Beginner’s Guide To Photography: An Introduction

Whether you’ve found your choice of camera or are literally at the beginning stages of entering the photography universe, here are some helpful pieces of advice I wish I knew before I spent a ton of money on equipment and workshops. This is also the introduction to the Beginner’s Guide to Photography series.

Your Journey Is Subjective

If there is anything I want you to take away from this list of information, it’s to know there is no correct way to do this. There is no correct equipment, correct settings. This is all about your perspective and expression. Everything provided in this series are helpful nudges, but at the end of the day, you make the decision about what’s best for you, your skillset, and budget.

Set Your Goals And Budget

Setting your photography goals helps figure out what kind of equipment might be best to start your journey. This also helps provide a bit of tunnel vision to stay on budget as there are A LOT of really cool gadgets and whatchamacallits in photography. It’s absolutely so easy to get big eyes and want to purchase everything.

If you’re new to photography – I can attest – you’re really not going to use all of that stuff up front, especially if you don’t know how because it’s not part of your picture taking routine. Stick to a camera body and one lens and create a wishlist for another time.

Conquer one photography goal at a time.

Resources

There are plenty of free resources in the universe for photography. Pinterest has an abundance, google, youtube…all of the platforms. Don’t cave in to paid workshops and courses just yet when there are so many freebies at your fingertips to get started.

Before I share some of my favorite free resources – I’m going to be shamelessly plug my own free photography course HERE.

Adorama is one of my favorite camera stores and they have a really solid blog. They have all kinds of equipment, not just photography gear, so if you find yourself branching out into other creative paths, this is such a great start.

However, if you are ready for that next jump and you want to go down a career path or you’re looking for something very specific, I highly recommend Wildist. Some of my favorite photographers are on there, and it’s just really great to learn from people who inspire you to be a better photographer every day.

Connect With Other Photographers

This is something I avoided for years. Part of it stems from insecurity issues, other parts stem from, I’m sure some of these photographers with hundreds of thousands of followers have better things to do with their time than answer my question.

Turns out… they love to talk to you!

Feel free to ask your favorite photographer what their favorite camera setting is, or their favorite accessory or photo tip. It’s really cool to learn about how everyone sees photography in a different way and how everyone connects through those differences.

The photography community is pretty welcoming – especially if you’re on twitter.

Shoot. Every. Single. Day.

You don’t get better by hoping you will.

It’s really easy to fall into the Comparison Abyss on social media and feel a bit overwhelmed.

All of those photographers started exactly where you are right now. But they kept going, and so should you.

No matter what it is, no matter where you are, keep shooting every day.

Do Not Ask Photographers For Their Spots

This is something that isn’t spoken about, really. Especially very popular landscape photographers reduce how much they share. Social media can be a great tool, but also a curse on certain aspects of tourism and ruin certain pieces of nature because not everyone is respectful.

I’ve had people ask me exactly where I was standing at a certain spot in Iceland, and it’s a bit intense. There is a lot of research and preparation that goes into getting to certain locations. And the beauty of travel, sometimes those really cool locations pop up as a surprise and I couldn’t ever find them again let alone share it with someone else.

There is etiquette here.

Equipment

This is something I learned on my own, and spent a lot of money to get to this point:

Do not be afraid to grow into your equipment.

There are definitely a lot of ‘beginner’ cameras and lenses out there, but don’t let your present skillset prevent you from getting a more advanced camera.

Part of the fun of photography is the challenge it poses because of how difficult it can be (at times).

I hope this introduction has been helpful!

You can find more posts about photography HERE.

Tell me your photography goals!