 Welcome to the wonderful world of photography. Now, if you've just recently bought a camera and you're feeling a bit overwhelmed and lost, then I am here to help you to discover how easy it is to learn photography as a beginner. In 1993, a young wannabe whippersnapper photographer that would be me started at photography school in South Africa. Now, after I'd been accepted to the course before we started, I tried to learn as much as possible about photography. Of course, completely missing the point that I was about to be taught all of this stuff. I thought that everybody else there would be laughing at me if I didn't know my f-stops from my bus stops, and then an effort to jump in with both feet and learn as much as possible about photography. I got totally confused about what I thought I should be trying to learn. The guidance I got from my lectures was so, so helpful and it showed me where to start as a beginner photographer. If it's okay with you, I'd like today to share with you what I learned back then. So at the end of this video, you're going to have a roadmap to guide you through these exciting early days as a beginner photographer. You will know which three areas are going to give you the biggest rewards and you'll be creating your own amazing photographs in no time. How's it? How's it? Unlike those days when I was at photography school, these days, most people tend to learn photography online. Now, like you, they end up here on YouTube and they fall into this rabbit hole of people talking about odd terms like apertures, exposing to the right rules of thirds and something about a raw file, which, you know, quite frankly sounds like a thing that's escaped from a cooking channel. Do you ever feel overwhelmed by all of this? Now, I know I did earlier on. I was looking at books and magazines trying to improve my photography skills, but they just made me more confused. Luckily, that first day photography school wiped away all my confusion. I knew what we were going to work on and more importantly, why to improve our photography. And it's this experience, one which I think so few photographers get to have that I'm going to share with you now that so we can work together to get rid of your overwhelm. I can't wait to get started. We're going to keep things nice and simple and we're going to look at those three areas which, when you explore, are instantly going to help you improve your photography skills as a beginner. The first thing we're going to look at is the technical aspect of things. Now, this could be a confusing world of mysterious words like ISO, f-stop and this thing called Bocca, which everybody seems to go nuts for. Now, quite simply, a photograph is made when light travels through a lens, hits something sensitive to it, and then a shutter cuts off that light and an exposure is made. See, I told you, it's that simple. There's nothing to be worried about. Every photograph ever made has more or less followed that process. Now, right now, as a beginner, all you really need to understand are these three easy things. Aperture, this is how much light the lens is letting through. This is controlled by blades in the lens which open and close in increments called f-stops. Those are those odd numbers that you see on a lens, f1.8, f2.8, f4, 5.6 and so on. Now, they're boast around mathematical formulas, but don't worry, you don't need to know why these numbers were chosen. For the moment, just know that the smaller the number, the wider the aperture and the larger the number, the smaller it is. Think of it like this, setting your lens at f1.8 is like it being a drain pipe, loads of water throws through. Stop down your lens if that's setting your lens to a smaller aperture like 5.6, makes the lens more like a hose, less water is able to pass through it at the same time. Now, close down that lens even further to f22 and now it's like a straw, just a fraction of that water is able to pass through. The other benefit of apertures is they make more or less of the image in focus, and this is what's called depth of field. And again, this can be a complicated process, but right now all you need to know is that a wider aperture, so that's a smaller number, creates a shallow depth of field. And a narrow aperture, that's a larger f-stop, creates a wider depth of field. Controlling how that light hits the sensor is the job of the shutter. Now, opens and closes to expose the sensor. The longer the shutter is open, the more light is hitting it. And that time that it's open is usually measured in fractions of a second. For the moment, the main thing that you need to know about shutter speeds is that the shorter the exposure time, the more that you are going to freeze motion. And the longer that that shutter is open, the more blurry and abstract the image becomes. That's because you're moving the camera slightly during the exposure. Now we get to the real magic of the whole thing, the sensor or the film. This is this clever little thing that's going to record all that light that you see and create a photograph. Now in a very basic way, it's sensitive to light, and you can decide how sensitive it is. And this number is expressed as an ISO number. The smaller the number, the less sensitive the higher, the more sensitive. Now higher isn't always best. The more sensitive that you make the sensor, the more you're going to introduce things that's called noise. In a film, this was called grain. For now, just know if you want to have the smooth tones that so many people talk about, you want to choose a low ISO. Those are the three basic building blocks. It's really that simple. It's called the triangle of exposure because all three are linked and they work in conjunction with each other. You can see the triangle of exposure in action on your camera with your camera mode. Set your camera on P and an auto ISO if you have it. And the camera is going to adjust all three corners, the aperture, the shutter speed and the ISO, to give you what it thinks is the correct exposure. Now set your camera onto T, V or S shutter mode and you're manually going to set the shutter speed so the camera is going to adjust the other two settings to give you the exact same exposure. The same goes for AV or aperture value. Now you're in charge of the aperture and the camera will change the shutter speed and the ISO once again to give you those same three exposures. You see how easy it is. All of the things work together. You're learning something already. You're improving your photography skills. Is that simple? I don't want you to feel any pressure at this stage to only shoot a manual or in RAW. Those are choices that you can make later on once you've learned the basics. Right now shooting JPEG or using a program mode on your camera is not going to help you back and in fact on the contrary it's going to free you up to explore the possibilities. Now speaking of cameras at the end of this video I'm going to share with you the best piece of kit that a beginner photographer should be using. Think of exposure like the framework of your house. It's important to know how to put up the framework but you don't need to over complicate it. When you drive past the selection of housing being built and you see all those frameworks all the houses look very similar don't they? So how do you make your house look unique? The second part of how to learn photography is the aesthetic part. We've already put up the walls and the framework using exposure now it's time to paint those walls to put in the windows and the doors to make your house look different to the one that was built next door using the exact same framework. Photography is literally the art of drawing with light and at the heart of everything in photography is light. And light's a funny old thing we can see it all the time it's all around us and yet for a beginner it's very hard to actually see. Now I'm sure you've stood at some point next to someone as they took a photograph and you've looked at that result and you thought how did they see this? I don't see it you know this is what happens when you train your eye to see the world like a camera and to look at the world like a photographer. It's a whole new way of looking at things and once you open that window you're going to see that the opportunities for photography are everywhere. We're all used to seeing the world in a certain way and as a photographer you want to start seeing it differently. So how do you do that? If you have a small child or grandchildren look at how fascinated they are with everything. The tiniest most boring thing certainly to us can be utterly captivating for them. It's this ability to look at the world in a fresh new way that we want to tap into to start harnessing this ability to see differently. I want you to try this simple exercise. Next time you have your camera with I want you to go out and find letters in nature. Photograph as many as you can. This was the first practical assignment we had at photography school and at the time it seemed a bit odd but looking back now it was probably the single biggest jump in my photographic ability. Now this simple exercise which you can do even with a camera phone is the key. It is the key to seeing the world in a fresh new way to finding those opportunities for photographs that other people don't. You can also use what you learned with your technical exposure by using shallow depth of field to isolate those letters. If you ever get frustrated with your photography I want you to look at the comments here on the videos on this channel. You're going to see that you're not alone. Photography is a creative art form and all of us get frustrated from time to time. The crucial thing is that this is a place to find support to feel encouraged by this amazing community. Now just like at photo school we're here to learn. It doesn't matter if you're a beginner photographer or a veteran all of us are able to contribute something and all of us are learning something new. At the end of this video I'm going to link to another short video which I've created just for you. Now it's not a public video so you're not going to find it on my channel you won't find it in search. The only way you're going to get to it is to link at the end. I'm going to share with you some advice that I think would be immense benefit to all beginner photographers. Now be sure to check that it's just five minutes and it could save you years of frustration. Making your house of photography look different to all the others is one thing but how do you make it an architectural masterpiece that ends up in all those design magazines? The third area where you will improve your photography skills is visual communication. Now this is just a fancy way of saying having your photos create a feeling in a viewer. You may not know this but you are already practicing this photography skill at a basic level on almost a daily basis. Every time you send someone an image or some sort of funny picture without any word of explanation or comment that is a form of visual communication. Good photographs are a combination of technical and aesthetic skills but great photographs also communicate something. The following two images are by the same photographer and I want you to think about what feelings they convey in you. This feeling can be quite obvious it can be right up there in your face or it can be very subtle something in any sense somewhere in the back of your mind. This way to learn the skill is to is to feed your passion with raw materials. Look as many photographers as you can a great way to do this is to look on this channel I introduce you to some photographers whom you may not have heard of or if you have a favorite photographer and they have a Wikipedia entry go there read it see who influenced them look up those photographers jump down that rabbit hole. One of the drawbacks of the modern world is that we tend to see images as single images they exist without context they live all by themselves now I would encourage you to either visit a library or a bookstore or a gallery or an exhibition somewhere where you can see photographs and see how the images are created to work together look for things like juxtaposition that's when two elements or or two separate images work side by side to give you a third new way of looking at the image. Now just like great writers read and great painters visit galleries you must also look at photography let it work it's magic on you see it as the viewer sees the work the more that you look at photographs and the more that you try to figure out why that photographs makes you feel a certain way the more you're learning this language of speaking visually now when you learn any new language you learn the basic words first you know ball cap rug with learning to speak visually I want to look for the basic emotions does a photograph make you happy doesn't make you sad doesn't make you fearful does it make you intimidated because you've been absolutely awesome you've clicked on that thumbnail and you spent time with me now discovering how to learn photography I want to share a bonus tip with you to help you start your journey as a beginner photographer and this is explore all genres of photography if you're probably interested in one or two that's perfectly fine but you never know it's possible you may find a passion in a genre that you you never expected when I was a student I I was convinced I was going to be a landscape photographer I hated people I didn't want to be near people I certainly didn't want to photograph them and as it turns out because we did a lot of portraiture at photo school I found I was quite a good portrait photographer so much so that I won a national portrait competition a number of years here in the UK and most of my my photographic career has been of taking people so so keep an open mind seek out photography give everything a try see what happens that advice I gave you earlier about the best bit of kit for a beginner photographer well it's not your camera you don't need you absolutely don't need a fancy camera to get started the best camera for a beginner photographer is the one that you have right now no the best bit of photography kit that you could possibly need are your eyes and a willingness to use them I want you to click here for the article of the advice that I mentioned it's something that I really wish somebody had told me years ago that would save me so much heartache thank you ever so much for joining me here today I wish you all the best as you improve your photography skills