Learning to Shoot

#TravelTuesday with Dave has come round again, and this week I want to jump into learning photography. I’ve been asked time and again about when I got into photography and where I learned, most recently on the Drobo blog.

I’ve told the story of my first camera many times over: – my parents got me a Nikon F40 for my birthday when I was a teenager. That’s the very short version of the story! If I were starting now, I reckon it’d be a lot quicker to make progress versus back then when I was shooting on film rather than with a screen on the back of the camera. In fact, I recently took hold of a film SLR and it was very strange that there wasn’t a screen back there!

The way I learned to shoot initially was simply by picking up the camera and shooting anything and everything—flowers, my pet dog, landscapes, people, literally anything that happened to get in my way! It was so frustrating, though, because I wasn’t immediately seeing results. Oftentimes, I couldn’t quite remember what I had done when I’d gotten things right and wrong. It was all about making mistakes, then subsequently remembering what the mistakes were!

Me shooting Blesbok in South Africa

When I moved to South Africa I had another camera, as well as my Nikon F40—I had a little digital point-and-shoot. I was learning from both together, taking the “pure photography” skills from what I was doing with the SLR and taking note of composition and colour and various other things from the digital camera, and kind of mangling and intertwining the two to form a bigger picture in my head of what was happening in photography.

It was a few years after my return to the UK that I started to take it much more seriously, investing in a digital SLR and really taking note of what an aperture really was, how shutter speed affects things, and getting my head around ISO. I discovered that I really did love photography as much as I’d thought and I stepped it up a gear again, scouring the internet for all the information that was available and investing in all manner of books for my shelf.

The truth is, moving on from then to now, that I’m still learning and I’m positive that if you ask Scott whether he’s still learning, he’ll give you that same positive answer. And, Scott is someone who I’ve learned so much from with KelbyOne and his amazing books and from shooting together.

Me with Mimo Meidany, Roberto Pisconti, Juan Alfonso, and Scott Kelby, shooting together and learning from each other

The community of photographers incorporates all of us at every skill level, and it’s a great community. It’s one which we should treasure and respect because of its value to us all because, ultimately, wherever and however you learn about photography, you’re learning from a photographer.

Speaking of learning, Photoshop World West is right around the corner, and if you’re there I’d love to meet you!

Much love

Dave

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