Newbie Photographer Resources and Advice

Prior to this blog I was a photographer for a small nightclub in the London area and it taught me a lot about how to use my Canon 1000D SLR in low lighting to get some really cool shots (with the aid of a flashgun of course).

As well as trial and error I searched the web for advice and tutorials on how to use my SLR camera effectively to create impressive photos that patrons of the club would want to use and share. This lead to the discovery of multiple blogs, infographics and video tutorials which I'd like to share with you awesome readers in this blog post. Just keep in mind that when I started my photography job I was a noob so some of this information might not be of interested to advanced SLR users, however, it's always good to go back to the basics every now and then.

The Photography Cheat Sheet

This is a recent infographic that I stumbled upon by Miguel Gantioqui which explains the basic settings of SLRs and the effect it will have on the image you shoot. This is a great resource for SLR owners who are deciding to use the manual settings of the camera for the first time. More experienced users will understand that it is a balance of the different functions within this infographic that contribute to the quality/ style of image you want to produce. Therefore, for the noobs out there, don't stick to just modifying one setting. Play around.

http://miguelinclosedcaption.tumblr.com/post/3526501838/infographic-poster-2-photography-cheat-sheet

YouTube Channels for Video Tutorials

Like anyone else looking on how to do stuff, I YouTubed it. So rather than having you waste your time looking for the decent quality channels on photography I'm going to give you a quick list of the ones I'd recommend:

• http://www.youtube.com/user/PhotographersOnUTube
• http://www.youtube.com/user/philippedame 

Short list right? If anyone has any other channels they'd recommend or individual videos they rate highly for noob SLR photographers then please add then to the comments section of this post. After all it's all about learning right?

Photography Forums

There's a lot of value to be gained from becomming a member of online communities as you can get honest feedback and advice from a broad spectrum of users, from noob to expert. There are a couple that I checked out which were pretty good reads so if you feel like it sign up to them and get asking. If not just have a read of the stuff they're talking about, you'll learn quite a bit this way.

The forums I took at look at were:

• http://www.avforums.com/forums/digital-photography/ 
• http://photography-on-the.net/forum/ 

If anyone has a range of forums they checked out when they were starting out/ that they are still a member of, please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments section below.

That's all for now...

I hope you've found some use in the resoureces that I've provided above. I hope new users of SLRs can learn a whole lot from this and then go on to adapt these teachings to find their own methods. Don't forget the value in post-production as photo editing software such as Photoshop can add a whole other dimension to your images. I'll discuss this in another blog article some other day. Happy learning!