Follow Someone

Think back to kindergarten when your teacher asked you that fateful question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  I don’t want you dwell on what you did or did not achieve, but I do want you to think about what you wanted to be.  Was it a fireman, policeman, cowboy, doctor, nurse or even a scientist?  Why did you want to be like them?  With photography you need to do the same; you need to follow someone.  I don’t mean follow their blog, but follow their work.  Look at the photos they create and intently study what they did to create those images.  It doesn’t have to be a well know photographer or even one that has a blog.  It could be someone with Flickr account or a photographer that contributes regularly to a stock photography outlet.  I have several photographers I follow and here are the reasons I follow them:

1. I use them for ideas of ways to pose and shoot portraits.
2. I try to figure out how they light a scene to get the look that they do, especially the ones I know that don’t post process their images.
3. I try to emulate some of their looks, not that they are my style, but if I can emulate a look I can better serve my clients.

These are the main reasons but I do have another, I want to know what they say about their work and how they relate to their network of followers.  Because photography is more than just the image, it’s the way you make the viewer feel.  In some cases I don’t like what they do or say, but it’s all a learning experience for me and helps me think about and hone my photography both as an art and a craft.

Zero

Don’t you just hate it when you’ve been photographing for a while and realize that one of your camera settings was set wrong.  I hate to admit it, but that’s happened to me a lot.  Either the ISO was too high or the lens was on manual focus and if I didn’t have a LCD on the back of the camera, I wouldn’t have figured it out for days.  So here’s a good habit to get into:

What does it mean to zero out your camera?  Simply put, change all your settings to the “zero” state for you.  The zero state is the settings you use most often.  My zero state is Aperture Priority mode, ISO 400, f/5.6.  For Manual Mode, ISO 100, 1/60, f/5.6.  And for the lenses I always set them in autofocus and image stabilization on, if they have it.

That’s it for this tip.  There isn’t a single definitive zero state.  It depends on you and what sort of photography you do. So You’ll have to figure out your zero state.  I can’t tell you how much doing this simple little thing has helped me.  Now when I pull out my camera, I know what  it should be set on, so if I need that quick shot, I’m good to go.