Regardless of what you want to achieve with your photography, here are some sure fire ways to improve your skills without a degree.
- Get familiar with your camera. …
- Watch online tutorials. …
- Hit the books (and online portfolios) …
- Practice, practice and practice! …
- Expand your network. …
- Get a mentor or apprenticeship.
The basic essential is getting to know your camera and lenses and what they can do and what they cannot. I know it may seem stupid but read you MANUAL and find out the features that are within you camera. Always buy the best lenses you can afford.
The lenses you choose are probably more important that the camera at the stage. Zoom or prime it does not really matter they are all pretty darned good nowadays.
The main problems you will find when you first pick up are camera is not with the camera, or the lenses, but with you. Getting blurry or out of focus images due to camer shake, a thechnique problem. Learning how to hold and balance your camera is fundamentally essential, practice and things will improve.
Camera shake happens more frequently when using loger focal length lenses so until you have perfected you technique they are best avoided. Use Google and Utube to find someone to instruct you on this or watch the video below.
Hitting the books is another great idea, use you library or the internet to find free books or instructional videos that will help yu learn the ”basics”.
Getting out and practicing is essential to being able to put a good image together, set yourself some goals, go out and just take pictures of things you find interesting, make notes of what you do and refer back to them to try are see what you are doing right, or wrong. Not things like shutter speed and aperture, and even the weather, a windy day can have an effect.
Learn from others, maybe even consider joining a camera club. Consider mentoring and maybe even some courses at your local college, but most of all HAVE FUN, keep snapping.
a world without pictures is like coffee without cream and sugar, bitter 