My BEST Photography Tips for Intermediate/Advanced Photographers.

I've got no idea what I'm doing this you know what pinch of salt looks like but you can just do that and it changes everything welcome everybody to a channel all about improving your photography well mostly what this this is this is electrolytes Cheers I've just been for a run as per government guidelines I've tried to take the minimum amount of time possible outside which basically means I've run about twice as fast as I'm actually capable of running for my fitness levels so if I start screaming with cramps please um please phone an ambulance don't actually at the moment no that wouldn't go down very well if you're watching this in two years time it's currently the coronavirus lockdown remember that right anyway as I've said a couple of times on this channel before I have pretty much had enough of photography tip list videos so today what I thought I'd do is another one but this one's a little bit different this one is basically my my sort of greatest hits maybe the only hits that I've had to be honest I think in the hundred plus videos that I've done on this channel most of the stuff that I've ever said has been complete nonsense but I think completely by accident I have stumbled across some nuggets of wisdom over the course of all those hours of footage and today what I thought I'd do is condense all the stuff I've said but I think is actually quite good into one video I can maybe announce them like a radio DJ you know I maybe Jimmy was be really she means now I won't do that also there's not ten there's only nine [Music] right this tip I've given that I think is actually quite a good one is that I think the aim should always be to make photos that are about things rather than just off things which is a bit of a strange thing to think about and it's certainly not black and white and I don't mean black and white in terms of photography I mean black and white in terms of theory there's a lot of gray in this basically there's no hard-and-fast definition of what makes a photo of something or what makes a photo about something I just think you should try and make photos more about something than off something I can see you looking at me thinking what the hell's he going on about if you've not see me talk about this before let me try and explain through photos so this is a photo of Lake Bled I think it's a photo of Lake Bled and here is a photo about Lake Bled or certainly more about Lake Bled than the other one and what makes this photo more about Lake Bled is the fact that I feel like I'm in the middle of a story when I look at this image so I get a sense that people visit this island I get a sense that we're in like a calm serene environment because there's a lovely reflection on the lake I get the sense that I'm surrounded by trees because you can see branches in the corner at the frame I get a sense of temperature because of the mist and the autumn leaves and so in general I think this does a much better job of being about something rather than just of something which as I said I think is always the aim with photography another example so this is an ice fishermen in Greenland and I could have for this photo just gone right up tight to him and taking a photo basically filled the frame with his body and through doing that tried to get lots of detail of the I don't see using to the spear thing to get through the ice that could have been the aim with the photo but by doing that you wouldn't have got the sense of scale that you get by me standing much further back and including all of the ice that you see in this photo and by doing that you get much more of a sense of what is going on what the scene is about than if you just saw the fishermen for example you can see that there is no other person for miles around other than me taking the photo but there's no people there's no industry and by showing that you get a much better sense of for example what his life is like and you wouldn't get that like I said if you if you framed it differently if you just got a photo of him and this I think is a photo about him similarly with this one from the same trip this is dogsledding as you can see now if the whip wasn't included in this photo then it would just be a photo of my feet and a person in front of me on a dogsled by including the whip you get a sense of urgency you get the impression that this man maybe owns the dogs you get the impression that maybe he's working you get much more of a sense of what's going on in the frame just by including that whip so yeah having photos that are about things rather than just of things is a bit of a strange thing to wrap your head around but it's certainly something good to aim for also a quick intermission here is three seconds of drone footage to remind us all of what going outside is like okay number two a bit of a strange one again seasoning your photos now when you eat food say you've got a big play of I don't know spaghetti in front of you sometimes it can look the absolute works and just taste what can't blend really and in such situations you might find that adding some salt to your food er a pinch of salt can do it the world of good you can just do that and it changes everything too much of it it's an absolute disaster but just a little bit a pinch can do it the world of good photography I find can be exactly the same and let me explain again with examples so here's a photo from that same Greenland trip that was productive for the sake of this video and as you can see my friend Olynyk is walking towards this iceberg now were he not there the photo would be entirely different I mean it basically be a photo of an iceberg but by putting him there despite the fact that he is a tiny percentage of the overall frame you get a much better sense of story just because you start thinking to yourself what on earth is he doing that and that is the start of curiosity with an image and it changes everything as soon as you have questions about an image and just a little bit of seasoning ie something small in the frame to make you question things can do a photo of the world good here's another example of it me in the Faroe Islands with my big orange jacket on again I'm a tiny part of the frame but you start thinking how on earth did he get their car and a bit of a walk is how I how I got there doesn't always have to be people I mean it works quite well with people in this sense I mean this is another one from Italy with Tom and again if I remove him the photo is not the same it's just a photo of a mountain but as soon as you have a person there you go much better sense of adventure here's an example with some birds so without these birds this is just a photo some mist and a nice lake on a winter's morning with the birds I think at least you get a sense of story again despite the fact that there are a tiny percentage of the frame tip number three is how to take photos faster or just stop missing photos not the first I've shown you so far a lot of those I could have quite easily missed to be honest they were very split-second moments in time that I was just ready to take photos off and all it takes in situations like that is a little bit of pre-planning to make sure that you and your camera are ready so the most important thing is for you to be ready in situations like that and what I try to do is anticipate so quite often for example I will see the birds coming for example I'll see them in the distance and I think oh no I'm not really soaked photo yet and I'll try and track where in the sky they're going and I'll try and work out where they'll be in 20 seconds time when I am ready to take photo and I'll plan to get them in that 20 seconds time a couple of examples of this so this is the Matterhorn in Switzerland and some parachuters paragliders don't know what they're called is that paragliding which one's the one where you like a motorized thing and you've got the triangle above you it doesn't matter I saw these two and thought oh my word I've missed them and then I trapped them in the sky worked out that I would be able to get a shot of them with the Matterhorn it gave me time to work out my focal length and what my settings needed to be and about 15 seconds I saw them I've got a shot than his an example of a bloke on nubra beach in Wales I spotted him down the beach and tried to work out where I'd be able to get a photo of him in 20 30 seconds time that gave me time to adjust my settings and to frame a composition I waited for him to come into the frame but see as far as making sure that you don't miss many shots anticipation is crucially important I also use a custom setting a custom profile in my camera I can flip to where I know settings will broadly be what I'm after and then I'll need to make fewer adjustments than I otherwise would in a setting that wasn't for that so I think I mentioned in the video that was talking about this in but typically I'm at f/4 in this custom profile just because that's plenty bright enough and I'll know that I'll be able to get pretty much all of my subject pretty much all of the time in focus I'll have my shutter speed set to 200 a second which is usually plenty fast enough to get even moving subjects sharp and I'll be an auto ISO now if I'm in really bright scenes than a two hundredth of a second shutter speed sometimes won't be fast enough to get a properly exposed image but if that's the case all I need to do is make some quick adjustments on the back dial of my camera to bring down the exposure quicken the shutter speed and I'm good to go that is a lot less adjustment than I'd otherwise have to make if I was just in aperture priority and I've been shooting something else previously so having a custom profile set up on my camera for this is a really big deal that has helped me stop missing as many photos as I otherwise would number four jigsaw I'm going mad at home to be honest so this is what I spoke about just a few weeks ago actually and it was about a tip that somebody gave me right at the start of my photography journey while I was in New Zealand taking photos of a tree in wanaka which has sadly been destroyed not destroyed someone has cut the branch off it which is a horrific thing to do that thing is like such an icon for New Zealand and someone's just trying to destroy it for seemingly no reason whatsoever horrible anyway a stranger told me that his number one tip for photography was just stop looking for completed jigsaw puzzles and instead just look for individual jigsaw pieces so to demonstrate this here is a photo of Tom in Slovenia now it's rare as photographers I find that you come across a scene that is just a perfect photograph more often you come across bits of what you think will make a perfect photograph and then it's your job to try and figure out how to make them a photograph this is a good example of it you've got the mountains you've got the river you've got the very slightly autumnal trees and you've got Tom putting all those things together was my job afternoon and as soon as I have those individual pieces in my mind I could try and work out how to piece them together to create a photo if you can't stop me just looking for what looks like a photo in front of your eyes you're unlikely to find as much stuff as if you're willing to kind of manipulate bits and pieces and walk around trying to find how to slop each individual item together number five why you should shoot with JPEGs now if you've been around photography blogs or in photography videos like this you have probably heard that is good to shoot raw because those files and much more manipulatable that's definitely not a word RAW files basically are uncompressed data so you can do a lot more with RAW files than you can with compressed JPEGs there's just not as much information in a JPEG to help you manipulate that JPEG so that you can make it look how you want it to look the trouble is though if you're not that experienced with photo editing you can have a raw file and all of a sudden you start doing splits with the sliders in Lightroom and before you know it you photo turn looks absolutely disgusting shooting raw plus JPEG means that you can use the JPEG as a guide for how you want to start editing your RAW files and I find it can be a really good exercise to try and edit your roars to look like the JPEGs that your camera has produced because I find once you do that well then you're probably competent enough to start editing of your own accord without the need for a a guide JPEG but until that's the case having a JPEG that you can use as a guide is a really useful thing I think and in that video that I talked about this in I'll show you how in Lightroom you can set up the JPEG as a reference image and you can edit them side-by-side number six is exercise not that kind of exercise so I find one of the best photography practices to be going out with a single lens preferably a prime if you have one and trying to find images at just that one focal length I find giving yourself restrictions like that really helps hone your concentration and work out what you can get in a frame but also what you're not able to get in a frame and that just thinking about compositions much more intensely I find to be a really good exercise and a way to improve your composition skills so yeah every now and then I like to get out with either a twenty five mil which is a full frame equivalent of 50 ml or maybe my little 15 mil which is a thirty male full frame equivalent I like to go out with those lenses and just those lenses and try and work out how to get photos with those and even if I can't it's not the end of the world it's just a practice and I'll have learnt things by at least trying to get photos at those focal lengths if you haven't got a prime just use a zoom and just keep it to one focal length [Music] assault everywhere now tip number seven is Goldenhar or not governor not always having to shoot in Goldeneye so a lot of photography advice seems to suggest that you can only really get photos in good light now good light is one thing to take photo of it's one element of a story that can help to make a good photo but it's by no means the only element that you can take photos of to make a story and I've got lots of birds that I'm proud of that have been taken at Golden Hour but they're not always the defining feature of the photo and to be honest I find that like anything in life if you see too much of something you'll get bored of it and I have certainly got to that point with Golden Arrow photography any image where the light the Golden Hour light is the star of the show in that image to be honest I've got to a point where I personally find it cliche more often than not I find it boring and if I see it on Instagram it's the sort of thing that I'll scroll past without any second thought light or good light is one potential subject there are plenty of other things to take photos off and if you take too many of your photos in golden air or you look at too many photos of golden hair you might find that you end up the same as me just bored of those kinds of photos number eight is back button focusing the importance of backburn focusing now I think focusing and taking a photo should be treated as two separate things and chances are that your camera by default treats them as pretty much the same thing I mean you're half pressure shutter button to focus and then you'll fully press it to take photo I think by using but button focusing and separating those two things you get lots of advantages primarily that you don't have to worry about taking accidental photos and you can focus recompose and then take a photo which for me and my style of photography is invaluable so yeah lots more in this video up here but if you've never tried back button focusing give it a go I've never met anyone who hasn't really liked it I mean it takes an adjustment but it changed the way I take photos for the better definitely and number 9 finally well what I called I think the photography paradox or something like that and basically what that is is well it's about not listening to photography tips so the trouble with photography is that I don't necessarily think you can learn it actually that's not true you can learn photography or you can learn to take photos in the same way that the people take photos for example if you employ all of the tips that I've spoken about today you'll probably end up working in a more similar manner to how I work thing is who's to say that I'm doing it the right way because photography is an art and therefore in theory there is no right way so by all means experiment with the tips that you come across in this video and other videos and blogs in wherever experiment with them but keep in mind that it doesn't mean that you won't find a better way to do things of your own accord because like I said there is no right way there's no wrong way and keeping that in mind ultimately will be beneficial to your process and probably if photos as well ultimately I've not got a clue what I'm talking about nor is anyone else that you'll listen to we're all just muddling along trying to work out how we want to take photos and if you don't want it to there's no reason that that should impact how you take photos because like I said you might find your own way which could be immeasurably better than what anyone else has told you previously so yeah that's that thank you very much for watching I hope you stay in saying indoors and I'll see you soon Cheers [Music]

Channel: James Popsys

Views: 90,200

Rating: 4.9416385 out of 5

Keywords: photography, how to, photography tips, photography tips for beginners, understanding your camera, learn photography, photo editing, james popsys, photo tips, james popsys landscape photography, better photos, landscape photography tips

Id: FffEPQqGDPc

Length: 17min 44sec (1064 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 29 2020