Taking a good photo: 10% Gear + 90% Skills

Photography is a skill based craft. Gear might help you, it is your tool and it is the final 10% of an image. But the big 90% are skills such as handling your gear, being creative, knowing how to interact with your subject, dealing with tricky photographic situations, and so many more.

When I got my first DSLR I was lucky enough to have my brother in law borrow me the book “The Digital Photography Book”, written by Scott Kelby. It taught me a lot about exposure, apertures, landscapes, portraits, flowers (and why to shoot them as a practice for portraits). But more than that, reading this book, trying things out and practicing did influence me in the long run: I knew that my photography would get better through learning and practice.

In this post I want to recommend resources for learning photography and cinematography that have been the most important to me. Besides those, you will be able to find plenty of tutorial videos on Youtube. And there is CreativeLive: It is is a great resource. You can watch classes live for free and you can buy on demand access, which is still way cheaper than usual workshops.

Here are my most crucial recommendations for learning photography:

• Photography basics: Scott Kelby: The Digital Photography Book and John Greengo: The Photography Starter Kit for Beginners
• Don’t start with Photoshop, start with Lightroom. Adobe provides some good tutorials that should get you started.
• Learning composition: That one is so important – and so hard to learn. I highly recommend the book The Photographer’s Eye by Michael Freeman
• Learn flash photography: Strobist: Lighting 101
• Getting serious, particularly with flash and studio photography: Professional Studio Lighting with Zack Arias
• Getting even more serious with photography: Foundations of a Working Photographer by Zack Arias
• Learning Photoshop: There are tons of photoshop tutorials out there. I highly recommend Phlearn

Cinematography basics and resources:

• No Film School: If you are just starting out to shoot video, I definitely recommend their “The DSLR Cinematography Guide“. I learned so much from that, and it’s free!
• DSLRguide: I really like that guy! He has a very honest, story and not gear related approach to cinematography.