What do you think a beginner is?

Later on, it was the other hoses, not even pretending it's not a rain that trickles down the noobs head. It could get very ugly, yet this kind of bullying didn't stop.

It is a behavior associated with a schoolyard bully, isn't it?

I see this discussion has been moved to BQD - the bullying forum where nothing gets done and ideas go to die. I'm outta here.

Why are my prints coming out dark. god help us when this topic arises.

With how simple technology has made cameras, and their now near monolithic presence in nearly all corners of human society (I could be mistake about the minutiae of it all but I believe they are now even in Amish communities due to circumstances beyond their control, where cameras simply exist by default), to be a beginner now to me is something akin to day one of your first ownership of a camera that you can swap a lens with, and that time hopefully will last less than 24 hours.

Most people who get to the point of the body lens combo, now, have had a camera in their life long before the day they made that purchase. Like what that word used to stand for no longer represents a world where toddlers can and have literally been casually handed camera options that would make the early photography adventurers weep in envy.

And here's the thing about this modern tech. Results are instantaneous. No secondary process is necessary in a lot of cases (I'm simplifying things here admittedly, but work with me here). If you do have something "wrong" or "off" or "makes you as a creative unhappy" the tools to change it are only a mystery to a matter of simple effort. And I have to imagine anyone making the first step of buying a camera with lenses, probably has the curiosity to ask well how can I change these things in these images I don't like....and then depending on the person, those kinda questions about cameras never end. But that moment of beginning a "beginner" is kinda over as soon as you start working towards those answers, which is probably less than 24 hours nowadays because all the old barriers that used to stand in the way of photography have been torched to a bigger pile of ash than Sodom and Gomorrah.

The evergreen answer: turn the monitor brightness down until it matches the print :))

I'm back. We're all interested in everyone's ideas on "What do you think a beginner is?"

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I'm back. We're all interested in everyone's ideas on "What do you think a beginner is?"

Your comment is off-topic. Please stay on topic.

Interesting takes so far. Lots of examples of questions a beginner might ask. A little on what a beginner is.

I teach a couple college courses. One is at the fundamentals level. The other intermediate. The content is very different and how deep we get in to each topic is very different. We cover a lot of the same aggregate info in both. Just the specific situations and the “why” is a lot more detailed and nuanced in Intermediate. I guess that’s the mindset I take into looking at beginners vs others.

Questions that can be answered with high level, fairly short responses that are enough to help a beginner get better results. Just past a particular hurdle. There isn’t even a reason, in my mind, to get into why the advice works. Just share the advice. Why it works is past beginner and getting into intermediate. And when you start diving into the technical aspects of how a sensor gathers photons and turns them into an image, you’ve lost the class.

I don’t teach fundamentals often anymore. But when I do, I can tell when I get ahead of myself and expand on a topic with intermediate info. The eyes all glaze over and, “Is this going to be on the test?” questions follow.

To me, a ‘beginner” is someone who is trying to learn to take better images — it’s really about composition, good light, shadows. Amazing images can be (and are) taken on full auto. Many are also taken on full auto that are are crap. The difference isn’t the camera or the settings but learning about things like rule of 3rds, leading lines, etc.

I don't know if there are actually "beginners" here. And it is a relative label anyway. Maybe I am one?

Winner!
Whether you use intelligent auto whatever mode or not does not make you a good photographer. Good photographs make you a good photographer. And every good photographer should want to learn more and improve.

I know a lot about lighting and composition, but I always want to learn more.

When I was a beginner, aged about 13 back in the mid 1970s, I was one of those wide-eyed enthusiastic beginners with a pile of photography books from the local library, a weekly subscription to Amateur Photographer, keen to learn everything as rapidly as possible. Home darkroom in the family bathroom, B&W d&p and printing and E6 processing.

I've always kind of assumed that was what all beginner photographers must be like, because back in those days automation was minimal and not very effective. Once you got past the Instamatic stage, you had to be an enthusiast if you wanted to do much.

These days, there are a lot more photographers and most are casual not enthusiasts. Photography is now much easier if you are no more ambitious that getting a picture to come out: point your phone and touch the screen. Share with your mates.

Today, there are a lot more photographers shooting a lot more pictures, mostly with phones. A tiny percentage of those people will get the genuine enthusiast bug. A slightly smaller percentage will get the momentary idea they'd like to get more serious, buy a "proper camera" and learn some of the technicalities. Most of those will quickly realise that was a mistake and go back to their phones.

Example:

A work colleague decided she'd like to buy a DSLR and some lenses. No specific reason why, more of a whim. She asked my advice. I asked her what her usual photographic interests were and what she wanted to do differently. I quickly concluded it was a whim and she'd be wasting her money. I tried to dissuade her by saying that she'd hate the camera once the initial excitement had passed because it would be too big, too heavy and wouldn't fit in her handbag. She was adamant, so I steered her in the direction of a low cost used Canon Rebel type camera. She duly got one and a couple of lenses. A few months later, I asked her how she was getting on. "Well", she said, "it's a bit heavy and too large to fit in my handbag so I haven't actually touched the thing..."

The moral of the story is that photography was once split into Instamatic type family snap shooters (the majority) and a much smaller group of enthusiasts. The snap shooters were happy snap shooting (as they should be), the enthusiasts got all technical. Beginner enthusiasts were in need of a technical (and sometime artistic) learning programme. Today, the automation features are incredible and modern snap shooters can do a lot just by pressing a single button, but the attitude to photography remains the same. Today's enthusiasts have also benefited from modern automation and they can reasonably easily step up to proper cameras without knowing a lot more than the snap shooters. I suspect true enthusiasts are a very similar group to yesterday's true enthusiasts - it's a personality thing.

The question then becomes, what support does the modern snap shooter need, what support does a lazy "proper camera" user need and what support does a modern true enthusiast need, and how should that help be presented?

In the context of this site, I'd say a beginner is someone new to using an interchangeable lens camera (or at least a "bridge" type camera with manual controls). They likely rely on automatic functions for camera settings but would like to learn more about how to make creative decisions themselves.

It is my oft-expressed opinion that more photographs have been harmed by the rule of thirds than those that have been helped. I blame the Lr cropping UI.

Doesn't the rule of thirds only really work with 3:2, anyway?

I think it is too formulaic regardless of the aspect ratio.

Formulaic yes, a rule - silly, but it is useful to understand that putting your subject smack bang in the middle is not the only way to do it. I always like another rule of thumb (that I call the "L rule"): it's when you position a subject far to one side, then use a vast expanse of nothing on the other side to provide a balancing visual weight. Such as a tiny figure in the landscape to one side balanced by a mass of billowing cloud in the rest of the frame. There are many compositional possibilities and at least the 1/3rds thing introduces the concept.

I have to laugh how rigid and prescriptive some people get, though, about composition. Back when I was a camera club member, I submitted an image of a weird sculpture. It was kind of like a simplified stainless steel tree that had glass globes hanging from the branches like some kind of sci fi mechanical fruit. Mine was a close up of 4 of these glass fruit hanging from a branch with a deep blue sky as a backdrop. The judge told me it would have been a good photo if there had only been 3 glass bulbs, because photos look better when things are in threes...

I guess the problem of compositional guides, is that some rule-bound people think the guides are a kind of "checklist of goodness" that has to be passed, like a QC list. I'd like to think that people who become judges would be flexibly minded, but apparently not often the case.

I'm quite fond of this image I shot in Iceland back in 2009. It's a pano with symmetry. I think that works as a compositional tool

When I've taught composition -- infrequently and a long time ago -- I stressed looking at the image: look at the edges, look at the forms, sketch them, turn the picture upside down, squint at it, etc. People who are new to composition tend to look through the photograph, rather than at the photograph.