Photography

For the Forgetful

This is a work in progress, too.


Photography For the Forgetful is my guide to everything I've learned about photography, in the context of my life, and taking into consideration what photography means to me, an eternally anxious and forgetful person. It's still early in writing. I don't imagine it will be done for another year or two, at least, though I couldn't give you any sort of meaningful estimate either way. I stay pretty busy, these days.

The difference between this guide and Do It Yourself is that this guide focuses more on being a photographer; using a dedicated camera and building meaningful skills in photography. Do It Yourself is limited to self-photography, using a smartphone. If you want better pictures of yourself, Do It Yourself is for you. If you want to be a better photographer, this is what you want.


Here's how it's currently organized:

  1. Why Bother?
    I think it's important to start your reading of this guide with a real justification for why you want to bring photography into your life. For me, photography does a lot. It helps me remember things that I've done. It gets me out of the house. It puts me in touch with other people; with new people. It makes me want to make my time worth photographing. What does it do for you?

  2. First, Use What You Have
    In this chapter, I tell you not to go shopping. No, don't skip straight ahead to the next chapter. Yes, that one is more fun, but I think that this one is more important. Whatever you have--use that, first. Whether that's an old hand-me-down kit you got from your father-in-law, that tiny, cheap digicam that's somehow still bouncing around in your room, a shiny new toy you bought on a whim, or even your phone--use that. Photography is more than taking pictures. You can learn on anything. You do not need to feel barred from entry here.

  3. Shopping! Shopping.
    Yes! It's everyone's favorite hobby (mine included). Here's what you need to know about what you need and don't need when you're on the market for new gear. Regretfully, this is likely to become the most popular section.

  4. Expose Yourself
    That's enough preamble. Now it's time for the actual photography. You have your camera. You have your subject. How do you get your subject into the camera? Exposure is hard, and takes some real consideration to get right, especially in difficult or variable conditions. Here, I want to cover both the basics--light, aperture, shutter, gain--and the not-so-basics--metering methods, programs, exposure strategies, invariability.

  5. Composition (No, Not Rule of Thirds.)
    In this section, we talk about the rule of thirds.

  6. Editing, in Painful, Painful Detail
    Good editing is the difference between pretty good and truly good work, in my opinion. Those last few details matter. Unfortunately, there are a lot of details. Here, I will *attempt* to cover my own editing process, in detail, from beginning to end, and to use it as a basis for talking about principles of editing in general.

  7. Workflow
    It's another boring one, unfortunately. And again--the cruel irony that the most boring topics are the most important, and the farthest-reaching. You take a lot of pictures, or you will take a lot of pictures. What the fuck do you do with all of those files--what do you do?

  8. Portrait, Fashion, Cosplay
    If you find a model that doesn't tense up, even a little bit, when you point a camera at them, please give them my number. People get uncomfortable in front of a camera. They always do. If you want to take pictures of people, you have to make your people comfortable. In portraiture, the model comes first. Everything else is secondary.

  9. Where to Find Birds
    Birding is a fun, free activity that anyone can enjoy! Bird photography is not. You can save yourself some trouble, though, logistically and financially, if you know how to find and safely approach the birds you wish to photograph in the first place.

  10. All Business, No Pleasure
    When you like your work, and feel you're ready, you might want to start asking for money, in return--or maybe you've been thrust into this by a friend who wants you to take their portraits and wants to pay you, too. At some point, you might start thinking of photography as a business. How do you pick your prices, communicate your terms, and set appropriate expectations?

  11. Mouth Where my Money Is
    I've talked a lot about what I know about photography. Now I want to talk about what I don't know. This is my section to critique myself, and ultimately some guidance on how you can critique yourself, too, and why that's important.

  12. In Retrospect
    It's been a few years since I got back into photography. A lot has changed.



Like Do It Yourself, I am working on a short-as-possible-but-still-helpful version of this guide, where every one of these sections fits onto one page. It will probably be a fairly long page. As I have the time and energy, I'll fill each section out, add examples, and split them off into their own pages. At the end of that process, this guide will be done.

I will be hosting this guide on my website, for as long as I have a website where I can host a guide like this. I think that information like this should be freely available, and I think that more and more often, it isn't. Photography is a lovely way to spend your time, and I think everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy that. It's done a lot for me. I want to do something for it, too.