How To Get Into Photography as a Hobby
Photography is an unusual and rewarding hobby that enables peoples to capture beautiful moments, showcase their creative skills and to look the world through a captivating lens. With photography, you can capture beautiful and memorable moments of life, emotions and stories of life. Everyone can capture images, but your passion and interest is necessary for carrying photography as a hobby. Photography as a hobby is like having fun and challenge that will also make you more creative. In photography as a hobby, you take photos or capture moments just for your enjoyment and happiness. You don’t need to worry about earning from photography. In this article, you will find complete guidelines and tips about how to get into photography as a hobby.
Advantages of photography as a hobby
Photography is a marvelous hobby and have many advantages.
- Firstly, it enables you to explore world more closely, prepare your eyes to observe small details that often go unnoticed.
- Secondly, It enables you to showcase your creative skills by playing with lighting, composition and framing.
- Another useful advantage of photography as a hobby is that it make you feel fresh, problem free, as it provide various opportunities for expressivity, make you more attentive and better observer.
- You also enjoy and feel happy by sharing your beautiful captured images on social media and gaining likes and comments.
Decide what type of photography you want to do
Photography is an art of capturing beautiful, memorable moments and it have many diverse genre like food photography, portraiture, wedding photography, sports photography and fashion photography etc. First of all decide what type of photography you want to do according to your inspiration and interests. You may also want to capture every moment and object that your eye notice or you may a nature or wildlife lover and want to capture nature, animals and plants. You can also decide more than one theme of photography. Here I’m sharing some popular types of photography.
Portrait photography
In portrait photography, photographers mainly capture the identity, personality and essence of their subject using photography techniques such as composition, lighting techniques, poses, props and backdrops etc. If you want portrait photography, capture beautiful moments in such a way that they express emotions and tells stories.
Landscape or nature photography
Nature photography is another stress buster photography that allow you to capture beauty of nature and breathtaking scenes. If you are a nature lover, the landscape photography is best option for you to capture beauty of nature such as beauty of sunsets or snowfall and many more. Experiment with different photography techniques and also consider the rule of thirds to take unusual and attractive images.
Wildlife Photography
Like me, you may also love wildlife and crazy to capture the amazing and wonders of animal kingdom in their natural habitat and interacting with each other. Wildlife photography’s shots requires patience as your subject movement is uncertain and you don’t know how shots you’ll get until it captured. Make sure animals don’t disturb from you and also care their safety so try to capture from a distance.
Street photography
Street photography involves the capturing of daily life moments in urban environments that tells stories. In street photography, you will find various opportunities to take shots. Make sure you capture real and authentic moments of people and their environment that tells stories and express emotions.
Macro photography
Macro photography involves the capturing of very small objects such as flowers, insects to show their close up view. For macro photography, you’ll need a macro lens to explore tiny objects and to show their beauty.
Now choose the theme of photography according to your inspiration and interests. You can also choose more than one type of photography. Now take your camera and enjoy this interesting hobby and improve your skills through practice and experimenting with different photography techniques.
Essential equipment for photography
Here are some equipments that you’ll need for photography.
Types of cameras
First and the most basic equipment is the camera in any type of photography. Here are the most popular types of cameras for photography, choose the one that you find suitable and best for your theme of photography:
DSLR cameras
DSLR cameras are of high quality with manual settings and allow you to change the lenses. They are big with heavyweight and have versatility that enables you to capture high quality images in different styles.
Mirror-less cameras
Mirror-less cameras are more popular due to their compact size and lightweight so easily portable than DSLR camera. Mirror-less cameras have fast auto-focus feature, better post processing option and give access to a wide range of lenses to take versatile images.
Point-and-shoot cameras
For beginners, the point-and-shoot camera is best option to choose as it is small, user friendly and also economic friendly. These are best to capture daily life moments.
Even you can also use your smartphone’s camera that have high resolution power. So choose any one of these cameras and start taking attractive images. Before purchasing your camera, read feature of camera that is mentioned on model and choose if these are according to your need and suitable for your theme of photography.
Essential accessories
In addition to camera, there are also some essential accessories and equipments that will allow you to enhance your photography experience. Some of these are discussed below:
Tripod stand
A tripod is useful for taking sharp and clear shots as it help to keep camera steady and also useful for experimenting with long exposures.
Lenses
With mirror-less and DSLR camera, you will also need lens of good quality to take different types of shots.
Camera bag
Camera bag is most basic equipment required to keep your camera safe, protected and to keep everything well organized. It also helpful in carrying camera easily anywhere.
Batteries and memory card
To avoid yourself from run out of power at capturing moments, you’ll need some extra batteries and memory cards to store your captured images.
Understanding the basic of photography
Composition
is the creatively arranging of things within your frame to capture an attractive and unusual images. Follow some basic photography techniques such as rule of thirds and framing to take your photography from an ordinary to extraordinary level. Experiment with different photography techniques to take desired shots.
Lighting
Lighting plays very crucial role in photography, Understand how to use different light equipments such as light reflectors and use of natural or artificial light in photography to take attractive and desired and attractive shots.
Exposure
The right exposure is the key for getting stunning results. Understand the working of aperture,ISO and shutter speed to control the effect of lighting in photos. With practice you will able to take high quality and attractive images.
Editing and post processing techniques
Editing is very beneficial tool in creating more stunning and attractive images. First of all, understand how to work with some basic and popular editing software like adobe and lightroom. After choosing the best and suitable editing software, focus on enhancing the overall look of your image, sharpness and white balance. Keep in mind, don’t do over editing and keep your captured shots as it is naturally. The last but not least thing to do in editing is remove any element that can cause distraction from your main subject.
Conclusions
In conclusions, Photography is a wonderful, stress buster and useful hobby. Hobby photographers feel joy by capturing beautiful moments and telling stories through their captured images. By understanding the basic photography techniques, lighting, exposure, different types of photography and styles, you can improve your photography skills. Read this article carefully, hope it will help you to become a hobby photographer.