This book teaches you how to physically take photos. But not how to make art, how to make a vision. But here’s a brief guide on some useful mindsets to have as you start taking photos.
Be there
“In the midst of the conversation, as I’m now trying to recall it, I did say that 80 percent of success is showing up…The figure seems high to me today. But I know it was more than 60 and the extra syllable in 70 ruins the rhythm of the quote, so I think we should let it stand at 80.”
Showing up with a camera is important. Who cares what kind of camera it is or even if you take a single photo at all. Everyone can remember a time when theys saw something great and if only they had their camera. No one remembers the times they didn’t show up at all, and neither would anyone else. It’s great to be ready, great to be knowledgable. But it’s better to just pick yoruself up and experience. You may not even take a single photo.
Be square
If you’re not being paid to take photos, then you need to find all the low-cost excuses you can to practice. Your office, your pets, the bar, your friends house, whatever. Do it to amuse people. Just practice. There’s a line when it’s obnoxious (and I’m sure I’ve crossed it) but who cares what others think.
A friend told me one night while we were coming homing home one night, “I’ve always wondered how you take so many good photos and then I realized you just take a lot of photos.”
Be close
“If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” - [Robert Capa](http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP=XSpecific_MAG.PhotographerDetail_VPage&l1=0&pid=2K7O3R14YQNW&nm=Robert%20Capa “Robert Capa”)
From a technical perspective, it’s important to be close because your camera will resolve detail better.
From an artistic perspective, it
This is, though, the most challenging of the advice. Capa himself was killed etc etc. Not all strangers. So, this is as much a skill to practice as it is a mindset.
(photo: Chinatown parade)
Be patient
If you take a thousand photos in a single day, you’ll still have only captured 50 seconds of actual time.
This is a metric our yearbook teacher told us (though it was a year) to remind us not to fill the pages with just photos of us horsing around with our friends. To the everyday photographer, it’s just a reminder that a lot happens. A lot happens between then and the only way to get the better part is tk tk to wait.
On a practical note, when doing street photography, you’ll kick yourself because someone’s hand was out of place if you only waited a second more that background would’ve moved. Sometimes it’s worth staying that extra second.
(before you know it, you’ll be spending that extra hour. And then you’ll be broke.)
Be limited
The first thing you’ll find out when starting out with a modestly-priced camera is that you are so limited. The lens that came with it will be too short to capture anything more than 30 feet from you. The camera’s shutter lag is too slow to capture action.
The on-camera flash turns a dreamy scene into an artificial waste. Because of your camera’s poor dynamic range, you can’t get the details in the highlights and shadows of a scene. You might not even be able to get all of just the details in just the shadows.
So what do you do (I mean, besides spending more money)?
You stop taking blurry photos of the moon and decide to focus on what’s around and near you.
Instead of “spraying-and-praying”, you carefully watch the scene, the rhythm. You follow the action a bit in your viewfinder, noticing how your camera (slowly) adjusts to the changes. And then you snap a shot. And then you stay longer, just to make sure you can’t do it better.
Instead of using flash, you tell your friends to move where the dark bar’s lgiht glances off them softly and expose for it, take a deep breath, exhale slowly and hit the shutter. And maybe you have to convert the photo in black and white.
Instead of capturing highlights and shadows, or resorting to HDR, you realize it’s better to just focus on one thing. You act like an artist, not everything needs to be seen, just what you want to be seen.
Even when you buy a more expensive camera, when you get a real job doing this, you’ll relish holding onto a disposable or cheap camera or just your camera phone.
Someday you might get a better camera, with lights, assistants, the ability to shoot 10 photos in less than a second. But you’ll learn that everything shouldn’t have to be.
This is what artists do.
Be boring
Becoming dedicated to photography is not much different than trying to lose weight as a New Year’s resolution. If you focus too much on immediate, earth-shattering noticable results, you’ll find that you’ve an expensive piece of equipment (a camera, or treadmille and fancy exercise clothes) collecting dust in the closet. Be ready to be boring to the world.Be prepared to take hundreds, thousands of boring, throwaway photos before you get one that you feel is worth showing.
On a technical note, it’s important to realize that photography may be art, but it’s still something that requires physical memory that comes through repitition, whether it’s being able to adjust exposure without a second or even how to hold your camera still.
So aim to take interesting photos, still go to interesting places. But take photos when you don’t expect interesting. You’ll still get the physical practice out of it. You’ll also get pattern recognition.
Take a photo every day of your cat, but not because the world needs another cute photo of a cat. Soon you might get bored and take photos of your cat at night, carefully tracking it to reduce blur. Maybe you’ll get a cat from ground level. OR just focusing on the nose so that it’s an abstract art. Take enough boring actions and your brain will scream to be artistic, and you may be producing interesting photos