Photography is as much a learned skill as it is a natural talent for some. Whether you fall into the former or the latter category, there are a few practices that you can practice every day that can help you become a better photographer.
Travel photographer and blogger Pat Kay shares four tips he uses to keep his photography game at its peak. In the above video, he goes into detail about habits he's formed to keep his shooting and editing sharp.
The first two are geared towards seeing with your eyes. Kay talks about recognizing what does it for you as far as photographs go and making sure you photograph it. For Kay, it's hard light situations that play between light and shadows. For others, it's reflections. For me, I always like to make long exposures out of water and the ocean, quite possibly a byproduct of living near water for so long.
Kay talks about visualizing compositions. He talks about "scouting" a location through Google Earth or Instagram images that people have already taken, but he also talks about seeing some concepts and looking for them in everyday life, such as frames or leading lines.
The third tip is the one that is most obvious for photographers: carry a camera. Yes, a cell phone is a camera, but many times, I'm also carrying a small mirrorless camera, such as my Canon EOS M50 Mark II and a small pancake lens, such as the Canon EF-M 22mm f/2 STM. There's just much more freedom and ability to make the images I really want to make with a mirrorless camera as opposed to what's just on my phone. That said, the best camera is, as they say, the one you have with you.
Finally, the last tip is about putting some space between you and your work. This was an old trick I used to do as a newspaper reporter. I'd write a story, and if time allowed, I'd let it sit for a day before reading it over and editing it, or if that wasn't possible, I'd do a few laps around the outside of the building before coming back to it. In photography, your emotions are always running high after a shoot, and coming back and editing photos right away might mean you don't make the best choices or edits because of it. Letting the photos sit for a bit before looking at them just might be the emotional distance you need to make the best work.
Kay goes into a lot more details on these habits, and you can check them out in the video above.
Do you have good photography habits to share? Leave them in the comments below.
