80% of the Basics of Photography in 10 Minutes

Photography is a tremendously varied pursuit that can take you many different directions, but there are a few fundamentals that every photographer, no matter what they shoot, should have mastered. If you are new to photography and ready to learn, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will teach you many of the basics in just 10 minutes.

Coming to you from Pay Kay, this great video tutorial will show you 80% of the basics of photography in just 10 minutes. If I could give one piece of advice to anyone just starting out and working on gaining comfort with concepts like the exposure triangle, it would be to put it into practice one piece at a time. A lot of people hear that manual mode is the best way to learn and the only mode that professionals use. Not only is it untrue that professionals do not use other camera modes, it can be overwhelming to try to manage all your settings simultaneously when you are just starting out. Pick a semiautomatic mode such as aperture mode and experiment with how changing that one settings gives you different results and creative control. When you are comfortable with all the parameters individually, then you can move on to manual mode as appropriate. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Kay. 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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I believe you will cover this in the future. Great explanation of the light triangle. I see you are using a Sony, one thing also and that is using Zebras to see points that are too bright like lights at night or clouds or reflections off say a white bird. There is a +/- EV dial on top to the right to the back, adjusting in the negative will lower the Zebras (brightness of something). Yes will give you a darker image but exp. better detail of a birds feathers, also will lower ISO and increase SS when reducing Zebras. Due to high dynamic range to get a brighter image is in post just increase exposure or shadows or blacks and you will find less noise with the greatest detail on the bright object.
For outside set to + 109, for exp. for overcast clouds say during fall and getting colors of leaves most capture low so not to capture blown out clouds but you will get great detail in the clouds.
At night with a moon going negative may bring out moon details.
A white bird at high noon feather detail
The benefit faster shutter speed and lower noise (lower ISO) if using Aperture mode.