Essential Photography Tips for Beginners

Photography is a fun and fascinating process. It’s easier now than ever to get started too. Long gone are the days of needing portable darkrooms or waiting hours to take a single photograph. You can dive in and start snapping away at anything that piques your interest.

Since the technical barrier to photography has been drastically reduced, we have much more time to focus on how to take good pictures. We’ve compiled 47 photography tips for beginners that show quick ways to improve photography techniques without over-complicating things.

There’s lots to take in as a new photographer, so we’ve also broken the list down into five categories. Jump to the sections you need the most help on below. With this in hand, browse our photography rentals to find gear that’ll help boost your skills.

Learn all the rules so you can break them later
Photography rules are essential because they provide a foundation for more advanced photography tips and tricks later on. Learn the rules first, so you have more creative control when breaking them later.

Learn as you go — don’t let it prevent you from picking up a camera.

Expose and focus first, then frame your shot
An improperly exposed or blurry picture is unusable, but one not precisely framed may still be saved. For this reason, you should always focus on and properly expose for the subject before adjusting the frame.

This is something that happens more often when you have extreme lights and darks in the same scene.

Focus on the eyes
We are always drawn towards the eyes in a photograph, since eyes are a natural focal point that we connect with.

When taking portrait photographs at any aperture, make sure you nail the focus on the eyes. As long as the eyes are in focus, both you and your subject are more likely to consider the picture to be properly shot.

Make lots of mistakes, then learn from them
The more mistakes you make, the faster you’ll learn and improve your photography skills. All professional photographers once started without an understanding of anything on a camera.

The real value is in turning mistakes into lessons that build your skills. So try a technique or style you haven’t done before and expect to make many mistakes along the way.

Perfect the exposure trifecta
Getting proper exposure in photography consists of balancing three things: shutter speed, aperture, and ISO settings. You can start off by shooting in automatic or priority mode, but to get full control and shoot with manual camera controls you’ll have to understand the relationship between these three things that each directly affect the exposure and quality of your image.