Recently I was reading an article by Darren Rowse entitles A 15 Minute Exercise to Help You Improve Your Photography. The title intrigued me so I read on. His idea was to challenge you to slow down and thing about the images you are making before actually taking the photograph. In the film days, you had a limited number of shots on a roll. Because of this, photographers tended to look at a scene prior to starting shooting. With the advent of the digital camera and more specifically the cheap photo storage, photographers just started shooting.
To help you improve your photographs you need to look at your subject and discover where the light is coming from. How it will look best in the environment, do you need to move in or out to compose the image properly? Darren’ s challenge is to get your camera, even an iPhone will do and go outside and find a place to just sit. For the next ten-minutes you cannot take a photograph but rather just look around and observe what is around you. While you are doing this, plan your shots.
In his article he says:
- Observe – Think about your shots, move around see what the different angles of light do to the subjects that are catching your eye.
- Plan – Think about what you are going to shoot and how you might take the best shot you are composing in your mind
- Shoot – after your ten minute ban, after you have completed both your observation and your plan, now shoot your subjects and see if you can make you plan a reality. Spend only five minutes taking photographs
- Evaluate – How did you do? What can you do different? Did you have the right equipment for your subject or would using another piece of equipment made it better? Was there something you could have used on-site to improve your image (eg. You could use a piece of paper to act as a reflector to reduce the shadows on one side of your subject).
If you want to read his full article, you will find it here
