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”!

Dig­i­tal cam­eras are now wide­spread and the price of both DSLR and com­pact cam­era went down quite a lot. Pretty much every­one has some kind of cam­era these days, whether it’s a small cam­era phone or a high end DSLR. But few peo­ple real­ize that it’s not that much about the cam­era – it’s about the photographer’s eye.

I became addicted to pho­tog­ra­phy when I bought my first dig­i­tal cam­era, in 2006. I went through a cou­ple of film cam­eras before that: one of them was stolen in Panama, I still have the other but I was hes­i­tant to exper­i­ment with it since devel­op­ing films was quite expen­sive. But in Jan­u­ary 2006, on Box­ing Day, I walked into Best Buy and saw a small Kodak EasyShare C743 Zoom cam­era for less than $200. The price alone sealed the deal – I hadn’t planned to buy a cam­era that day and it looked like a sweet deal. It didn’t think twice and bought it.

It turned out to be a great cam­era, by my stan­dards. I started exper­i­ment­ing, tak­ing a lot of pic­tures, try­ing to fig­ure out what worked and what didn’t. Sure, the zoom was lim­ited, I kept on feed­ing it bat­ter­ies and the shut­ter was some­one to slow to cap­ture quick action but it didn’t mat­ter. It was a great cam­era to learn the basics. And it took great pic­tures too: this is the only cam­era we had in China, dur­ing our first two French trips and in Latin Amer­ica. I feel ter­ri­ble when peo­ple ask me what cam­era I used to cap­ture that or that because they expect me to start brag­ging about my gear when in fact, these were taken with old out­dated cam­era. I used it again last year to take pic­tures at the Metal­lica Con­cert (I was searched and my DSLR wasn’t wel­comed…) and I was quite happy with the result.

Even­tu­ally, in June 2009, I decided to buy a DSLR and got a Nikon D-60 with a cou­ple of lenses (35−55 mm and 55–200 mm). This is the cam­era I now use. But let me tell you: I’d suck as a pho­tog­ra­pher if I hadn’t learned with a com­pact cam­era first!

Indeed, com­pact cam­eras teach you to think out­side the box. First, they are easy to mas­ter, this is why they are nick­named “point and shoot cam­eras” This is what I did at first: I pointed and I shot. Didn’t like the results much, though. So I started exper­i­ment­ing. I learned that the best way to take night pic­tures wasn’t to use the “night set­ting”, but the “fire­works set­ting” which trig­gered a longer shut­ter. I learned that the “sports set­ting” was the one with the faster shut­ter, so it worked for all action scenes. I under­stood how impor­tant a tri­pod (or any steady sur­face) was for night shots, oth­er­wise the pic­tures would be help­lessly blurry. The zoom wasn’t bad (albeit lim­ited), but I learned not to rely on it too much and to get close to my sub­jects to fill the frame.

When I finally bought my DSLR, I was used to being inven­tive and I knew the basics. It still took me close to six months to be com­fort­able with it – I wasn’t used to have con­trol on every­thing, from shut­ter to aper­ture! It was frus­trat­ing at first: I had this beau­ti­ful cam­era in my hands and my pic­tures sucked. I had to take it one step at the time and learn every­thing from the scratch.

Of course, I now find hav­ing a DSLR very reward­ing. It allows me to do so much more! Yet, I can’t help feel­ing sorry for the peo­ple who invest in a high-end cam­era expect­ing it to do every­thing – it’s not about the cam­era, it’s about the pho­tog­ra­pher. Enough of the “how many megapix­els does yours have” and “how far can you zoom” silly lit­tle war. It-does-not-matter. What mat­ters is your eyes and how you see the world through your viewfinder. That’s it.

Related arti­cles:

1. The Best 3 Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips I Was Given
2. Pre-traveling Rush
3. Tips For Night Pic­tures (II)
4. 5 Con­cert Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips (III)
5. 5 Ways To Ruin a Pic­ture (V)