🌳 How to Take Magazine-Level Photography for Complete Beginners

1. Get the “shallow depth of field” look (images with blurry backgrounds) by purchasing a DSLR camera, with a lens above, preferably 50-200mm, also keeping the f-stop low between 1.4 and 5.6. If you can’t afford this, the next best thing is the Focos app for smartphones - it’s free, and gives ai-generated shallow depth of field. This also applies to creating “cinematic” video shots. Don’t forget iPhone’s cinematic mode for that one.

2. When looking for a camera, get one with high dynamic range, meaning that it can get a lot of range of dark and light without one flooding out the other (for example, instead of the sky being white and the ground being bright, the sky would stay blue along with still being able to see the ground).

3. If you’re taking portraits, try lining up the eyes a little above the horizontal center line of the frame.

4. I like the ratio of my photos to be the same as my movies - 1920×1080. Widescreen. It feels more cinematic and picturesque, to me.

5. Turn your photographs black and white, or try shooting with a black and white filter already applied in-camera. You’ll see more shapes and outlines of things, and it can make your shots more emotional. Lighting will feel different.

6. Just speaking of lighting, experiment with lighting. Try different things. Light your subject from different angles. See what shadows it creates on them. trying practicing on miniatures with a flashlight. Backlighting creates a halo effect. Side lighting could create emotion. There are also these things that the film world calls “scrims”, which are basically like cookie cutters for lights. You can make it look like there are blinds, or a tree, or other sorts of things. Also look into 3-point lighting. You can choose harsh lighting (direct, with very sharp shadows) or soft lighting (with a soft box over the light - diffused). If you light underneath, you can light just the eyes. Check out this video on the effects of lighting and how it could change appearance - my teacher Justin used to show this all the time in the cinematography classes I used to take. Some lighting emphasizes the cheekbones, too.

7. Try putting colored transparent sheets over your lighting (but not too close, because that could be dangerous!). In the film world, we call these “gels”. This can create so many interesting moods in your film.

8. If you own a DSLR, you can choose the bokeh (the little blurry dots of light in the background of professional photographs) shape by using something called lensbaby - you can turn the blurry sources of light into little stars, squares, or other shapes.

9. If you want to practice portrait photography but don’t have a subject, try practicing on a doll. When I was 15 I would practice on my Disney Princess Barbie dolls, and I got some amazing shots

10. If you own a DSLR, try light painting - you put the camera on a slow shutter speed, place the camera on a tripod or a stable table, then walk in front of it and paint in the air with a light - the result is that it will create a trail. Can create some awesome portraits. I used to teach kids how to do this in media classes.

11. Mirror shots can be awesome - car mirrors, house mirrors - they serve as a frame within a frame.

12. Using natural window lighting rather than lamp lighting goes a long way - it’s soft, diffused light, and is naturally very balanced. It looks very studio-like. Makes a difference with foods, portraits, and more.

13. Trying capturing patterns that you see, or layers. These kinds of things - in my experience - are harder to capture with a wide-angle lens. But look for repetitions, repeated things. It can be very metaphorical.

14. Nighttime shots with single light sources can be legendary - also, nighttime city shots. My favorite way to take pictures of the city is at night. And black and white nighttime city shots are a bonus.

15. Try taking pictures from a different perspective. Low-angle, high-angle, worm’s eye view, or bird’s eye view from a window. You can learn something new about the same things you see every day just by changing your perspective on it, literally. It helps the brain think in new ways.

Want some inspiration for photography? Feel free to browse through my portfolio below. I am not fond of Viewbug’s five-photos-per-week limit on their free plan, however I have found it fun to use because I like the look of the layouts. It used to be 20 free photos per week. Oh well. You also used to be able to edit the photos directly on the site, changing color pictures to black and white.

In terms of camera recommendations, here is what I like:

1. Canon 5D line - I highly recommend these for a budget professional video camera

2. Rebel T5i (I have the T3i, but as you can see, it can deliver some very nice photos with far higher level of details than iPhones)

3. Huawei Ascend 5W - an older phone that I got in 2017. However, the camera was magnificent. The quality was (in my opinion) better than every iPhone I’ve used. The dynamic range and level of detail was incredibly noteworthy.

We’re talking photography right now, but if we were talking video, I would have other cameras to chat about, too.

And for your understanding, let’s talk about f-stops, shutter speed, white balance, and some other stuff.

• F-stops are about how much light you let into the camera hole - a smaller-number f-stop (for example, 1.8) has a BIGGER camera hole and lets more light in, while an f-stop with a bigger number (like 12) has a SMALLER hole and lets less light in.

• Shutter Speed is how quickly the camera’s shutter opens to take the picture. The higher the number of the shutter speed (for example, 250), the faster the shutter opens. When the shutter opens fast, that means it can freeze a moving subject more easily. And when it opens briefly, it allows less light to reach the sensor, therefore creating a darker image. If it was a slow shutter speed (like 10), the moving subject would be all blurry. But lots of light would reach the sensor.

• White Balance is when color temperature is measured (measured in kelvin, I think), based on the light source. For example, sunlight is warmer, while tungsten indoor lighting is cooler. So the camera has to compensate to make sure that the white is the most white white possible.

Also, always format your SD card before you start taking pictures with it in your camera, as long as you have everything saved from it first! Mixing SD cards between cameras can create card malfunctions and might end up in corrupted files.

You’re going to be amazing! Now go out there and show the world what you’ve got!