Shooting in black and white is just one way to exercise your photographic skills. Photo by camil tulcan.

Just like any other skill, becoming a better photographer takes a lot of practice. There are so many different variables to control - lighting, shutter speed, aperture, ISO - and it takes time to understand how they work together to produce the perfect image. But if you’re impatient, here are five quick and easy tips to start improving your photographs today. Each is designed to exercise a certain part of the photographer’s brain and to get you thinking more carefully about the shots you take.

1. Shoot a roll of film.

Yes, it’s an anachronism in today’s day and age, but there’s no better tool to help you think about every individual photo you take then a film camera and a roll of film. Think about it. A photographer with a digital camera is like a soldier with a machine gun - just press the trigger and fire away and eventually something will hit. But a photographer with a film camera is like a sniper - each shot has to count. This forces you to slow down and think about every individual variable that goes into a photograph. You don’t want to waste a single frame, so you’ll spend that much more time thinking about the composition and lighting and all the camera settings that come into play.

And, as an added bonus, you get to get it developed. So often I’ll fire away for days on my digital camera, only to store my photos somewhere in the dark recesses of my hard drive. There’s something to be said for getting a set of prints, of having something tangible to represent the photo shoot.

2. Shoot in black and white.

One photography teacher once told me that you should never shoot in color unless it adds something to the image. It’s an interesting approach, not one I necessarily agree with, but it definitely holds some truth. Especially in this era of Photoshopping and saturation effects, color can distract from the image itself. And in some cases, it can compensate for poor composition or photographic technique.

Shooting in black and white places a larger burden on the photograph. Color isn’t there to add any sort of wow factor to the image - you have to carry it through your composition alone. Shooting in black and white is a great way to force yourself to really make the photograph interesting, either through the subject or through a unique perspective. There’s a reason nearly every basic photography class starts out with black-and-white photography: there’s still no better way to prove your chops as a photographer.

3. Create a time lapse.

Photo by iseemooi

There are some pretty cool examples of time-lapse photography online, but we’re not going to create anything that impressive. This is just a simple exercise to understand the quality of the light better. Choose a subject - it doesn’t have to be anything impressive, really, but make sure it’s outdoors, stationary and in direct sunlight for most of the day. Start around as early as you can with your first photograph, and then come back every hour or two and take a new photograph until it’s too dark to continue.

Load up all the photographs at the end of your experiment and peruse through. You should be able to get a better handle on what times of day create better photographs and at what times it might be best to set the camera down. It’s a tedious exercise, but one that will certainly help you appreciate the quality of light more.

4. Experiment with depth-of-field.

Strong macro photography begins with a good understanding of depth-of-field. Photo by abdhakamabdah

It seems like beginning photographers often struggle with the idea of aperture and how it affects their photographs more than any other concept. Here’s a great way to really nail the idea down. Choose an object you’d like to photograph. Set it outside on a bright day - we’re going to need a fair amount of light for this experiment - and start by shooting it on the widest aperture possible (smallest f/number) from as close or as zoomed in as possible. Then, take another photograph at every couple aperture settings until you get to the smallest aperture possible (highest f/number). Notice how the depth-of-field becomes wider with the smaller apertures.

But don’t stop there - zoom out (or back up about four or five feet) and repeat the same exercise again. You’ll notice that the depth of field from further away is much greater than it is from close range. This is because the depth of field is regulated both by the distance to the subject and by aperture.

In addition to macro photography, this is a great exercise to help you with portrait photography too. Beginning photographers often wonder how to get that creamy smooth background (dubbed bokeh) in their portraits behind the subject. It’s a function of depth of field. If you limit the depth of field, either through using a smaller aperture or by getting closer to the subject, the background will be less in focus.

5. Look at your EXIF data.

Did you know your digital camera doubles as a recorder? It’s true. The vast majority of digital cameras record and store tons of information about every photograph they take - aperture, shutter speed, focal length, time, etc. This data is contained within an EXIF tag, stored inside the image itself.

Choose a few photographs that you’re particularly proud of. Do you think you’d be able to reproduce them, or was some luck involved? If you’re not confident in your abilities to replicate the photograph, cruise through the EXIF data. Look at the aperture and the shutter speed, and see if you can understand why they made the image as great as it is. Look at the time you shot the photograph, and look at how the time of day affected the quality of the light. All these variables are important to consider when you’re shooting a photograph, and there’s no better teaching tool than your own greatest shots.

Confused about how to access the EXIF data for your images? Check out this online EXIF viewer, which will let you examine your images without having to install any special software.

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