landscape shots, this app shows where the sun will rise/set and at what time. This App is absolutely invaluable when it comes to planning astro shoots, you are able to plan where the milky way or moon will be months in advance. There are also tools to help with exposure, hyperlocal distances and even star trails. I highly recommend the Photopills App.

5. Lightroom app

Once you have shot an image the best way to finish it of and give an aesthetic look is too edit the image. Editing can range from a few basic adjustments like lifting some shadows or adding some contrast too more advanced techniques like exposure blending ect. If you are just starting out I would highly recommend the Lightroom mobile app, the app can be downloaded for free straight onto your phone. Lightroom is a powerful editing program that most professional photographers use often in combination with photoshop. Lightroom is a very easy program to use and is great for doing quick edits while still producing high quality images. One of the greatest features on the Lightroom program is the presets, you are able to save your settings and apply them to any image you want in a matter of a single click. What makes these great is that loads of professional photographers have there own personal presets for sale so that you can simply take a photograph and choose a preset that suits. This is great for people who are after a quick way to take photographs and upload them to instagram or other places without needing to spent hours editing. They are also great for beginning photographers as presets offer a great starting point to an image that can be tweaked to your liking. I myself am in the midst of creating my own set of presets and find them very handy.

The Lightroom App is an amazing tool to simply edit your images. Here i added my Blellow preset to bring out the yellows and blues.

Using these simple tips you can easily improve your photography and produce consistent results. Shooting with good light is the most important thing when it comes to getting good and consistent photographs. Follow these tips as rough guidelines and I think you will see a drastic improvement in your photographs. If you like or found this helpful I would love to hear from you.

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5 FREE ways to radically improve your photography