Stuff ALL Beginner Photographers should know!

a big thank you to squarespace for sponsoring this week's video if you need a website or a domain go to squarespace.com forward slash james for 10 off your first purchase hi everybody and uh welcome to clean craftsman here in wales where the forecast had absolutely nothing to do with rain but it's raining so that's wales for you anyway my plan a today was to do a 10 photos from that's why i initially thought i'd i don't want to sit on that now it's soaking wet yeah 10 photos from but these aren't the conditions that i was hoping for for a 10 photo front from here so what i thought i'd do instead is run through a list of things photography things midges that i've learned over the past few years i think every photographer learns these eventually but i thought if i can save you some time by going through them in the space of a few minutes then um well hopefully that's useful and hopefully i don't get too wet in the process and hopefully i don't get bitten by too many midges right [Music] okay so thing number one is camera gear all of it is compromised in some way now if you watch as much youtube as i do you might have seen titles such as is this the perfect camera is this my perfect lens and the answer to that i can say quite confidently as of june 2021 for me is no there's no such thing as the perfect camera or lens or any kind of photography gear so for example this is my g9 my favorite camera that i've ever bought you'll know that if you watch a lot of this channel and it's floor as many people would argue is it small sensor other cameras might not have many lenses available in their system others will have hopeless menus others will have rubbish battery life and others will have overheating problems some of them might even have sensors that are quite difficult to edit with the point is it's impossible to find a perfect camera as of now and it has been ever since i've been taking photos the trick is to try and find the cameras and the equipment that affect your photography the least whose flaws affect your photography the least and that could be quite a tricky thing to do but that should be the aim as opposed to um trying to find something that's absolutely perfect because chances are as far as i'm concerned you're not going to find it [Music] [Applause] um right as you might be able to see the reflection has gone off the water so my plan is to go up there which will be uh sweaty but hopefully i'll get a couple of nice photos now thing number two is that photos are never universally liked there has never been a photo taken that has been liked by every single person who has seen it regardless of its popularity its critical acclaim there will always be people to who that photo just doesn't suit their tastes and that's absolutely fine and that piece of knowledge gave me a couple of bits of um well practical application a it gave me the knowledge that it's completely normal to have people not like your photos when they see them and b it kind of alerted me to the fact that i was probably on the right track when i started getting criticism of some of my images because it meant that more people were seeing my photos than just the people who would never give me criticism of my photos you know family and friends people like that it meant that people outside of those circles were seeing my photos which i think is a good sign and i say all this to kind of give you some hope if you've been disheartened or disappointed when you've had any kind of criticism of your work because i think on a couple of fronts it's a pretty good sign and just know that regardless of whoever your favorite photographer is there will be people that don't like their photos and it's fine we've all got different tastes that's what makes us human and that's what makes the world interesting so don't lose hope or get disheartened just because not everybody likes your work it's normal uh i thought i brought some hay fever stuff with me tablets no spray eye drops that sort of thing but i've got nothing so i'll have to apologize in advance for my streaming eyes ruins the best time of year anyway the uh the thing number three that i wanted to talk about was the importance of having an aim or a goal because without a goal you can't score which is the cheesiest saying in the world but i do i do actually agree with it now the thing is with most activities and hobbies and pastimes like golf for example it's quite easy to work out if you've had a good day because you can score your day also if you go fishing in that lake it's quite easy to work out if you've had a good day because you either go home with a big fish or you don't i mean you might put it back but you know what i mean also judo i don't know the first thing about judo but you either break your opponent's arm or you don't is that the aim anyway with all those things i think it's easier to work out if you've had a good day or not than photography because yes you might go home with some photos with photography but particularly if you're not experienced it's quite difficult to work out if you're happy with those photos if they could have been better and how many photos you left out in the field that you didn't see and in my experience having those feelings just becomes a bit sort of disappointing and ultimately you end up wandering around aimlessly with your camera not knowing where you should point it if there was a better way to point it in that direction and how many other things you could have pointed at and that as i say can become a bit disheartening so my solution to that over the years has been having a goal with my photography and typically that goal has been aiming for 10 or 12 photos a year but i'm really happy with by which i mean i'd be happy to stick them up in my living room on the wall now unless you've got a gallery sized living room you're not actually going to do that every year but having those photos that you genuinely would put up on the wall i think is a decent aim to have and actually going out and doing these 10 photos from videos where i go out over the course of a day and try and get 10 photos that has been really good for kind of honing my uh my focus on any given day as well those 10 photos are very unlikely to be 10 but i'd be happy to put on my wall but it helps me with the process of trying to get to those 10 photos at the end of the year raining again as you uh i imagine you can tell lovely [Music] the um the weather sorry that's just the uh the mounted rescue helicopter i don't think i need rescuing i'm fine anyway yeah the weather can't make its mind up today which is fine apart from these trousers are not great in uh in rain very quickly makes it look like you've had an accident anyway this uh this ten photos from concept that i keep banging on about where you go to a place and try and take 10 photos or you might decide 15 12 it doesn't really matter but you go to a place and try and take multiple photos i think it's good because it battles the biggest secret in photography which is that you need to take thousands of photos in order to end up with good ones and if you want to take 10 good photos in a year as i was talking about before or 110 years then you're gonna need to take thousands of photos in the process of doing that in order to end up with those um those photos this is annoying okay i think it's gone anyway your favorite photographer regardless of who they are they will take hundreds or thousands of photos for every one photo that you see in their portfolio and there's absolutely no shame in that it's absolutely fine it's completely normal it's just that you don't see those and so if you don't know that that is the process then it can put pressure on every single time you hit the shutter button because you think you need to end up with a result that is portfolio worthy or living room worthy and it's just not the case so take pictures without the fear that you're going to be judged by your rubbish ones because chances are you're not going to be because you don't have to show anybody your rubbish ones unless you're a youtube photographer as i am in which case you sort of do have to but for the most part you don't need to show people those photos but they're necessary in order to get to the really good ones that you do want to show people and that's the completely normal process for you or anyone else your favorite photographers the best photographers in the world that's the process for everybody particularly if you're at the early part of your journey and you're developing your skills you'll need to take loads and loads of photos to end up with the style that you want to end up with the skills you want and therefore the results you want um yeah and it's just part of the process also i think i'm going to abandon my little jolly up into the hill i'm trying to keep phone signal at the moment emily is uh is seven and a half months pregnant ish and so she's got a little while to go yet but she is quite big now she's sort of waddling around and i'd hate to be in the mountains for hours on end without phone signal and something happened so i've got an increasingly short list of places that i can uh i can visit at the moment because as i say signal is at a premium in in the hills let's check now 3g we're all good [Music] well as you might be able to tell the the rain is really coming down now but it's okay because i've come down to the water on this little beach and i thought i'd partake in one of my favorite things in the world to do which is sit by a lake and write some poetry that's not true i've never written a poem in my life wouldn't know where to start no what i thought i'd do is draw out how my photography progression went versus how i thought it would go so i thought it'd go just bear with me a minute talk amongst yourselves so i don't know if you can see this this linear curve here ish is how i thought my progression would go i thought it'd be quite smooth i thought every week i'd be making gradual improvements towards the kinds of photos i wanted to take what actually happened was well was this which i think happens to to most people to be honest you make big leaps forward and then you have weeks where you just feel like you can't take any photos at all and it's difficult with photography particularly outdoor photography because obviously you've got to battle things like the weather conditions your location your motivation how much coffee you've had how much you're focusing in more than one sense there are lots of things that can wreak havoc with the kinds of photos that you're making and your progression i would suggest is not going to look like that which is why i said that with your goal it should be like a long-term goal i can't remember if i actually said that but by being a year that's relatively long term and you're going to be able to make judgments on how you've progressed within that year versus trying to work out if you're improving week to week because as i said there's so many external factors that you have no control over it's really difficult to work out if you're making any improvements at all when the weather might be shifting for example so yes how i thought it would go how it actually went but the general line is is still the same kind of upwards i think it's just that you have huge peaks and troughs and having a long-term goal hopefully sustains you in these troughs because it can be quite disheartening being down here and you might have thoughts of of giving up please don't but i should really go home it's getting quite wet and i have no signal whatsoever now so yeah get back oh you've not given birth have you no still in there still in there yes everyone's been asking how bump is oh yeah it's it's here sizable big lunch yeah i like your uh see that all that filing there yeah that they're all empty those boxes it's just all on the floor good work have you ever tried guinness chocolate emily got me some quite nice i feel a bit bad for criticizing the state of her office now especially where mine is about 30 times worse still i'm pleased you didn't give birth today i'd have been in so much trouble anyway a huge thank you for watching this i don't know how helpful it's been sometimes when i do these kind of advice tip videos i am i feel a bit of a numpty really i feel like i'm sort of preaching and i feel like i come across as someone who thinks he knows it all which absolutely isn't the case i'm still very aware that i'm learning as all of us do when we uh embark on this sort of hobby or whatever you want to call photography it's just that since i started i've noticed all of these things and i hope that there are views to you particularly if you're at the start of your um photography yeah hobby uh before you go one other thing i would talk about briefly is the importance of enjoying photography which i'm not sure i did for a long period of time mostly because i think i was thinking about the next gear that i could afford or how i could save up to go to a particular location or how i was going to learn to do i don't know something in lightroom to improve my photos i was always kind of thinking about the next thing rather than going out with my camera and enjoying the process of being wherever i was with that camera and for a while it looked like i thought i might not really get fully into photography because as i say i was always thinking about the next thing and the thing is if you don't enjoy the here and now with whatever equipment you have wherever you are then chances are you won't get to the point where you can be somewhere better with equipment that's better because um well you won't enjoy it it's very obvious that i think but it took me a while to to understand for some reason i'm really waffling now could be the chocolate or the guinness in any case a big thank you for watching this video and thank you to this week's video sponsor squarespace so as you probably know i have a squarespace website where i have my portfolio of images i have like a gear page things like that i also have an online store that's powered by squarespace where i sell things like my prints and my books works perfectly i send email newsletters where i talk about things like my workshops that's also powered by squarespace super super powerful tools but also really really simple to use i couldn't live without it it's become a huge part of my business and i'm really grateful that squarespace exists so if you've been thinking about getting an online portfolio or perhaps an online store where you can sell things like calendars and prints i would definitely recommend squarespace and if you go to squarespace.com you can start a free trial and after that if you'd like to make a purchase then go to squarespace.com james for 10 off that purchase and a big thank you to them for their continued support anyway thank you for watching i'll see you next time i'm gonna make this disappear

Channel: James Popsys

Views: 177,330

Keywords: landscape photography, beginner photographers, adventure photography, how to buy a camera, lumix, wales, james popsys, vlog, photography lesson, photography tutorial, new photographer, how to photography, better photos, improve photos, improve photography

Id: RXO2dcWg_G0

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 26 2021