Photography is a passion that increases the more you practice it. Many people can successfully turn this passion into a business. By learning some photography tips from those who are more experienced than you in this field, you could make way more money out of this passion than you have been making until now.
Finding out about the top photography tips could benefit you in numerous ways. Whether it is about digital photography or non-digital photography, you could get ahead of the competition in this field by keeping yourself updated with the best photography tips and hacks. The more confidence you can build up in this field, the nicer the photographs you take would turn out.
Photography is needed for websites and social media as well. That’s why the demand for good photographers continues to rise. No matter how advanced the photo-editing tools become, the original photo shot taken still carries weight. Suppose the original photograph is not taken in high quality and at an optimum angle. In that case, there is not much that a photo editing app can do to turn around its appearance completely.
Since product photos are part and parcel of marketing for almost all businesses, learning photography tips will give you opportunities in many different industries. Service-providing companies also need to hire good photographers to take pictures of their corporate culture and satisfied clients. Large organizations look for professional photographers who are well aware of the latest and top photography tips so that their corporate pictures come out the best. They then use these photographs to represent their company on their website, office, PR events, and any other marketing occasions that they plan.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
In this post, we will be talking about a few photography tips for beginners. If you master these, nothing stops you from becoming a pro at photography, which could potentially open doors for extensive career and business opportunities for you. In particular, we will be discussing the photography tips you need to know to take pictures for websites of small and large organizations.
Towards the end, we will show you how to upload good-quality product photographs on a website built on Strikingly. This is important because having quality images is one thing, but uploading them on your website neatly and appealingly is another thing. You need to be adept at both skills to make your website look attractive.
Photography Tips for Beginners
Here are a few photography tips that will help you in your career in photography.
1. Learn to Hold the Camera Properly
This might seem like an obvious tip, but it is one that new photographers often neglect. If you do not hold your camera properly, your camera would shake and the pictures would come out blurry. The best way to prevent the camera from shaking is of course using a tripod, but tripods are usually not suitable for use in bright light situations.
As you get more practice, you will develop your style of holding your camera. Make sure you always carry it with both hands. Use your right hand to grip the side of the camera, and place your hand under the lens. This will help you support its weight while keeping it in a steady position.
Keeping the camera closer to your body helps in holding it stably. Some photographers like to lean up against a wall or kneel on their knees to support their bodies better.
2. Start Shooting in RAW
Shooting in RAW is good for practice. The RAW format is similar to jpeg, but it does not compress the pictures. It gets you higher quality pictures while giving you more control in processing them after they are taken. You can edit the images taken in RAW to adjust the contrast, white balance, or color temperature.
A disadvantage of shooting in RAW format is that the pictures take up a lot of space in the camera. You might also need to invest a bit in a photo editing tool to process the photographs you shoot in RAW. However, it is still worth the effort and money for good photography practice and is thus included in our photography tips.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
3. Understand the Exposure Triangle
It might feel a bit daunting to understand the exposure triangle in the beginning. That’s why we include this in our basic photography tips. It refers to the three key elements of exposure in your camera: theISO, aperture, and shutter speed. If you shoot in manual mode, you will have to balance these three things for taking well-lit and sharp pictures.
ISO determines how sensitive your camera is to light. Low ISO means low sensitivity, while high ISO means higher sensitivity to light. In most cases, an ISO of 100 to 200 is the ideal setting for an outdoor shoot, while that between 400 and 800 is suitable for shooting indoors.
The opening in the camera lens is called its aperture. Aperture is responsible for controlling how much light penetrates the camera’s sensor. If the aperture is wide, more light can come through, which isolates the photograph’s subject. If you want to include the entire scene in focus in the photograph, use a narrower aperture.
The shutter speed determines the time for which the camera shutter stays open for each photograph. If it stays open for longer, more light can get through to the sensor. Freezing actions are usually shot well with a fast shutter speed.
4. Know Whether to Use Wide or Narrow Aperture
A wide aperture is suitable for shooting portraits. Whether you are shooting people, animals, or scenery, you need to make the subject the main focus of the photograph. You can do this best if a wide aperture is used. The subject will appear sharp, and it will blur any distractions in the background.
If you are taking landscape photographs, use a narrow aperture. A narrow aperture is suitable for putting everything in the foreground and background into focus so that all the items within the camera lens appear sharp in the photograph. This is one of the most straightforward photography tips.
5. Always Check the ISO Before Shooting
New photographers could accidentally shoot a whole series of photographs in ISO 800 and then become frustrated at the end of the session when the photos do not come outright. This is why it is good to make it a habit always to check your camera’s ISO before you start shooting. Reset your ISO settings before the session begins on a bright sunny day and also when you’re putting the camera back into the bag.
6. Use the On-Camera Flash Carefully
The on-camera flash could sometimes give unpleasant effects to your photographs, such as harsh shadows or red eyes. As part of our photography tips, we would say it is usually better to keep this flash off and use the ISO settings instead to adjust the sharpness and brightness of the photographs.
Photography Tips for Getting Good Pictures on Your Website
So far, we have discussed the general photography tips for beginners. Now let’s discuss a few photography tips you need to know precisely to get high-quality photographs for your website.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
- It is always better to use natural and bright sunlight when shooting product photos for uploading on your website.
- Investing in a tripod to take your product photos is a good idea. It will help you take multiple product shots by adjusting the product position while maintaining the camera in the same position.
- Invest in a lightbox as another piece of basic equipment for your product photography. It will help you do crisp product photography by providing the optimum amount of shadowless lighting, highlighting your product features the way they need to be shown.
- Make sure the subject, that is, your product is in focus in the photograph, or else there is no point in the photographs to be uploaded on your product page.
- Use a high resolution when you’re taking pictures for your website so that they come out clear when viewed on both small and large screens. Your website images should be responsive for all kinds of devices, including laptops, desktops, smartphones, tablets, or others. This is by far the most important among our photography tips for website images.
- Before uploading them on your website, use some basic photo editing tools to add perfection to the photographs taken,.
- It is good to plan for the future photography needs for your website.
How to Upload Images on a Strikingly Website
Once done with your photoshoot, you can upload the images on your Strikingly website. Strikingly provides tools and features that make the process of adding content to your site very easily with the use of its editor. All the photography tips we discussed are useful in getting good-quality images to upload on your site. Any mobile photography tips that you come across will also be applicable if your website is built on our platform because our templates are all responsive and mobile-friendly.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
From your Strikingly editor, click ‘Add New Section’ and select ‘Big Media’ from the ‘Image & Video’ category, or select ‘Gallery’.
Image taken from Strikingly
Image taken from Strikingly
If you use the Big Media section, click on ‘Edit’ on the image that appears, and upload your photo from your device or your Strikingly library. Click ‘Publish’ to make the upload go live. If you choose the gallery section, you can either replace the images that appear one by one or click ‘Add Images’ to upload any number of images to the web page.
If you want to upload many photographs on a web page, such as a product page, the gallery section is more suitable. In contrast, if you want to showcase a couple of large images on your homepage, we recommend using the big media section.
The easy-to-use Strikingly editor interface is just one of our features that allows you to create and maintain a professional website. We offer tons of other features too that you can check out by signing up for your free Strikingly account and going through our various website templates, to begin with. We hope to hear from you at the other end of the signup process!
