How To Improve Your Photography

The other day I wrote a piece about how to improve your photography by finding interesting things to photograph, which I still stand by.

But today I want to give you another tip that is rather controversial – to copy others. By that, I mean be inspired by and try to replicate people who have gone before you.

Ancient History…

So, I will take you back to my early days of photography to explain this.

When I first got my DSLR on New Year’s Eve 2003, I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing. I didn’t know what settings meant, what a RAW file was, or anything like that. Literally, I had a camera in my hands and I pressed buttons, and what came out was rubbish.

I started driving around the local countryside looking for interesting stuff to photograph. But it was only when I joined an online community called EPhotozine, which is still going today, that I found other people who were on the learning curve. Some were professionals or experienced and knew what they were doing.

Online Sharing Was The Start

They would upload a photograph each day, and the community would critique or comment on it. Some photos got a lot of love, others got no love at all. There were a few people who were doing great landscapes, which is what I was into at the start. They would regularly visit great places, but they would also have a very distinctive look to the photographs – defined by moodiness, dark with carefully selected bright bits, taken at at sunset, so low-light, lots of shadow, and warm tones from the setting sun. Usually, they were at interesting locations near a lake, some trees, or mountains.

Don’t Do It Alone!

So, what I would do, along with a couple of colleagues and friends who were also into it, was to look at these images and try to work out how they did it. Often, in the comments they uploaded with the photograph, they would say what the settings were and what the motivation behind it was. From this, you could deduce roughly what settings to use, if they applied filters, and where it was. Mainly, going out at sunset seemed to be the way forward. When I was working, the summer was perfect because I had seven sunsets a week to work with because it was late.

Choose Who To Copy

People like Keith Henson, who was a commercial photographer on the website, ran workshops and did some amazing photos from the Dales and the Yorkshire coast. I’d look at his photos, look at the composition, trying to learn from what works and what didn’t work.

If he was at Malham, he would probably go to that famous tree, which he probably made famous on that website. There was a root of another tree sticking out, which is long since gone. He would put that on one side of the shot as a lead line, and then some cracks in the limestone pavement would also lead to the tree. So, that way, you could go to that location, find the components of his shot, and make a great image from it. It was quite a magical way of working.

Vary Your Subjects

Then, there were people who did seascape shots. You could look at what they did. They had these filters called big stoppers and could get two or three-minute photographs even in broad daylight. So, the sand and water became two flat, distinct textures rather than waves and choppiness, giving a lovely surreal pavement sort of look about it. Often, these were quite minimal, with just the end of a pier, a single rock, or a cliff. So, we’d go out and try that.

Keep up With The Latest Trends

Around 2006 or 2007, people started doing these peculiar images called HDRs, especially with architecture. We’d look at the people who were doing this and try to find out what software they used. Back then, there was a thing called Photomatix, which was a very powerful but very difficult to understand tool.

We would learn about bracketing, which means taking shots at different exposures. Our cameras back then could only bracket three photographs, unlike today where you can get seven quite easily. We would read all kinds of tips on the forums about how to process these things because it wasn’t straightforward back then.

It wasn’t user-friendly at all.

Our typical workflow involved creating a basic HDR blend in Photomatix, which we would then overlay on our traditionally edited photo. This technique helped us recover details in both the highlights and shadows. While this manual process was time-consuming, it was considered the industry standard at the time, so we followed the best practices established by leading photographers.

Try New Kit

As remote flash triggers became a thing, so you could take your flash off the camera and put them onto light stands, we purchased some softboxes, speedlight flashes, and some very dodgy little triggers and receivers. The trigger would go on top of your camera like normal, but your flash would be on top of a receiver. You’d set the power manually, go to your position, take a photograph, and then check the lighting.

Then you’d think….

• Does it match the person you’re trying to copy?
• Is the front too bright?
• Are the backlights in the right position?
• Is the rim light like the one you were trying to copy?

You would then have to walk around and manually change the powers because there was no remote power changing in those days. You also had to move them a little bit to get the right position and then take another photograph. Eventually, once you’ve got the look you were trying to emulate, you could click away for a while before moving to the next spot.

Don’t Reinvent The Wheel!!!

My point here is if you try to emulate what people have done before, stuff that you like, you learn how they did it and then can bag those skills and use them for all your future work. The art of copying is all about learning rather than being derivative. So, the point is not to start doing exactly what the person you’re copying does because that’s their thing. The point is that you learn how it was done, and with all those skills, you can then, like a person riding a bike, just set things up with all that new knowledge you’ve gained from copying.

I Still Copy…!

So, there’s a few things I’ve done in the last few years which are still like this. One is Flambient, which is a technique of blending interior photographs using a mixture of ambient light (like HDR) and also a flash. The result is a hybrid image which has all the benefits of the ambient light – quite cozy and natural, but also of the flashlight, which eliminates color issues. So, I’m still copying people when it’s necessary.

Don’t be afraid to ask…

You should copy people, and to be fair, I think most people are actually flattered if you ask them how they did something, so don’t be afraid to ask. Copying is king.