Photography Tips - The 1 Simple Thing You Can Do to Improve Your Photography 100%

Most of us have cameras and record our lives as little moments stopped in time.  Our images are of memorable times we want to hold onto.  They are the most valuable pieces of our self.  Years ago I wondered why my images were nothing like what I saw and felt at the moment I took the picture.   My first experience was with a little 110 Instamatic on my first backpacking trip to Yosemite in 1970.  I had never seen anything like Yosemite--the falls, the cliffs, and strange mountains.  I shot all what little film I took along.  I thought for sure that I had some award-winning shots.  To my disappointment, I received washed-out; blurry semblances of what I felt when I looked out over the mountains.  Nothing like what I saw in the calendars at the gift shop.

There are two sides to photography.

One is a left brain techno thing. It involves f-stops, shutter speeds, depth of field, and a bunch of stuff the other part of your brain wants nothing to do with. Like in my early years I knew there were left brain things I needed to learn to capture those right brain moments in front of me. That second part of photography is how we see the world and the camera gets in the way of this. A good image was more luck than craft. On my days off from work I camped out in photography classes at a local college. I saw great photography and wanted to be able to do it. I went to a Robert Mapplethorpe show in Berkley and felt chills with every image that glowed from the paper. I still love when I see an image that makes me feel that way.

My first tip is easy and involves no thinking.

It is something worth having if you want to become a better photographer.  It is a tripod.  A teacher once told me that the one thing that will improve one's photos 100% without doing anything else, is putting the camera on a tripod.  

It does a few things:

• First it steadies the camera at all shutter speeds like handholding cannot.  You take the human factor out of the equation. 


• Second it forces you to look at what's in the viewfinder.  You can see what you want in your photo and what you don't.  You start learning to see.  Composition starts to become second nature. 

Oh yes, you say, I see fine.  Changing a word from some of Paul Simon's, "a man [sees] what he wants to [see] and disregards the rest."  We all live in the same world but all see it differently. Most of us are in auto pilot when it comes to seeing.  We see what we want to see and seldom look.  Our photography reflects our indiscernible, ordinary, look at our world.  A good shot is the luck of the photo gods and camera designers.  For those who don't foresee a tripod in their future, try spending a little more time just looking through the viewfinder before pressing the button.  You will be amazed at what you see.