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By Kristin Mitchell

6 May 2009

As I near the end of my college course, I thought I'd write about some of the things I've learned along the way, which have helped me to take better photographs.

This is by no means a definitive list, nor is it in any particular order of preference. As a result of applying these ten lessons, I found my learning curve increased rapidly.

1. Do some research

One of the things I've been taught to do is to create books full of personal research. If you were an aspiring writer, you'd be encouraged to read a lot. With photography, you can learn a lot from what you see other people do. It helps you to work out what sort of photography you like, and get ideas about how to develop those techniques to make your photos look the same. Even through simple things like composition, it helps build up ideas about what you want to do. Before a dressmaker starts to sew, they create a pattern to work from. Keeping a little scrapbook of images you like is a bit like that pattern. Some of my college briefs are wonderful because they are so broad in terms of what we can do. For example, we were invited to create advertisement photographs of chocolate teacakes for one particular project. How we produced the photograph was left entirely to us. Through my research, I realised that a lot of the still life photography I liked used the dark field technique - a dark background, the front of the subject is dark, but the outline is highlighted. I ended up using this technique for my college project, and I really liked the unusual effect from it. It gave me something that was completely different to what the rest of my class produced.

2. Be a copycat

This is a little harder to explain. I don't encourage outright plagiarism and something that looks like a carbon copy of another image. However, there's nothing wrong with taking inspiration from a photograph, and trying to do it in your own way. For example, you might not have the kit, crew, finances or location to create a Gregory Crewdson photograph, but there is nothing to stop you finding a suitable location somewhere closer to home and trying to do the same thing on a shoestring budget with a couple of friends. Equally, you don't have to be Annie Liebovitz and have Queen Elizabeth as your subject. You could however recreate the image with your grandmother as the subject, in front of a window. Some of the most simple looking photographs involve quite a lot of problem solving to work out how to get the same angle to recreate them. From experimenting in this way, I've learned a lot about taking photographs just from mimicking, and all the photographs have my own spin on them. I'm currently working on a series of vintage inspired portraits, where I've taken inspiration on lighting, angles, shadows, locations, from fashion photographs of Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn. They're not the same, because I'll never be able to travel back in time to 1940s New York, but I've learned a lot from trying to recreate them. Sometimes I start with the original image and end up going in a slightly different direction, putting my own slant on it. It's great fun, and gives a wonderful starting point. You'll be hard pushed to be the first person to create a portrait that is completely different to anything anyone has ever done before. However, there's nothing wrong with taking a great portrait, mimicking it, and putting your own slant on it.

3. Don't Be The Same

This is a bit of a contradiction to the previous point. However, what I'm trying to say is don't be the same as those around you. Trends develop - you can see them on any internet photo sharing website. Type "stripy tights" into any search engine, look through images, and I dare say most of them come from a handful of photo sharing sites. A lot of them will be composed in a similar way, look quite similar, and probably be favourited by people who like stripy tights. I have no problems with stripy tights - I have a couple of pairs of my own. Try and find things that people aren't photographing quite so often - look for the unusual. The same goes for post-production techniques. While some post-production techniques - such as cross-processing - might compliment the quirkiness of stripy tights, most stripy tight photographers have already thought exactly the same.

4. Go easy on the photoshop

I like photoshop. I like playing with photographs, and just improving them, getting rid of unsightly blemishes, increasing contrast, and tweaking hue and saturation balance. However, there is a point when less is more. There's a lot of different and interesting techniques, and I'm very much in favour of learning them and trying them. Draganising, cross-processing/ lomo effects, even HDR. A couple of years ago, it was the thing to make yourself look like an Andy Warhol screen print, over, and over, and over again. Now it's HDR. The idea of HDR is great - bring out the detail in the shadows, and mix the balance of light. However, if it's over processed, you end up with something that looks a bit frightening. Some people might refer to it as "painterly", but I'm not really of that opinion. Remember in the eighties/ early nineties, when people wore black or white over-sized t-shirts with illustrations of wolves howling at the moon, or pandas or dolphins, usually with some slogan, under a plaid shirt, and people were beginning to grow out their mullets? That's what over-processed HDR reminds me of. Good HDR is so subtle, you don't even realise someone has processed the image using several different exposures. Keep it simple, keep it subtle, and let your work age gracefully and look classy, rather than date quickly.

5. Take criticism

This is one of the hardest things to do, but it helps a lot. Invite critique from people. If people say they like a photograph, ask why. Probe them to find out what works in the photograph to make them like it. You don't need to find a professional art critic to do this, everyone has their opinion on aesthetics. It might be that it reminds them of something, or makes them think about something. Equally, ask why when people don't like your work. It might not be your photograph they dislike, but that it stirs up a memory they aren't fond of. Look at your photographs yourself, and critique them, work out what ones you like, and what you dislike, and try and work out why.

6. You don't need lots of kit

I'm going back to my "less is more" line from photoshop here. The majority of my photoshoots involve using a small amount of kit. Mainly, my camera, a polariser filter on the front of my lens, and maybe a tripod. Occasionally I use an off-camera flash if its very dark, but I prefer to carry a reflector with me for daytime shoots which is much cheaper, lighter, and doesn't require batteries. You'd be surprised how powerful a reflector can be - I've produced photographs where it's looked like the light came from a flash gun. Keeping your kit simple gives you two advantages: firstly, you think faster about how to use what you've got rather than contemplating lots of different solutions and potentially missing the moment. Secondly, its lighter, cheaper, and easier to work with. I've met a lot of people who do talk at length about what things they've bought, what they're going to buy. I have to admit, I'm usually more critical of their work as a result, because I think they're throwing money at a photo rather than thoughts and really, I expect to see something spectacular. My favourite photographs sometimes use the most basic equipment. Sometimes being spectacular means having people underestimate you because you're working with the minimum equipment. It's satisfying when you produce an image which involves very little kit, and people asking "no really, come on, you can tell me, what else did you use to get that photo?".

7. Work with Light

It sounds obvious, but there's so many things you can do with light. For example, with daylight, you can create shadows, you can have your subject shaded or partially shaded (flagging), you can reflect it with aluminium foil or a mirror, you can get different effects and create different moods depending on the location, time of day, and time of year. Cloud coverage diffuses the light and soften shadows; sunny days give you strong bold shadows. With artificial light you can move it around, have it above, below, to the side of your subject. You can shine it through blinds to get stripes of shadow, you can back light your subject. Then there's all the tricks you can do by changing the white balance on your camera or in photoshop, to get different colour temperatures. Try photographing an object in a dark room, and shining a torch over the subject, highlighting different areas. All of these are extremely simple and cheap to try out and get some interesting effects. My favourite though, is when taking a photograph of a person on a bright sunny day, to have them stand with their back to the sun. I then slightly underexpose the image, and use the flash. That means I get a nice blue sky, the person doesn't squint, and I can control the light.

8. Change your subject

One of the hardest things I learned early on, was to photograph a very plain ordinary object. However, what I did was to try and look at it differently. Instead of seeing it as a brush, I tried looking at how it could be something else entirely. Some of the best photographs I've seen have been quite clever, where the purpose of the subject is changed entirely. A recent shot I saw which sticks in my mind, was two rows of coloured pencils, with the tips facing in to each other, and a pencil sharpener in the middle. The pencils and sharpener were positioned to look like a multi-coloured zip. One of the things I learned from photographing the brush is that actually, a simple object is often the most interesting and offers more potential for changing its purpose.

9. Make your own theme

One of the things I've enjoyed most at college is setting my own project. Start off by deciding what genre of photography you want your series to work within, for example press photography, portraiture, documentary photography, still life, travel, whatever floats your boat. Then set yourself a project to create images within that genre to tell something you want to tell. For example, you might want to produce portraits, and you decide you want to do a series of portraits which explore the innocence of some family children playing. You could think about the different games they play, where they play, whether they play on their own or in groups, their different behaviour and emotional reactions to games. You might decide to look at photographs other people have taken of children playing, and think about whether you want to try and emulate something similar in your work. Once you've planned it, photograph it. The hardest bit, is to find a group of images which work well as a set and as individual images. You need to find images which complement each other, that don't just look like the same pose from a slightly different angle. You might want to show a diverse range of games the children are playing, or different locations. Think about trying to tell a story with your series. This is great fun and can add personal value to the photographs you produce.

10. Geek out

This last one almost takes us full circle back to the first point. If you only ever read one thing about photography, make sure it's your camera manual. You'll find there are things in there which you didn't know you or your camera were capable of. In addition, it will make you more familiar with your camera's settings when you need it most - you'll know which button to put your finger on at the crucial moment. You'll end up experimenting more when you see what your camera can do, to test it to its limits, and that's a very good thing. There's nothing wrong with being a bit geeky and knowing your camera. Always remember the old adage that a bad tradesman blames his tools. A good tradesman however, learns how to use his tools, and how to get the most from them. Take your camera and learn everything there is to know about it. It's one of the best things you can do to improve your photography.

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