Practicing Photography

Nobody wants to hear it. But it's true. You can't get good at something if you don't practice. Your photos suck because you need more practice. A sharper lens, more megapixels, more YouTube camera reviews, watching how-to videos, scrolling Instagram, reading this blog post. None of these activities will improve your photography. Only practice will.

I know this to be true, but I still struggle with it. What and how should I practice?

Many years ago, I discovered a photography workshop on Creative Live. Remember that platform? I think it's changed hands like 5 times but it's still up and running. The workshop was intended for wedding photographers, which I am not, but the presenter, Roberto Valenzuela, said some really direct things about practice that lured me in. I purchased the course and it changed the way I look at photography. The course is from like, 2012 but it's totally relevent today.

He emphasized deliberate practice. Go out and shoot with intention, then, when you're trying to shoot a portrait, it'll be second nature. You shouldn't be practicing on paying clients. You should know damn well what you're doing when clients are in front of your lens. I bought his book, Picture Perfect Practice and I'm reading it again for a second time. He outlines the things he did to become a better portrait photographer and breaks it all down.

What I like about it is, if you do the practice exercises, the things you learn become burned into your subconscious and shape the way you see. For, me, this book answers the what and how of practicing photography. I do recommend it.

There are 2 things that I enjoy photographing more than anything. Candid people (documentary, street, reportage) and portraits. For me, that's the stuff. Landscapes are fun, I like shooting cars, but for some reason, photographing people is what I like most. Maybe it's the Imago Dei that draws me to this. I don't know.

Candid Kids

I have 2 kids and shooting documentary photography of their childhood came easy to me because I had access. Access is very important, especially if you want to practice something. It's hard to get reps in shooting icebergs in Antarctica if you don't live in Antarctica. Anyway, my kids are near me every day so I practiced like crazy shooting images of them just living life. I feel like I got pretty good at this because I could practice at will.

In most of these shots, I'm paying attention the light, framing, balance and other composition elements. Trying to make something out of the chaos. This is practice without a specific intent. I'm just working on taking good photos.

I'm not going to bore you with my before shots, but here are just a few of the thousands of images I've shot of my kids candidly.

I can (and do) critique these photos all the time. Could have done this better. Should have tried that or this. For instance, the image of the 2 girls on the beach with the wind blowing their hair, I wish that horizon line wasn't cutting across their heads. But, that's how learning goes.

The problem with kids, they grow up, turn into teenagers and the candid photos come to a stop. I still take pictures of them but not like I used to. Don't worry, I'm still exploiting my children for my photographic pursuits. We'll get to that.

Street Photography

In addition to documentary photography of my kids, I also did a lot of street photography. This is a hard genre to excel in but I love the challenge. I don't consider myself a street photographer but I practiced in this area as well. Again, access. I could go out on an occasional weekend or night after work and practice because I lived in the city.

I could use a lot more practice in this genre and I do hope to keep going although, I moved to a rural area so access to street scenes is limited. I don't consider the images below to be particularly compelling images, but I also don't think they're bad. Much better than the images I shot when I first started, that's for sure. And that's because I had some practice over the years. But again, this was practice without intent. Just trying different things and working on improving.

And now to the type of photography I want to be good at the most. This is where I'm willing to pour in practice for years because I wan't to get truly good at it.

Portraits

I have been trying to shoot good portraits for about 12 years now. Once again, practicing, but not necessarily with intent. I would get some paid work photographing families, doing headshots or senior portraits every now and then. The work was okay. My portraits were decent. But I knew I needed something more. I needed to show up to do a portrait (paid or not) and do my thing, knowing the outcome would be good. I still don't fully have that. I get some good images, but I often wonder if it was a fluke.

Practicing with intent, by that I mean, I'm going to go out and shoot a portrait using shallow depth of field in bright light with a clean background and pose my subject in a flattering way. Next time, I want some environment in the background, but not distraction and again, create a flattering images of my subject.

After that, maybe we focus on balance in the image using what's available at the location, or leading lines, or repeating patterns or...you get the idea. You go out with a plan, you know what you want to get, you try to accomplish that and then review your work.

Again, my kid comes into play here. My daughter loves doing portrait shoots because she uses the images for Instagram. I get to practice portraits. We both win.

Here are a few of my practice portraits with a brief explanation of why I did what I did and how.

For these, I was attempting to use shallow depth of field to create a dreamy background with my subject appearing natural in the image. I think I mostly succeeded but I went overboard on the shallow depth of field here. These were shot at f1.8 at 85mm on full frame which is a bit too dreamy.

I learned that balancing using flash, directing a pose, fighting exposure with the ND and my model being goofy and joking around is a lot to balance.

And that's why I decided to go back a few days later to the same area and just use available light and keep it simple instead. This time, I wanted to have some motion in the shots, like she's walking around and exploring. Again, huge focus on keeping backgrounds nice and clean, without distractions.

I feel like these turned out pretty good. I like that the background isn't so blown out and that her look is natural for the most part. I learned that keeping it simple is good but the trade off is that the light is not as nice as it is when using flash.

Conclusion

Practice is critical if you truly want to get good at something. Doing something over and over doesn't necessarily lead to progress. You have to go out with an idea in mind, use the knowledge you've gained, pick apart the result and find out where to improve.

I still don't feel like I have as much control over a portrait shoot as I'd like. The good news is, I can keep practicing and get better. Check out the book I recommended and start trying this yourself.