My SECRET Technique to Create Better Photos
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I’m about to destroy my YouTube channel with the following photography advice to help you create better images… Stop. Watching. YouTube… to learn photography. There are 3 better ways, and the last option is very controversial. I’m not saying never to watch another YouTube video again because it is convenient and easier than the methods I will share. That’s not true since the last one is even easier, and I guarantee that when you apply this method, your images will be ten times better instantly.
BOOKS
Back in 1989, we didn’t have YouTube. We had to rely on an old-school method… we read books. If you’re like me, I learn best by watching a video and reading.
By engaging your mind with reading versus only watching a video, you will automagically begin laying the seeds for remembering the content when it matters most… at the time of the photoshoot.
Let me know in the comments your preferred method of learning: videos, reading, or both.
GET OUT
This next technique is another method we used pre-internet.
That is, physically go out and practice what you learn immediately because, if you’re like me, you’ll begin to forget what you learned after a few hours.
Then life gets in the way, and a week or two later, you’re back trying to re-learn it.
So, the sooner you can put the content into practice, the better your chance of remembering it.
STEAL
Going out and shooting is a great hands-on experience, and that’s exactly what I did from 1989 to 2000.
But the learning curve was extremely slow… since I was a starving artist and could only afford a roll of film or two each week.
But everything changed in 2001 for two reasons.
That was the year I picked up my first digital camera, and more importantly, I immediately started implementing another technique for creating amazing images. 2001 was my first year as a full-time, self-employed wedding photographer, and I had little experience shooting weddings.
The only training I had came from working with another photo studio the year before, and they pretty much fired me after training me during 5 weddings.
So, that’s all the experience I had.
However, I was still able to book 62 weddings in 2001. Most of those bookings came during the wedding season.
My lack of experience limited my portfolio. I think I only had seven or eight images to book clients.
So, my goal with those first few weddings… at the beginning of the year… was to build up my portfolio with tons of amazing images to make it easier to book more weddings.
The internet had only been around for a few years, and I found a few websites with amazing wedding images.
So, I studied them, made a list of the ones I wanted to “steal,” and then for each wedding, I’d recreate the same image… but I took it one step further by creating a composition that was different from the one I was “copying” from.
So, after shooting over one hundred thousand images that year, I created hundreds of unique images for my portfolio that were better than those I copied.
And I know they were better based on client feedback since I booked many more weddings that year and each year thereafter. I have no doubt you can train your brain to see beautiful compositions immediately for any genre by improving on great images.
BONUS
Watch this video next to discover what the pros know about ISO that you should know.