These days, everyone wants to be a photographer, because everyone CAN be a photographer. Digital cameras are insanely cheap and the optics that power them are getting better every year. Incredibly popular are digital single lense reflex cameras (DSLRs).

Canon and Nikon, two well known camera companies, can attest to this. In the last couple of years, both Japanese companies have seen tremendous success in the entry-level DSLR bracket. Commonly known as “Pro-sumer” DSLRs, models such as Nikon’s D40/60/3000 or Nikon’s XSi/XTi/T1i are cheap, lightweight, and take great photographs that a point and shoot camera could never produce. Coupled with memory cards capable of storing thousands of photos, it’s no wonder that photography will soon become a profession that doesn’t require professionals.

Any person can just grip a camera, press the button and, voila, make a photo. The world doesn’t need another photograph on Flickr, just for the sake of being able to upload one.

Image courtesy of the tsirkus.org Flickr photostream

Photographs should show something without the aid of text or speech. Photography is all about the visual experience. Much like how a well written story “shows” and doesn’t just “tell,” a great photograph is one that doesn’t need to be explained.

Facebook makes it easy to upload albums and albums worth of photos, but how many of them are worth spots in their respective albums? How often do you see people just uploading everything from their memory cards directly to Facebook?

Again, comparing photography to writing, all the “bad” stuff is edited before it ever makes it to the reader. A book isn’t perfect when it goes through its initial rounds of editing, and neither should your photographs.

Here are a few tips everyone should follow:

1) Delete. This function is so simple, yet so many people are reluctant to use it. Great photographers know that for every ten photos, one or two will make the final cut. Even if two photos do get away from deletion during the first round, one of them is usually deleted in the second round. You will never know what photos are good, great, or terrible if you never learn to tell the difference. Good photos aren’t great. Delete them. You can make better ones when you acknowledge that. Because we’re no longer restricted by film, it doesn’t mean that we should keep all the “garbage” on our photos just because we can. It’ll clog your hard drive when you transfer it over and when you’re low in storage, you’ll kick yourself for not deleting all the lame shots in the beginning. Read the rest of this entry »