In photography, the most important thing is light (or lack of it), and how to manipulate it. After that, for me, is the exposure triangle. You can make great photos on Automatic, Program... but you need to understand the relationship between Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO.
Next if you go into people photography, is posing. There is a whole "science" about posing. And a lot of different opinions, but also some things that everyone is agreeing.
Try to get some separation of arms and the body. If the hand is just strait connected to the body the person always looks larger. Try to pay attention to fingers that should not be strait and stiff, don't cut the photo on joints, try to get curves, try to avoid 90 degrees angles...
There are thousands of videos and blogs about posing and you can learn something from every one of them, and there will be a lot of different approaches to it. And you can watch all of that and it all falls into the water if you don't practice it.
I started my photography with live events, so i was always waiting for the right moment to happen. Portraits are something i stumbled into. And i am not doing them often enough. So i always struggled with posing.
Especially when everything is happening fast and when you should rely on the "muscle memory". But muscle memory is trained. And i feel the difference when i do several shoots in a month, and when i don't do one in few months.
One thing that i actually like in this place is, not that complicated one light setup, almost everywhere. Most of the celling is white, there is a big white cloth on the wall next to the dark gray wall, and another big white wall.
There is nothing better than a big white wall to bounce your flash of, if you don't have a big nice light modifiers.
And i mostly do one light setup for these quick shoots on location. I should do few of them where i take tame to set up several light, with background light, and kicker light.
Photography Basics: Learn Manual Mode (tutorial, Part 1)
Photography Basics: Learn Manual Mode, Shutter speed (tutorial, Part 2)
Photography Basics: Learn Manual Mode, Aperture and ISO (tutorial, Part 3)
Photography Basics: Learn Manual Mode - Thinking process (Tutorial Part 4)
