Photography, just like any art, is never a fast process.
It is an extremely slow process of learning how to see, and that is why only those who are passionate enough to stick around for decades can achieve mastery.
What I really mean to do, by providing the following ways to learn photography yourself ‘fast’, is to point you towards the areas that matter the most so that you know what to focus on.
And of course, these things don’t cost a dime. You can absolutely learn photography yourself for free with enough patience.
Here are five recommendations as to how you can learn photography yourself fast and for free:
Learn to shoot on manual mode
Watch the behind-the-scenes of photographers you look up to
Read photography critiques
Answer questions in the photography community
Find a mentor
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Learn to Shoot on Manual Mode
Why does this help me learn photography fast?
Shooting on manual is covered first for a reason - you should get this out of the way as soon as possible, and focus on the things that will actually bring your photography to another level.
You might not see it now, especially if you are just starting out.
But throughout your photography journey, you will come across situations where shooting on auto mode is screwing up your photos, let alone serving your creative and commercial needs.
At some point, you need to retain more control over what your camera is doing.
Techniques are by no means the most important thing in photography. But it is a prerequisite, without which your creative possibilities will be greatly handicapped.
So in order to get to the really interesting bits in photography fast, get yourself past the stage where figuring out the proper settings still requires a conscious effort.
How to learn manual mode?
With some patience, you can largely navigate manual mode through repeated trial and error by yourself.
Consolidating my learnings from 8 years of photography, I wrote a guide on how to get started with shooting on manual mode.
If you want more perspective, let me point you to some resources I have personally learnt from - they are completely free, thanks to the generosity of the creative community.
Sean Tucker - he made a video explicitly on how the exposure triangle works, explaining it in granular detail.
I have recommended Sean’s videos a couple of times in other articles, such as this one about shooting in a dark room.
What really inspires is the fact that he never talks only about the techniques. He always makes it clear in his tutorials the stylistic implications of what he is teaching.
Julia Trotti - in this video she breaks down for you her thought process on how she decides on the settings. If you want to jump straight into the steps, start watching from 3:35.
Of all the tutorials, I am recommending this video because it is exactly what I do too.
In simple words, here are the steps:
Pick the Aperture first based on your style
Pick the lowest possible ISO
Point your camera at what you want to shoot
Check the light evaluation meter on the camera
Pick the shutter speed that puts the exposure meter reading at 0 or -1.
If this hasn’t convinced yourself that shooting manual can be a fast and free process, I’m not sure what will!
Watch the Behind-the-Scenes of Photographers you Look Up To
Why does this help me learn photography fast?
Photography is largely a cyclical process. Photographers oscillate between periods when we know exactly what to work on, and other periods when we feel totally uninspired.
What you do at a plateau is a determining factor of how far your photography will go, and how fast.
When you see how a photographer’s life is behind the scenes, you realise that even the best photographers are human.
It feels very real to see the knitty-gritty of their routines, from planing, shooting, selecting and editing. When you study the art to this level of detail, you start to pick up some learnings here and there.
And all of a sudden, you get a clearer idea of what it takes to get to where you want to be.
Seeing how photoshoots work in the most practical manner is a surefire way to learn photography fast yourself.
How to find the best behind-the-scenes?
Behind the scenes are literally everywhere on the Internet, and you can binge watch them for free.
Based on queries I get in my DMs, some of the biggest questions photographers have has to do with shooting portraits - not knowing how to behave and communicate with their models.
I doubted myself too in relation to this, a couple of times both before I made my first attempt at portraits, and after hearing some complaints from an angry client.
It was this exact video from Jessica Kobeissi that made me realise that there was nothing wrong with my photography.
I learnt that you don’t need advanced equipment and fancy lights in order to create great photos; and most importantly, this video proved to me that this is not just a cliche that gets thrown around.
The key issue was that I wasn’t making the photoshoot a fun experience for my client.
Ever since watching this short clip, I quickly picked up on my communication skills and made sure that every shoot I ever booked would turn out fun and satisfying.
This is just among the countless resources out there free to leverage on yourself!
Listen to Photography Critiques
Why does this help me learn photography fast?
If you want to make great photos, you first need to know what goes into a great photo.
Exposing yourself to the best photographs ever made and the commentaries in relation to them is a good way to put photography in perspective.
Novice photographers might not resonate well with the state-of-art photographs that speak of deep underlying messages, because their aesthetics can be very different from what is generally considered to be visually flattering in today’s standards.
But as you surround yourself with analyses of how certain techniques and concepts are employed by the big-name photographers, you will soon learn how to appreciate the most celebrated works of all time.
And this ability to appreciate photography is the key to learning photography fast because you know what great photography looks like, and therefore chase after the right things.
How to find content on photography critiques?
Again, there are loads of free content. But in order to make this article more helpful, I have curated some sources that I found the most inspirational.
The Art of Photography - a photography talk show run by Ted Forbes, a photographer based in Texas. He also runs a podcast by the same name.
He does a lot of amazing talk about contentious issues about photography, but what I really want to highlight here is his ‘The Artist Series’. The name is self-explanatory, where he dissects the work of many famous photographers.
It is an incredibly enjoyable series to watch because it points to some amazing things you can do with your photos.
The LensWork Podcast - a podcast show run by editor Brooks Jensen.
Again, there are a ton of free inspiration that could totally fast-track your learning process, but I want to point you to one particular episode that is especially relevant here - “Questions to ask while you are looking at a photograph”
This will totally up your game in terms of getting a basic understanding of how to evaluate the merits of a piece of work, which should translate into massive improvements in your own work within a short period of time.
Answer Questions in the Photography Community
Why does this help me learn photography fast?
At any given point in time, you can hardly tell what you know and what you don’t know.
Unless you engage in a conscious process of figuring that out, you will just be floating around without a focus on what to work on.
There are many Facebook groups out there where photographers of different skill levels ask questions and share their own work for feedback from the community. There are also tons of questions being asked on forums like Quora.
When you attempt to answer these questions with what you have learnt, you are putting yourself in a situation where you have to consolidate what you have learnt.
You only teach what you know. Thus at this point, it becomes clear whether or not you have the expertise on a certain subject matter.
Regarding the things you know, this process gives you the opportunity to organise you knowledge in a more systematic way; regarding the things you don’t know, it carves out what goes on your learning list.
Either way, you are putting yourself on track to a fast learning process in photography!
How to answer questions in the photography community?
Join these Facebook group. Start a Quora account. These things are totally free and can be done instantly yourself!
If you want to see how this all looks like, see the screenshots below.
This is my Quora Dashboard (left) and my stats page (right). I get answer requests flooding in every day ever since I wrote a few long, detailed responses.
The topics people ask about might or might not be within my abilities to answer. But since doing this, I gained a much better idea of what I already know, and what I probably need to focus on learning, especially if it is a question that a lot of people are asking.
This is one of the very active Photography Facebook Groups - Photography: Learning and Sharing.
As you can see, the community is very interactive - many photographers post their work and ask questions.
By just keeping the conversations going, you start to see how you can contribute to the community with what you know, and take away tips and tricks that you didn’t know.
If you haven’t been doing this, you absolutely need to try out this free tip to learn photography fast!
Find yourself a Mentor
Why does this help me learn photography fast?
Technically, learning with a mentor isn’t learning ‘yourself’. But it is a free option so I am putting this here.
Why this accelerates your learning is simply because two heads are always better than one.
Firstly, you need at least a second perspective on your work to steer you clear of biases and blind-spots.
Secondly, mentors shorten your plateaus because they help you see things that you can’t make yourself see.
Lastly, one great perk is that you get to try out each other’s gear. You two probably own different gear and having this opportunity to try on different lenses and equipment for free sets you up for a deeper understanding of how the camera works.
How to find a mentor?
Be the right mentee.
Most people, especially established photographers, are happy to coach promising younger photographers.
Note the word ‘promising’ here; no one wants to waste their time on photographers that they don’t see potential in.
Therefore, a large part of finding a mentor is to demonstrate your passion and your talent in the craft.
The rest is to find out where are the people you look up to hanging out. If they are a contemporary photographer, most likely they are on Instagram and Youtube.
Realistically, you might not be able to get the masters to notice you right away. But by being active on these platforms, you might get people who have previously worked with these masters to pick you up.
So these people might not be the very individual you look up to, but they would have gained some wisdom from your favourite photographer, and essentially you are getting their mentorship indirectly through this person you are in contact with.
Cherish all ties you build, because their expertise is really going to push you further into your photography journey much faster than you ever would yourself.
Summary
In this article, we talked about how:
Learn to shoot on manual mode
Watch the behind-the-scenes of photographers you look up to
Read photography critiques
Answer questions in the photography community
Find a mentor
Can help you learn photography fast and completely free of charge, by yourself!
More sharing coming soon!
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Keep shooting, keep creating!
The mission of this blog is to provide the best insider information in the photography industry, as openly as possible. You have direct access to my
first-person experience as an aspiring photographer who talks, but also works.
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