6 websites to help learn photography for beginners and beyond
You finally have some time and are motivated to understand how your camera works and learn photography or you want to progress your skills. Little bit by little bit no matter how complex it is. If you’re like me, when I first started playing around with my camera I had questions like how do I get those flowing water shots, or what does exposure, shutter speed and ISO really mean. What actually makes a good photo and how do I achieve it. And now, I am still researching how to make my photos better, for inspiration and for tips.
There is A LOT to the world of photography no doubt. You will never just learn it all but start with the basics, practice, practice, practice and keep learning. Once you get a handle then keep learning and build on those skills.
The great thing about technology today is that in a hobby that can be quite expensive there are so many free outlets online to learn photography. Websites, tutorials, forums, e books, you name it and like I said it’s free!
I’ve put together a guide that includes websites and articles that I found very useful when I was first learning and ones that I still use now. Like I said before, I highly suggest starting with the bare basics and working up from there. If your are more advanced I find these same sites are still just as helpful.
If you haven’t yet, subscribed to the blog so you can grab the photography guide I created to help you take better travel photos. Along with that guide I encourage you to explore more, like these suggested websites and articles.
1.Expert Photography
I really love this website especially their guide for beginners. The info graphics they use are very easy to understand and if you’re a visual learner like me, everything makes way more sense! They also elaborate even further on each of the topics like shutter speed, aperture, ISO, balance and more with more information and videos.
The basics of photography can be quite complicated to learn at first. I remember learning about aperture for the first time and interpreted it backwards! I went on shooting for weeks before it all started to click! Nailing the basics set you up for progress!
Links I love: Composition: frame within a frame, tips for better adventure photography, learning composition
2. Photography Life
This is a great website especially for beginners. If you look under the tab ‘Learn’ in the menu you can choose from a few categories. One being beginner photography. There are loads of ‘how to’ articles that are really helpful when getting started.
I particularly like reading their equipment articles as they are very thorough yet I can still understand them. Also, in each category there is something for beginners and more advanced photographers. You can also check out the tutorials on the side bar which are really helpful.
Links I love: Wildlife photography with a short lens, Photographing blue hour, How to take better reflection shots
3. Nature TTL
I love this website as it is dedicated to nature photography- landscapes, macro and wildlife. The articles are all very easy to follow and I find my questions are always answered. I quite like the ‘how to’ type articles and I find the suggested techniques and photography tips are very applicable and easy to understand.
I also like the website is easy to navigate and not to busy so I don’t get too distracted and I can find what I am looking for. I find this site very inspirational with the quality of photos and range of information covered.
Links I love: Wildlife for beginners, getting sharp photos without expensive lenses, Photographing sunrises and sunsets
4. Loaded Landscapes
This website was one of the first I signed up for their newsletter and am still subscribed today. I find their emails are short and generally suggest a read of one article which is great for me as I won’t get information overload.
The site focuses on landscapes and nature photography. They do have articles for those just learning photography but I find this is the best site to get inspired with travel photography. They have a lot of articles of ‘the best places to photograph in x’. The side bar as a list of places you can click on for inspo but use the search bar if you’re looking for a different location.
The also have a shop selling presets for editing. I find buying presets is quite helpful when learning how to edit photos. It’s not exactly one size fits all, meaning applying the same edit to different photos may not yield in the best results. You may have to tweak things further but I find it really helps to understand what all the options do and gives a great starting point.
Links I love: Guide to long exposure, intro to filters, tips for photographing mountains
5. Outdoor Photography Guide
This website is jammed packed with information and if you learn best by video, I highly suggest clicking over to the site to see what they’re all about. There are lots of free videos as well as a blog articles to go through about so many different topics in photography and types of photography.
In addition to the free content they do have a paid membership you can buy and loads of ebooks and other products. This is the first site I ever paid a membership for. They had a super sale and it was like $16 for a year, something like that. For such low cost, I’d say its very worth it. I do find though they send a lot of emails, many of them selling something so I had to turn them off.
Links I love: Ethics of photographing in nature, using circular polarizers, exposure compensation
6. Digital Photography School
This is a pretty popular and highly recommended website for photography. It focuses more on landscapes, portrait and post processing. I sometimes find myself just reading headings in the posts for tips because I think oh they’re pretty self explanatory but I highly suggest taking the time to read the explanations. It really does help for the information to sink in that much more and reiterate what we think we already know.
They offer courses at a very affordable prices but also a lot of free content. I found their beginner section super helpful as well as their library of video tutorials.
Links I love: Composing dynamic landscape photos, Using natural light in travel photography, Night photography for beginners
I hope this helps in your journey to learn photography. There are many websites out there to help. These are just some that I like to go to. Personally I find just picking a few and going through them to start helps to not feel over loaded with information.
Do you have any suggestions for websites to learn photography?
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Elton
Thank you for this brief and well summarized article. I got what i was searching for.
Keep up the good work.
cheers:)