LocalNavy433 Photography

Hello and how the hell are you?  If this is your first time here thanks for stopping by.  In this blog I am going to give you three tricks to improve your photography no matter what genre you shoot in.  I am a landscape and portrait photographer and I was needing to work on my compositional skills more.  I did a few jobs and it paid for me to get a new to me camera that I am going to be using as my backup body.  With saying that I wanted to see what I could do with the old thing.  I set the challenge to only use that one body and one lens this set the stage for the three tricks and is trick one.  Only using one body one lens to capture stunning photos is hard enough. 

I mean let’s truly look at how this trick is going to help you out.  For one it forces you to just work with what you have and it forces you to stay within the given focal length that you chose to work with.  For me it was 50mm and for a portrait photographer that would be easy enough but I put myself into a landscape mode.  So now I have to see if I can find a compelling image at that focal length. This was truly a challenge because I am usually shooting at the wider end of the focal range like 17-35 range for most of my work in landscape photography.  This means that I have to focus more on what I want in the frame so you can see how this is going to help with composition.  The second part of this hat trick is really where the fun begins for me and maybe you as well.  

The second part you have to shoot in Jpeg.  Yes that means no edits at all and that in and of itself is hard for me as I tend to edit all my images because it is half the process.  If you have been reading this blog for a while you know how I feel about the need for editing an image.  The main reason for this part of the challenge is simple.  I wanted to work on getting my setting right in camera to properly expose the photo right out of the gate.  The real challenge was the sub challenge that I gave myself and that was to get it in three shots.  I mean it truly is working on getting the proper exposure.  I was not allowed to use my meter or a histogram.  This really forced me to work on what the photo looked like on the back of the camera. I had to expose on the fly and it was so much fun it brought me back to when I first started shooting. I was taking photos from flowers to wide open landscapes.  This allows you to really work on getting the images just right to start with.  Seeing what you see is part of this challenge as well and that made me happy.  The last trick is truly where you are going to see how these will help you grow as a photographer.   

The third trick is to shoot with a camera that you are not used to using normally to shoot with.  This is where I did the photo jobs to buy a Canon 5D2.  Now I have shot with this body before in the past but it has been over two years since I have shot with it.  I felt so lost with the controls and where everything was for the settings.  I totally wanted to throw this thing in auto and just blast out shot after shot.  That would have done nothing to help me grow so I was changing settings left and right just to get the images that I was after.  I was not to keen on shooting with a older body again but I needed to see what I could accomplish with this old thing.  The images that I walked away with truly were some of the best images that I have taken in a while.  

I know the one thing that is going to help you grow as a photographer is to step out of what you normally shoot and put constraints on how you are going to shoot.  This allows you to try different types of shots that you normally would not be shooting.  On that note what are you going to do with challenging yourself as a photographer?  How are you going to feed your passion for getting out there to shoot?  What is holding you back in your personal photography?  The last question that I have for you is simple when is the last time that you shot something that you have never shot before?  These are some of the questions that I ask myself all the time to help me grow and get better.  Enjoy from St Johns AZ y’all