What are some ways to improve photography?

Lead: Athletes will never compete without hard training, so why should photographers take photos that can be hung on the wall without training? The following are the methods I have carefully arranged for you to improve your photography level. You are welcome to refer to them!

1. Study EXIF information

In photography class, I usually put a few works before the lecture. After the exhibition, someone will raise their hand and ask how a photo was taken. I will tell the answer first, but then I will teach them how to guess and try the camera settings, so that they know what to do in any case.

The best way to take professional photos is to analyze the works of professionals, and Flickr is the classroom. You should know that the camera will store all kinds of shooting information in the photo file-EXIF. Websites like Flickr can make it easy for visitors to view the EXIF information of photos. You can see how other photographers take pictures.

This exercise needs to log on to Flickr website, find good photos, and then read the information of EXIF carefully. Ask yourself why the author chose this setting and what can be improved.

As you do this exercise more and more, you will ask less and less questions about how to shoot. With more practice, you can easily see the camera settings.

2. There is only one photo.

Most photographers will take thousands of photos in a one-year course, but only a few photos are worth showing as personal works. There may be some good photos in every shot, but there are very few really wonderful ones.

Almost all photographers understand this, but their actions are just the opposite. Most people still take a lot of photos, and then hope some of them can reach a higher level.

Although this practice of not letting go of any opportunity has some merits, it also makes photographers accustomed to giving up here and going elsewhere if the first two photos are not satisfactory. Therefore, this exercise is to help photographers get rid of this bad habit: go out to shoot, but only take one photo when you go home. You can press the shutter countless times, but delete those imperfections before you go home.

This exercise can teach photographers not to give up a shot easily until they get a satisfactory picture.

3. 1 object shooting 10 times.

This exercise seems to run counter to the last one, but their purpose is the same: to keep taking good photos.

This exercise is: find a subject and take 10 photos of it. When I led my students to shoot landscape photography in Naples, I realized the necessity of this training. We went to photograph the famous fishing port pier in Naples. As I expected, everyone set up a tripod as soon as they arrived. Their photos are all long docks and sunset. This is a good composition, but they can't find a new way to shoot.

So I asked each of them to take 10 different photos. They had some difficulties at first, but in the end they all got beautiful photos. They shoot small details of the dock, capture the moment when the running water hits the dock, shoot the dock silhouette at sunset and so on. They all found that the original photos were far less powerful than forcing themselves to find new things.

When something attracts you, don't leave too early. Take 10 photos of the same thing all the time.

If you can do exercises seriously instead of just taking photos in the hope of improving, you will have more and more confidence in your skills.