When it comes to learning something new, developing a skill, or achieving a GOAL, such as becoming a better photographer, there are three things you need to consider, these are:

• Acquiring the relevant KNOWLEDGE
• Finding the appropriate level of MOTIVATION
• and moving forward in a PRODUCTIVE manner

Motivation

The WHY is the most important aspect of your journey. This is what drives you forward. When you come across obstacles it’s THE WHY that will help you to overcome them. Make sure  you’re doing what you’re doing or about to do what you’re about to do, for the right reasons. Don’t do it for other people, do it because you passionately want to do it yourself.

I’ve put Motivation at the bottom of the pyramid, in the illustration above, for the simple reason that it’s the basis for any progress forward, without it you just aren’t going to follow-through.

As well as finding the drive to move forward, there is a force that is actively working against you. This force is FEAR, fear of failure, fear or moving outside your comfort zone, even fear of success. Carefully look into your psyche and examine what is stopping you biting the bullet and taking the next important step towards your goal, you’ll inevitably find some form of fear is the culprit.

Knowledge

The HOW is next for us to take a look at. Acquiring the relevant knowledge is our next consideration in the process. Knowledge acquisition is twofold,

• finding reliable sources and
• obtain accurate information from them

When it comes to finding reliable sources of information, the best advice I can give you, is to find someone who has achieved whatever you’re aiming to achieve. If you want to learn about photography for instance, then who better to take advice from, than a professional photographer? Someone who makes a living from the very thing you want to learn about.

Consider finding a mentor who is willing to devote some of their time to helping you out, also consider mastermind teams or role models as sources of information. On the subject of learning photography, I have lots of free information on this site to help you do just that. Alternatively check out my one to one photography tutorials which are designed to hold your hand through the learning process.

So in summary, finding someone who offers advice and knows what they’re talking about, is the takeaway from this section of the article.

Productivity

Last but not least is, the WHAT and WHEN. These are the fundamentals of productivity. Productivity is not about being efficient, it’s about being effective, and there is a big difference between the two. It’s about getting the most important things boxed off. Find the one, most important thing that can be done to get maximum impact and do it. Ask yourself, “What’s the one thing I can do now such by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary.” The difficulty is often identifying what your priorities should be, what’s important and what’s not. Again our one to one photography tutorials will get you over this problem and set you up on the right path.

So there you have it, stick to the Get Results model outlined above and that is exactly what you’ll get, RESULTS. Check out the get results model here for more information, well worth a look, and never forget to enjoy the journey. Life is not a destination.

This handy illustration shows all the paper sizes from A0 to A8 and their dimensions in mm. I often find myself surfing the net to find such an illustration, so thought I would do one for myself. Hope you find it useful.

Focal Length has a dramatic effect on photographs. The whole image is transformed. When you shoot at wide angle the elements in the image are spaced out not just in terms of field of view (from side to side), but also from front to back with foreground and background elements looking to have more distance between them. As you increase your focal length, the field of view is narrowed and the elements in the background appear to move closer to the foreground elements. Check out the video above and the images below to see how each of the focal lengths impacts the look of the photos.

This illustration is taken from the same distance for each shot.

In the second illustration I have changed camera position with each shot to try to frame the subject the same in each photograph. It shows dramatically how the background creeps up on the subject with each increase in focal length. I have moved from approx 1 feet from the subject, in the first photo to about 30 feet away in the last photo to be able to give the subject the same framing.

A long focal length is ideal for zooming in on distant subjects so that they appear to be closer to the camera position. Short focal lengths are best for getting more of the scene into the photograph, or if you are unable to move back to get more of the scene in with a longer focal length.

Hope you enjoyed the information in this post. There are lots of similar posts throughout the site if you want to check out more. Thanks for taking time out to visit us. I also undertake one to one tutorials at my studio in Warrington and have more online tutorials. Subscribe to my “learn photography newsletter for more info” below.

Your DSLR camera has a built in light meter that helps you work out the correct exposure.

when you point your camera at something to take a picture your camera meter calculated the exposure.

Most DSLR cameras have a number of metering modes you can use that are something like this…

Evaluative metering mode

This is a general-purpose metering mode suited for portraits and even backlit subjects. The camera sets the exposure automatically to suit the scene your pointing your lens at.

Partial metering mode

Effective when the background is much brighter than the subject due to backlighting etc. Partial metering covers about 9.4% of the viewfinder at the center.

Spot metering mode

This is for metering a specific spot of the subject or scene. The metering is weighted at the center covering about 2.3% of the viewfinder area. When spot metering is set, the spot metering circle will be displayed in the viewfinder.

Center-weighted average metering mode

The metering is weighted at the center and then averaging for the entire scene.

Hope you enjoyed the information in this post. There are lots of similar posts throughout the site if you want to check out more. Thanks for taking time out to visit us. I also undertake one to one tutorials at my studio in Warrington and have more online tutorials. Subscribe to my “learn photography newsletter for more info” below.