12 Photography Rules To Live By

The following article is by a contributing author, Stephen Cook. For more information about Stephen, see the authors bio below this article.

Rule 1: For every rule of photography, someone has taken a great photo by breaking it.

corollary 1: It probably won’t be you.

corollary 2: You have to know the rules before you can break them.

Rule 2: The camera is just a tool. Don’t get too hung up on your equipment.

corollary: Every guy I know that says he has equipment that costs more than his house.
If you can’t take a photograph, a more expensive camera/lens/whatever won’t make much difference. On the other hand, the person most likely to be able to go out and do a great day of photography with a cheap toy camera is the person least likely to try and do it, other than as an experiment or an exercise. If a pro HAS to get the shot, he or she is going to use the best quality equipment they can acquire. A master carpenter may not obsess over his tools like photographers do over their cameras, but he’s not going to try to frame out a house with a tack hammer and a dime store saw. Rule of thumb is that if you haven’t mastered your equipment yet and aren’t getting the most out of it’s capabilities, you don’t need better equipment. If the camera is starting to limit you, that is, if you aren’t getting the photographs you want because the camera isn’t capable of it, you may need to consider moving up to better equipment.

Rule 3: Photograph what you love.

corollary: Learn to love a lot of things.
There are grooves and there are ruts. When you get to the point that you can take a certain type of photograph without thinking about it, you need to push yourself out of your comfort zone and try things you haven’t tried. If you keep pushing, when you go back to the photographs you thought you had mastered, they’ll often seem formulaic and pedestrian.

Rule 4: Photoshop is a blessing.

corollary:Photoshop is a curse.

Photoshop can cure a lot of photographic sins. It also induces people to over-saturate, over-process and become sloppy in capturing the original picture.

Rule 5: Know your camera.

corollary: Know your camera.
This is the only rule I know for which there’s no exception.

Rule 6: People would rather have a bad photograph of their kid than a great photograph of someone else’s kid.

corollary 1: They’d rather have great photographs of their kid.

corollary 2: People think an okay picture of their kid is a great picture (especially if they’ve taken it.)

Rule 7: Lose the idiot modes on your camera.

You know the little modes with pictures of portraits, sunsets, and a little runner? Forget them. Learn to use shutter priority, aperture priority and manual. Trust me on this. You’ll never control your photos until you control your camera.

Rule 8: Nobody can teach you how to take a photograph. They can teach you how THEY take a photograph.

Ansel Adams was a great photographer, but he never photographed anything moving faster than a redwood tree. He taught photography and by all accounts was a great teacher. However, he taught HIS way of making a photograph. You’ll never take a better Ansel Adams photograph than he took. Learn from other people, but develop your own vision.

Rule 9: Don’t fall too in love with one of your photographs.

After you get a great photograph, enjoy it for a few minutes, pass it around, and move on. There’s another great photograph out there waiting for you.

Rule 10: Never turn down a happy accident.

Every so often you’ll be working and discover something awesome in a photo that wasn’t at all what you intended. At that point you should act like the cat that just fell off the bookshelf. Sit there for a minute, lick your paw, and go, “Yeah, I meant to do that.”

Bonus Rule 11: About half the photo tip columns are actually advertisements for equipment.

I read a LOT of photography tip blogs/columns, and have gotten to where I can spot a product placement disguised as a column from a mile away, and yeah, there are a LOT of them.

Bonus Rule 12: Cameras are like cars and computers. You can’t ever buy everything, but you can always buy more.

One of the sadder things is to see someone with $10,000 worth of equipment and no idea how to use any of it. Start with a good camera, lens, flash and Photoshop Elements or Aperture. Master those. Pick up additional equipment as you find a need for it and as you can afford it. Mastering the camera, lens, flash and an editing program is plenty of challenge for a beginner. After you understand this equipment, you may want to look at other things, but learning photography is like learning to juggle. Start out with bean bags and work your way up to chain saws.