For this article I traveled to Milan with EasyJet. Concretely, I chose to fly from Barcelona to Milan Malpensa, and from that international airport a quick train ride left me in the middle of the city.
The city was freezing, about 32 degrees Fahrenheit. While I strolled in search of images, I didn’t take my eye off the bars, waiting for the opportune moment to go in, drink a coffee and recuperate my energy. It was a shift of the most pure style of street photography.
Everything started with a: “I want to get the most out of my camera”.
This is one of the phrases that I have heard the most from the mouths of those who attend the photography courses I do with Naturpixel.
Today, cameras have a very ample functions menu. This allows us to decide everything from image quality to playing with scene selection, moving on to white balance, sensitivity and many other things.
The compacts that you carry in the palm of your hand with an infinity of functions end up flustering the photographer and in many cases making our lives more complicated and frustrating our photographic experience.
Reading the manual and learning to get the juice out of the functions is interesting but that alone does not guarantee better photos.
Here I’ll leave you with 20 photography tips – the fruit of my years of experience giving classes to photographers.
1) To learn photography, you have to get out there, take photos and never stop practicing.
2) That said, the theory is important. Putting into practice the concepts you are learning is essential.
3) Using your camera in “P” mode (automatic) isn’t a big deal, plus it allows you to concentrate on more important aspects, such as composition.
4) Simplify and advance step-by-step without rushing, it is important to assimilate and practice concepts as you learn them, it is the best way to retain them and with time, automate them.
5) Learn to look, stimulate your senses and above all, consult the work of other photographers.
6) Always travel with your camera, you never know when you’ll see a decisive moment.
7) Your photography equipment should never get in your way, you should feel comfortable with it. Don’t carry accessories that won’t be useful.
8) In our day-to-day, we have many photographic opportunities, don’t underestimate them, the best photos are the ones we take in places we know well.
9) Travel to a European capital city and dedicate an entire day to photographing it, look for a concrete theme and develop it.
10) Invest in quality lenses, you won’t regret it.
11) It’s better to take a photo and have it turn out badly than to not take it and lose an
opportunity.
12) Get to know the place you travel to, it’s traditions and history are fundamental if you want to photograph the essence of the country and its people
13) “Bad weather, good photos” don’t pass up any opportunity, the worst enemy of a photographer is laziness.
14) Every photographer should be permanently evolving. Don’t get stuck in a rut. Read, study other photographers’ work, try, make mistakes, put don’t ever stop.
15) When travelling, you can photograph a landscape, a city, shoot a close up or a social act, learn to dominate all of these techniques.
16) Learning to compose a photo is essential, in urban environments we have thousands of opportunities, but we must be able to see them.
17) Photography is an art and requires time and dedication.
18) Using a fixed lens is highly recommendable. Fixed lenses are good, nice-looking, and cheap and they’ll help you to better understand composition. If they are also luminous f/1.4 they’ll allow you to realize stupendous defocus effects and you can take photos with low light.
19) Don’t become static, seek out risky angles, move around, walk, free yourself.
20) May photography help you tell and share your life with others.
