Learning practical skills during college days is usually inconvenient because one has to practice for more hours than the class time period usually is.
However, I found the college trip the best way to practice my Photography skills. Because these kinds of skills need variations and can mostly be practiced outside.
One can still practice it in its surrounding areas but, for more versatile photography, the scene variety is important. Hence, scouting different locations with scenes that portray different feelings in every single shot was necessary for me. And the area where I live is not so versatile for different sorts of photography.
Table of Contents
My trip planning for photography
Well, Recently, my college organized a trip to Kullu-Manali, and I immediately registered for it so that I may take a break from the theoretical part of my studies and enjoy the journey as well as practice my light-camera-action skills.
I readied up a piece of big baggage with a set of outfits for all three days and two nights, along with my camera gear, which included Canon EOS R50.
At first, I thought of practicing photography along with cinematography, but it came out to be only photography because I didn’t have enough space to fit everything in like my gimbal and tripod. As I did not bring a tripod, I had to do everything handheld.
To add more variations to my photography, I took two Black Mist filters 1/8 and 1/4 along with a ND filter for better exposure control and contrast.
Apart from that, I took a Telephoto Lens (75mm-300mm), a Wide-Angle Zoom Lens (18mm-45mm) for a better wide view, and a 50mm Prime Lens for better portraits.
I planned to practice landscape and portrait photography because these are the ones that I’m interested in.
However, there is also one more category that I like to practice a lot which is architectural photography. Even though I didn’t plan for it because I thought I would not find any good architecture, I turned out to be wrong when I reached there.
With all the stuff I was carrying, I arrived at the college, and our trip set off with a formal group photo that was to be uploaded somewhere that I didn’t know where.
What I learned from the moments I captured.
After enjoying and partying on the bus less than half the way to Manali, I took out the weapon and started capturing the people.
1. Always Consider the Balance.
Balance is the most important principle of photography. Every composition we capture with balance, the elements in the image look symmetrical.
Although a lot of composition have no symmetrical balance, We still have to balance it asymmetrically accordingly the abstract of elements across the frame.
This photo looks aesthetically good, at the same time, there is more weight on the left side and less on the right side, which unbalances the image a little.
Whereas, this photo Looks well-balanced and pleasing to the eyes as the main subject is placed more on the right side to balance the elements on the left side.
2. Consider multiple compositions in one shot.
While capturing moments with different compositions, an amateur may only focus on individual composition, but one should never avoid other compositions
In some scenarios, Compositions like the Rule of thirds, Headroom, and lead room come together if the subject is facing in another direction than in the camera’s.
Along with multiple compositions, one must consider the balance in the composition as without it image looks incomplete and amateurish.
3. Use DOF (Depth of Field) accordingly.
Depth of field gives an image a professional look, most professionals uses depth field to direct the viewer eyes to the subject.
However, using aperture at lower stops all the time to show a narrow depth of field is not a practice of a veteran photographer.
It should be used appropriately as per the circumstances. If the photo need to have a clear background with the subject in the focus for the necessity to tell the context of the photo, then there is no need to use lower stops of Aperture.
5. Shutter Speed Rule.
Capturing stills while preserving a good amount of sharpness was not that easy, if I did not know this shutter speed rule.
There are times when the subject is standing still and the photo output still turns out to be less sharp and jittery. It is because when we photograph handheld without a tripod, the micro hand moments introduce a little bit of motion blur that results in less sharpness.
The solution is to set the shutter value at double of focal length. A lot of veteran photographers follow this rule
At lower Focal length, one doesn’t need to increase the shutter speed unnecessarily by compromising the quality of exposure.
6. Capture in Raw.
The mostly used image format is JPEG across the interest. It is an lossy format as it compresses the image data too much and remove unnecessary details to shorten the size.
However, This format is not good for editing as when the camera captures the information through the sensor and converts the image into JPEG format, it immediately removes unnecessary details from the image.
Manipulating the colors of the images in JPEG format leads to loss of quality and color banding as it does not contain all the color information.
For the editing process, the photo needs to contain all the information that is captured through the sensor. It helps to manipulate the image futher more without losing the quality of the image.
Conclusion
I learned a lot of things about photography although I regret that I had not brought my tripod because I could have more practices like long exposure photography. Still, I learned a lot of good techniques to grow in the field.
I feel the more photographs I capture, The better I can compare. Exploring by capturing moments more frequently is all that a photograph should do because it leads the knowledge of the field.
Trying out different compositions and their combination gives an idea of how things work.