10 Photography Lessons to Improve Your Own Photography

In this blog I am going to share 10 tips/lessons I have learned since starting photography 8 years ago. That’s more than one tip per year!

I am going to cover lighting, being patient, why composition matters in photography, why you should shoot with other photographers and why it’s important to ask for help when you’re struggling. 

So let’s get into it… 

Gear Doesn’t Matter

Really. It doesn’t matter. Good cameras don’t take better photos. Better photographers take better photos. Better compositions make better photos. Better light makes better photos. The list goes on!

Think of the cameras that we have at our disposal today. Take the Canon EOS R5 MK 2 for example; 45MP sensor, 30 FP, 8K raw video,  Digic X processor. The list goes on. Give it to an absolute beginner and unless they’re some kind of prodigy, they probably aren’t going to take great pictures, perhaps not even good ones… maybe, not even average photos.

Then compare this to the cameras that some of the greats used, Ansel Adams shot much of his body of work on simple large format cameras, Bruce Gilden uses a Leica M6, Ernst Haas shot largely on Leica Rangefinder cameras. All of these are great cameras, but they’re not as technically advanced as some of the stuff that we have at our disposal in 2025. The reason you have heard of these greats of photography is that they know how to compose, how to capture a moment, how to work with the light, when to shoot, when not to shoot and how to use the cameras that they have!

Don’t be fooled, just because you’ve spent thousands on a camera and lenses, this doesn’t mean that you are going to go out and capture images that are great or good. 

Instead of investing money to get better, invest in time working on composition, learn the rules and when you know the rules, learn to break them! Spend time getting to know your camera: know what the buttons do, know the menus and know where the buttons, dials and switches are - you don’t want to miss shots because you’re fiddling around with buttons trying to adjust settings. 

Finally, if you’re going to spend money upgrading your camera setup, upgrade your glass and not your camera… some of the best improvements I have seen in image quality (not the standard of my photography!)  have been when I have got a new lens, not when I have got a new camera!

Light(ing) Does Matter

It might mean getting up at stupid o clock in the morning for golden hour, it might be staying out in the hills until late in the summer for sunset, it might be waiting patiently waiting for the right day of the year for the sun to be in the right place to create the exact shadow you want to frame a subject or it might be hours in the studio agonizing over flash power, modifiers, reflectors, flags and negative fill but not matter what it is, it matters. 

It might mean walking around a subject to find the right angle to shoot it from or positioning your model/talent in the right place to get the most flattering light. 

Light matters!

I used to shoot almost exclusively in low light and loved skulking around London in the small hours of the morning with the streets to myself and then when I decided I was going to start shooting more during the day, I really struggled with it. Struggled to the point that I almost gave up on ever getting a shot I liked during the day. 

What I learned was that it wasn’t me being unable to do it, but that I wasn’t using the light in the right way.

Getting the lighting right and having it in the right place will help to transfer a “meh” image into a “wow” image.

Composition over Settings

Composition is going to trump settings every time. .If you’re image doesn’t grab someone's attention then the settings are going to matter one single jot because they’re not looking at your photo in the first place!

Don’t just think about what you are including in your composition, but think about what you are leaving out of it as well. Crop the distracting items out in camera, save yourself some time in the edit and focus on what your image is about. So what if your ISO is a bit too high? It might be a noisier image than you had hoped for, but if it bothers you that much, you can reduce this in post and then remember that people also add grain to their images in the edit… (Yes, I know that ISO noise and film grain are two different things and it’s very much a matter of taste/opinion)

Perfect your composition first and make sure you get the shot, then worry about the settings that you have used to capture it. If it’s properly exposed and sharp then the creative stuff can come afterwards.

A solid, sharp and well exposed photo is better than a photo that is unusable because you were too focussed on getting the right settings. 

“Done is Better Than Perfect”

I have stolen this from Peter McKinnon, but when I heard him say it, there was something about it that really resonated with me. 

I was someone who wasn’t always willing to put my work out there if I wasn’t 100% happy with it. But this was at the expense of people not even seeing the stuff that I had spent hours working on. The reason we (well, I assume most of us!) take photos is so that we can share them with other people, be that either privately, commercially or on social media. 

No, I’m not saying you should share work that isn’t ready for public consumption, or that you’re really not happy with, but that you shouldn’t always agonise over the small stuff. In a commercial situation, sometimes you have to do this, we are often looking for perfection in these circumstances, but this doesn’t have to apply to every photo that you take. There is beauty in imperfeciton. 

If your image is 99% ‘there’ then is there any real return from spending another 2 or 3 hours, or even days getting that last 1%? Who is going to notice.

Moments Over Perfection. 

Look at the work of Henri Cartier-Breson, especially the work in his book “The Decisive Moment” (You might have to wait a while for the book or pay a lot of money for an older copy!) and see that not all of the images are “perfect”. 

Sometimes there is motion blur, sometimes there are areas of over exposure or under exposure, but what is key in these works is moment that the shutter was clicked to capture an emotion, to frame a subject or to steal an image in fleeting light. 

This is about storytelling rather than technical perfection. If you’re out in the street, on the fells or just out for a walk in your local area then you only get one chance to take the photo and you might miss some bangers!

This is very different to be in a studio environment where we can control almost evey aspect of what is in front of us from the position to lighting to the angle we’re shooting at. Out in the field you might get only once chance and you don’t want to miss it because you’re worried about the optimum settings to take your image!

See also “Done it better than perfect” above.

Be Patient

This one seems a but antithetical given what I have just said in the paragraph above, but I am going to say it anyway and it is especially true if you have a particular shot in mind. 

Wait. 

That’s it. Just wait.

You might have to wait 2 minutes. You might have to wait 20 minutes. 

This was especially true for me when I was shooting lots in London and I was trying to take photos of bus trails or light trails. There were many times when I had found scenes I wanted to shoot and had spent time finding compositions that worked. 

It was the same story time after time. A cold, often wet (city photos look awesome in the wet!) night, you’ve got everything set up for a bus to drive through the scene so you can fire the shutter and expose for the motion blur you are desperately trying to capture to complete your images. There were umpteen buses driving through when you were setting up and now you’re ready to go there’s no buses. Not a single one. And then when one does appear, the lights are the wrong colour temperature (Trust me on this, London busses have very different colour temperatures for their interior lights some are almost royal blue they are so cool and then some are a jarring halogen shade of yellow like old fashioned sodium street lights) and by this point you’re cold, you’re frustrated and the Pret across the street is looking more inviting by the second. 

But… the payoff when you get what you have been waiting for is always worth it. Always. There is nothing worse than getting home, seeing the images that you have made and them not being what you wanted because you hadn’t been patient. You’ve then got to wait for the same conditions to show themselves again,,, the right, the right weather and so on. By the time this happens again, you will have either forgotten or will have gone off the idea so be patient and it will happen!

Keep it Simple

This can be especially useful if you are stuck in a bit of a competitive rut.

You don’t need to take huge amounts of kit with you on a shoot for it to be a successful shoot. I used to take my big bag everywhere with me and it would be crammed full of as much stuff as I could fit and physically carry around with me. I wanted to be ready for every single situation and it took me a while to realise that I couldn’t be ready for absolutely everything. 

In more recent memory, I have invested in a smaller bag and think carefully about what I am going to take with me on each shoot - the gear really has to earn its place in the bag and the two mainstays are the camera body and my 70-200; It’s sharp, light(ish) and allows me to pick out detail. I love my 85mm f/1.8 but its big, it’s heavy and it still hasn’t been carried up a mountain or been on a long walk for this reason. 

So what’s the point here? Take minimal kit with you. Maybe limit yourself ot yoru camera and 2 lenses the first time you try this and then make it super minimal and take your camera, one lens and maybe a spare battery. 

This makes you think more creatively, forces you to think about composition, makes sure that you’re considering the light that you have and will make you take shots that you might have otherwise avoided because there was an easier option in the bag. 

The only time that the big bag comes with me now is if I am moving a lot of kit, it is going in the car and I am driving to a location to shoot or, I have a base (like a hotel room), in which case I am packing the smaller bag as well and then being more selective about what I actually take out with me to shoot with. 

Collaborate!

This doesn’t have to be some huge social media collaboration, but what I am getting at is getting out to shoot with other photographers. 

Some of the times that I have learned the most about photography and about myself as a photographer have been when I have been out to shoot with friends who are also photographers.

The first time I did this was with a friend in London. He was very much a street photographer, whereas I was much more focussed on urban landscapes and architecture. I remember meeting him and thinking “Where’s his tripod, how is he going to take any photos?!”. 

Our styles were (and still are!) vastly different but seeing him move through the crowded London streets and getting close to his subjects gave me a new perspective on my own work. 

Another time, I went out as someone fairly new to photography, again in Central London, with someone who turned up with just a camera and a 70-200 F/2.8 lens. I was confused as to how he would fit everything into his photos when he was shooting at such a long focal length and that was the day I decided I needed a longer lens to be able to pick out some of the details in a scene. 

I could go on but the point I am trying to make is that working alongside other photographers isn’t just about having some company on a shoot. It’s a great time to talk about photography, to see how other people work and to experiment with new ideas and get some feedback!

Not Everything Will Be Successful and That’s OK. 

Time to trot out a cliché! Make mistakes and learn from them, it’s the best way to learn. We learn from our mistakes. 

Yes it’s cliché, but it’s a cliché largely because it’s true. The key is to understand what has gone wrong, why it’s gone wrong and how it’s gone wrong. That way you can begin to understand what it is that has happened and how to avoid this happening in the future. 

When you’re starting out, make sure that you understand the exposure triangle - I have written a blog about this here. This will help you to correct under/over exposed images, blurry images (blurred not soft, they are two very different things!) or images that have a ton of noise in them. 

Not all of your shoots will be successful and even on a successful shoot, not all of your photos are going to be successful. Photography is a process and not an event and you should enjoy the process and learn as much as you can from it. 

Oh, and don’t compare yourself to other photographers on social media… just do your thing, trust the process, trust yourself and grow as your own photographer. 

When the going gets tough… Ask for help.

Make it stand out

There is absolutely no shame in this.

I am in a WhatsApp group which is full of photographers and videographers. It's a special place for a number of reasons, but one of the best things about it is that everyone there is knowledgeable and supportive. No one gets shamed for asking for help (they might get shamed for shooting Nikon!), asking questions or not knowing something.

The beautiful thing about it is that you often get several very different answers or opinions and you have a ton of new ideas to run with and to try out. 

A  very common question is along the lines of “I keep seeing this in images, does anyone know what’s causing it/how to mitigate it”. Usually within about five minutes, the problem has been sorted and we can get back to sharing memes. 

I find this is a great way to get support, especially for young photographers or people new to photography. The photography side of the internet can be a scary place, especially in some of the forums where people feel the need to gate-keep knowledge or to treat people in the most patronizing of ways and it just shouldn’t be about that.

We all started somewhere in this game (another cliché) and the chances are that in your photography network there is someone else who has had the problem you are having and knows how to fix it. 

Collaborate, go on meet ups and find your photography people!

Go and Do It

Firstly, if you have made it this far through my musings, thank you! But this links to something that I am going to finish on. 

I used to be really guilty of this. I would spend hours watching YouTube trying to get better and then realised that actually, what this was impeding my progress; whilst I was sat watching videos, other people were out shooting, getting images that I wasn’t and developing their own skills. I was just developing other people’s watch hours!

There is a lot to be said for photography youtube, but be selective, find some channels that work for you and stick with them but try not to end up down rabbit holes!

The best way to learn and to improve your photography skills is to go out, shoot and then come back to your computer and edit. You can sit and watch as many vlogs and tutorials as you want, you can read all the books and all of the blogs and these will help you with ideas, maybe with some inspiration but nothing is going to help you get better than getting out and doing it. 

You can’t learn to play the trombone simply by watching tutorials online. You have to play the instrument. 

You can’t learn how to play golf by reading about it in a book and then expecting to turn up at the range and drill it 300yds and sink every putt and the same is true of photography so get out there, take the shot, make the mistake(s!), learn from them and grab some bangers!

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