Photography for Beginners (and Experts)

Beginner, Intermediate and Pro – what do these terms even mean? Photography for beginners is the same as it is for Pro’s. Fundamentally both are using a set of near identical tools to create an image.

Misleading Hierarchies

Beginner, Intermediate, Pro are the common categories used to create a hierarchy of educational materials in almost every field, not just photography. On YouTube the terms are endemic, every class is a Masterclass. But there are problems with this type of lazy classification. I’d rather see something like Beginner, Improving, Advanced, But even that carries a whiff of elitism. Perhaps it’s Stage One, Stage Two and Stage Three?

So, with that in mind, what would constitute Stage one, two and three skills. The thing to remember here is that a professional or expert photographer needs and uses Stage One skills as much as they do Stage Three. This is not about abandoning the basics, it’s about expanding your repertoire.

Camera Skills

Stage One – the Basics

• Exposure
  • Aperture
  • ISO
  • Shutter Speed

This is about how cameras work. We master these things before moving on because otherwise we will be consumed by chaos!

Stage Two – Intermediate

Manipulating the above to create an effect

• Soft Background
• Motion Blur
• Lens Control
• Sharpness or Blur
• Composition
• Bracketing, Focus Stacking, Panoramic Stitching

Stage Three – Pro

• Getting reproducible results
• Coping with difficult conditions
• Awareness of the desired effect of the photograph

Its obvious that these things build on one another there is nothing in Stage two that could be reliably repeated without a thorough understanding, mastery even of the topics in Stage One.

Photo Processing

I could create categories and map stages on a journey to them, but that would imply that Pro is the end of the journey and that I would never go back to Beginner techniques. The reality is very different.

I think there are three iterations of processing, with each stage depending to some extent on the previous one or two stages. These choices are more to do with landscape photography specifically, but can mostly be applied to any other genre.

The first pass in my photo processing workflow is Cropping and Exposure

The second pass is always about colour

The third is about creating depth and leading the eye

How I achieve these results is about technology.

Stage One – the Basics

• Cropping
• Exposure
• Contrast
• Saturation
• Straightening the Horizon

These are activities that I would urge any beginner to study and master. Actually anyone to study and master. They are fundamental to the creation of a decent photograph from a RAW file.

Stage Two – Intermediate

• Framing
• Color Temperature
• Identification of Subject
• Hue, Saturation and Luminance

These imply an intent that indicates a degree of deliberation. The positioning of the subject, the way attention is drawn to it and the careful adjustment of colour and tone speak to what the photograph is about. It’s no longer a record shot, it is there for a reason.

Stage Three – Pro

• Leading the Eye through the image
• Creating Depth
• Using selective adjustments to achieve the above

These speak to more nebulous characteristics like tone and feeling. It’s about telling a story, a much abused phrase, but as soon as you start leading the eye, you are directing a story.

Down with Hierarchies!

I also have a problem with these hierarchies more generally, It’s very clear that somebody working at Stage Three, is not necessarily a professional, but they are somebody who has mastered the basics and is perhaps wondering how to take their photography forward. They will always need to understand exposure and contrast, hue, saturation and luminance and they will use these things in service of the image they want to produce. Just as a professional does.

I was a professional photographer for nearly ten years. 90% of my commercial work was effectively still-lives. Does that equip me to be a professional landscape photographer? No, it doesn’t. But it did give me a mastery of the basic skills in both Camera work and Processing.

So I don’t think “Pro” is a suitable term for Stage Three. I prefer “Advanced” but even that isn’t quite right because if we map the skills listed above onto something that equals progress, what we are doing, as improving photographers is this –

Stage One – Getting a Decent Exposure

It’s all about mastering the kit and the rules of capturing light. Nothing more.

Stage Two – Making a Picture “of” Something

Now that I can reliably take a photograph that I can view without wincing, I can start to pay more attention to what goes into and what is excluded from the frame. And the look and feel of the photograph.

Stage Three – Making a Picture “about” Something

Now that I can compose a picture and get rid of distractions, I can start to think about where I want the viewer’s eye to wander. And that’s it.

Conclusion – Photography for Beginners and Experts

This idea of stages gives us a straightforward definition of the evolution of a photographer without falling victim to the Dunning Kruger effect, looking down at beginners or being awestruck by the experts.

The beauty of this as somebody practising education, is that I can map lessons and software capability onto these categories without the possibility of being misunderstood. It works as a classification for learning.

This seems to me to be more accurate in terms of the evolution of a photographer, but it’s a marketing disaster waiting to happen! I could call my next YouTube video “Proposing a new categorisation of the skills and concerns of an improving photographer“. or maybe not – how about “Three Secrets the Photography Industry doesn’t want you to Know“?