Self-Portrait in Nantes, France

A lot of you have been ask­ing me ques­tions about pho­tog­ra­phy and how to achieve cer­tain effects. While I’m by no means an expert, I’m an avid pho­tog­ra­pher and I had to chance to exper­i­ment a lot. I’m also always a teacher at heart and yes, I like talk­ing about pho­tog­ra­phy, because I’m sure I can give you some tips and learn from you as well.

So I decided to start the Sat­ur­day Series again, this time with a focus on pho­tog­ra­phy. A new “les­son” will be pub­lished every Sat­ur­day, for a total or ten posts. Enjoy the “Ten Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips”!

Some days, I pick up my cam­era and I sim­ply don’t know what to take a pic­ture of. Seri­ously, how many pic­tures of Par­lia­ment Hill can I take before being com­pletely sick of it? Some days, I sim­ply have zero inspi­ra­tion. For­tu­nately, I dis­cov­ered some great web­sites to develop and build on my pho­tog­ra­phy skills.

Here are my top five favourite web­site for pho­tog­ra­phy inspi­ra­tion.

Flickr — Flickr is an online photo man­age­ment and shar­ing appli­ca­tion. But it’s much more than an image host­ing web­site: it’s a thriv­ing com­mu­nity of pho­tog­ra­phers of all lev­els and all inter­ests. For instance, pho­tog­ra­phers can sub­mit their pic­tures to one of the thou­sands of groups, rang­ing from What­ever the weather to Food, food, food!, from Can­did & Street Pho­tog­ra­phy to Pro­gres­sive Pho­to­jour­nal­ism. Just brows­ing the many groups some­times help me to dis­cover a new focus of a new tech­nique. Flickr users can also use the explore func­tion to browse selected best pic­tures. Basic mem­ber­ship is free (you sim­ply have to reg­is­ter) and you can upload up to 100MB worth of pho­tos each cal­en­dar month. Pro accounts only cost US$24.95 a year and you can upload an unlim­ited num­ber of pic­tures, among other ben­e­fits. This is one of the few web­sites for which I’m actu­ally happy to pay for a pro mem­ber­ship and no, Flickr didn’t pay me for that post.

Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy School — Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy School is a web­site ded­i­cated to giv­ing pho­tog­ra­phy tips and tuto­ri­als to pho­tog­ra­phers of all lev­els. While it can seem con­fus­ing at first, it is actu­ally a mine of infor­ma­tion, cov­er­ing all areas of pho­tog­ra­phy, includ­ing cam­eras, equip­ment and post-production. Their com­pre­hen­sive Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips For Begin­ners sec­tion is a must read for all pho­tog­ra­phers. I’m also a huge fan of the How To Pho­to­graph… articles.

The blo­gos­phere — I love read­ing blogs and I fol­low quite a few pho­tog­ra­phers, pro or ama­teur. Among my favourite are Gail At Large (she taught me more than she prob­a­bly thinks!), Daily Dose of Imagery, PDN Photo of the Day, Sid­ney Snoeck’s My Sari Sari Store (with great photo-documentary from the Philip­pines), Cynthia’s blog and pho­to­stream… And these are just a few exam­ples of great pho­tog­ra­phers on the web!

Deviant Art — Deviant Art (dA) is an online com­mu­nity show­cas­ing var­i­ous forms of art­work, includ­ing pho­tog­ra­phy. While I’m not a mem­ber (you can only be a mem­ber of so many web­sites!) I enjoy brows­ing the pho­tog­ra­phy sec­tion, itself divided into sub­sec­tions such as Still Life, Street, Pho­to­jour­nal­ism etc. Users are usu­ally inven­tive and offer a totally dif­fer­ent and new angle on photography.

Designer Blogs — While design seems to be an art form pretty dif­fer­ent from pho­tog­ra­phy, I actu­ally find a lot of inspi­ra­tion on var­i­ous designer blogs. For instance, I enjoy Noupe’s pho­tog­ra­phy cat­e­gory which show­cases the best exam­ples on a given topic, such as bridges pho­tog­ra­phy or action pho­tog­ra­phy. Smash­ing Mag­a­zine, which also focuses on design and web-development, also pro­vided an “inspi­ra­tion” sec­tion with many exam­ples of beau­ti­ful and inter­est­ing photography.

Related arti­cles:

1. 5 Last Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips (X)
2. 5 Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips For Blog­gers (VII)
3. 5 Things To Do With Your Pic­tures (IX)
4. 5 Weather Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips (IV)
5. The Best 3 Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips I Was Given
6. Street Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips (II)