How I Learned to Take Better Photos With The Photography Essentials Program!

I love to see the Ah-Ha moments in stu­dents when they start to see that they can take bet­ter pho­tos. You know, those moments when it just “clicks” …when it all starts to come togeth­er for a stu­dent, and I can see it in their pho­tos. Gone are the days of out-of-focus snapshots…they are now pro­duc­ing crisp, tack-sharp pro­fes­sion­al-look­ing pic­tures. Pic­tures that they are proud to show off! And I love even more to hear the sto­ries of where they start­ed and how proud they now feel show­ing off their amaz­ing shots!

Today, I am going to share one of my stu­dents, Christi­na’s sto­ry, and her before and after pho­tos with you.

If you are already in the Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials Class, I hope that Christi­na’s sto­ry and pho­tos moti­vate and inspire you to pick up that cam­era every day. If you aren’t a stu­dent in the Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials Pro­gram, I hope you read on to see just how Christi­na achieved these fan­tas­tic photos.

Can you introduce yourself and tell us where exactly you are on your photographic journey?

My name is Christi­na. I’m mar­ried with two daugh­ters, ages 14 and 10. Pho­tog­ra­phy has always been a hob­by of mine, and I’ve always looked for ways to improve myself.

What made you want to learn photography?

My inter­est in pho­tog­ra­phy start­ed around the time I was 13 or 14 years old. My sis­ter and I were both on the year­book staff. She was in high school, I was in mid­dle school, and my dad had built us a dark­room in our base­ment. I remem­ber my dad bring­ing out some old pic­tures he took as a teenag­er, and he had the neg­a­tives. Not only that, he still had the dark­room equip­ment he had used. It was so fas­ci­nat­ing watch­ing these old neg­a­tives come to life. I don’t real­ly remem­ber ever hav­ing any lessons in pho­tog­ra­phy, but I always had that Minol­ta film cam­era with me at school tak­ing pic­tures. I would always hear, “Here comes Christi­na with the cam­era!” and either my sub­jects would run or pose, not nec­es­sar­i­ly what I want­ed. I would go home after school, excit­ed to devel­op the pic­tures I captured.

As I got old­er, I still loved the idea of pho­tog­ra­phy and want­i­ng to cap­ture the moment, but I nev­er had the mon­ey to go to school. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, my cam­era did­n’t get used as much in my ear­ly 20s. The longer I wait­ed, the more tech­nol­o­gy start­ed to change. Then came dig­i­tal. I could see the pic­tures right after I took them! There were more set­tings, such as Auto! Why would­n’t any­one not want to use Auto? If the cam­era can fig­ure it out, why keep fum­bling with these dials and watch­ing the expo­sure meter? It would be about 10–15 years lat­er how wrong I was.

How did you begin learning photography?

I was 30 when I had my first daugh­ter. The cam­era was back in my hands reg­u­lar­ly, not miss­ing a moment of my daugh­ter’s first few years. For the most part, all pic­tures were still on Auto, and occa­sion­al­ly I would attempt to try to remem­ber man­u­al from my teenage years. I would get frus­trat­ed and switch back to Auto.

When my girls were around 7 and 3 years old, a local pho­tog­ra­ph­er was hav­ing a Mini Spe­cial. I jumped right on it, as the only oth­er “pro­fes­sion­al” pic­tures we had, were from a stu­dio chain. On the day of the Mini ses­sion, it was cold and windy. The con­di­tions prob­a­bly weren’t ide­al for young kids get­ting their pic­tures tak­en, espe­cial­ly my three-year-old. The pic­tures were just…ok with red noses and all. I don’t blame the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, but when I looked at the pic­tures, I thought I could do better!

When did you realize that you wanted or needed to learn more to take better photos?

I real­ized if I want­ed to get that “Kodak Moment,” I need­ed to learn the cam­era. Not just Auto, but all the set­tings. The oth­er but­tons I was too afraid to touch. At that time, I start­ed read­ing my cam­era man­u­al but went to books, tons of books, FB Pho­tog­ra­phy groups, and YouTube. I start­ed work­ing in man­u­al again, but then, there was anoth­er set­ting- Aper­ture Pri­or­i­ty. I loved Aper­ture Pri­or­i­ty! One less thing I need to fig­ure out on set­tings, as it fig­ured out my shut­ter speed for me. But even then, not all my pic­tures were to my sat­is­fac­tion. I was miss­ing some­thing, but I did­n’t know what it was. Again, back to YouTube, how to do this, how to do that, same with FB groups. I was famil­iar with some of the ter­mi­nol­o­gy thrown at me with the back­ground I had, but it did­n’t mean I under­stood it. No mat­ter how it was explained. So I went with what I knew and tried my best, slow­ly see­ing results.

It was­n’t until this past March that I start­ed to see the miss­ing puz­zle pieces, I knew I want­ed to take bet­ter pho­tos, so I joined Dena’s class­es. How the Rule of Thirds can make or break a pic­ture, how the shut­ter speed and ISO work togeth­er, White Bal­ance (I’m still work­ing on those). It’s all in steps, which I was­n’t doing. I was try­ing to throw it all together.

What is one thing you wished that you had learned earlier?

If I could go back in my ear­ly years of the cam­era, I would have stayed on man­u­al. But you know what? It’s nev­er too late to learn new things.

When I signed up for Dena’s class, Begin­ner Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tial, I did­n’t know what to expect, let alone if I was even going to have time to do it.
I was sur­prised by how easy and sim­ple it was. Dena did­n’t throw out pho­tog­ra­phy lan­guage that few begin­ners, if any, would know as most Face­book Pho­tog­ra­phy groups and or class­es do. Her class­es explained WHY; why my aper­ture needs to be at a par­tic­u­lar place. WHY I should look for the light and not just the location.

I took all three of her class­es, and I learned so much from each class. Each les­son in her class­es went by steps. The lessons did­n’t rush from one to anoth­er.
I nev­er thought I would take pic­tures indoors with lim­it­ed light. I was actu­al­ly intim­i­dat­ed by it. Dena explains what light to look for and how and where to posi­tion your sub­ject for the per­fect pic­ture. When it came to out­door pho­tog­ra­phy, I knew the best times to shoot were ear­ly morn­ing before 10 am and gold­en hour, but I did­n’t know how to work with shad­ows and open shade, and I learned how in Dena’s Let in the Light class.
With all of the class­es, you can go at your own pace, and they can be down­loaded as well. If it took me longer on one les­son, I could go back to it as need­ed. If I still did­n’t under­stand, Dena was right there at the key­board, hap­py to help.

What is one thing you would say to photographers just starting out?

To those who are start­ing out, take your time, breath, focus. Learn from your mis­takes. One of my favorite quotes is,
“Life is like a cam­era. Just focus on what’s impor­tant, cap­ture the good times, devel­op from the neg­a­tives, and if things don’t turn out, take anoth­er shot.”

I want to thank Christi­na for tak­ing time out of her life to share with us the sto­ry of her pho­tog­ra­phy jour­ney. I hope that her sto­ry inspires you to pick up that cam­era, begin learn­ing in a guid­ed man­ner, and nev­er give up on your pas­sion for pho­tog­ra­phy. Check out The Begin­ners Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials if you are look­ing for the Per­fect Pro­gram to learn how to take con­trol of your cam­era, or the Let in the Light Essen­tials if you want to learn how to find the cor­rect light­ing and make it work for you.