Digital Photography Basics: From Equipment to Skills

By the end of this post, you will have the necessary theory to begin your journey to become a photographer. This course is the digital photography basics and will focus on choosing your equipment, learning how to use it, learning the techniques and applying them, and what you can do with your photos.

This course covers the steps to start your journey on becoming a photographer before you have even invested any time up until you are ready to make some money from your photos. However, this is just a basic lesson. Though you can learn a lot from it to start you off, there is much more in depth lessons to learn. If you wish to become more involved and continue your learning how to improve your photography skills, you can subscribe to our newsletter.

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Lesson 1: Why Digital Photography?

The world of photography quickly became accessible to everyone with the advancement of digital technology. Digital cameras became widely available to any budget. Nowadays, you can become a photographer simply by using your camera phone. The world of photography revolutionized, and it has never been the same since.

Still today, cameras continue to improve with new technology coming out regularly. With the introduction of mirror-less cameras and drones, photography is as exciting as ever.

Why do you want to be a photographer? Maybe you want to work your way towards becoming a professional. Maybe you just want to photograph your family events with quality images for your own personal memories. Either way, you have come to the right place to begin your photography journey.

The journey begins with knowing what you want to photograph. Identifying what you want to photograph will help you when researching the correct equipment to purchase. After this, we need to purchase that equipment and learn about it. Next, we will explore the theory and skills used by photographers to capture those wonderful looking photos. Finally, we will discuss what you can do with your photographs.

What to Photograph

Before you begin exploring the many different types of photography, you must ask yourself what you want to photograph. What is your typical subject? When will you use your camera? Are you traveling with your camera? The answer to these questions will help you choose the proper equipment to purchase.

For example, when I bought my first quality camera I knew I would be photographing landscapes and portraits as I would be traveling and figured these were my typical subjects. I settled on a larger camera knowing I would have to travel around, but I was happy with the features and quality. Know what you want before you make the commitment to purchase it.

Types of Photography

Here, we will briefly discuss the various forms of photography (though there are numerous others) that you could experiment with and give you ideas for what equipment you would need. While you are reading through this list, ask yourself whether or not this style of photography interests you. Some of these styles of photography overlap each other in terms of what they encompass.

Landscape

If you are a traveler, hiker, or adventurer, you will most likely want to be capturing the world around you. Photographing a landscape is taking a photo of the land that surrounds you.

Wildlife

Photographing wildlife involves capturing wild animals in their natural habitats. This requires a lot of patience and exposure to these animals.

Nature

Nature photography is taking photographs of the natural world around you. The forest, lake, mountains, anything that was created by nature.

Architecture

Architecture photography includes the photographing of man-made structures. This involves creatively photographing these structures and presenting them.

Documentary

Photography tells a story. There is no better way to tell a story then through documenting a series of photographs and compiling them together.

Macro

Macro photography is the photography of small subjects. This involves photographing these subjects at close range using a specific camera lens.

Sports

Sports photography requires a fast shutter speed to capture quick moments in a photograph.

Time-lapse

Taking several photos from the same position and stringing them together creates a time-lapse of longer events.

Panoramic

Panoramic shots are wide shots of a large area. This involves taking several photos from the same position and stitching them together afterwards to create that wide shot.

Urban

Urban photography captures the urban lifestyle of neighborhoods and the subjects living within that environment.

Underwater

Underwater photography captures the life of aquatic animals in their habitats. This requires special equipment and sometimes a scuba license if you want to dive deep.

Travel

Travel photography is simply documenting your travels through various forms of photography.

Portrait

Portraits are photos of people, specifically their faces. A face can tell a lot about a person and their story. Portrait photographers specialize in telling that story.

As we previously stated, there are numerous other styles of photography out there to study. However, most of those types are not things that you will get into when traveling or doing day-to-day photography. For example, satellite photography or medical photography is not something you are probably here to study.

Knowing what you are interested in studying and practicing is an important step towards our next lesson. Choosing the right equipment requires you to know what you want to achieve with your photography and what subjects you want to capture.

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