Photography Advice

I thought about this for a while, and here are the steps to learning that I recommend to make learning a DSLR non-daunting. This is pretty close to the process I followed during my learning process. Each step could be a half day if you're intensive with it, and you don't need to complete each step before going onto the next one. But this is the order in which you're likely to comprehend what's going on. Think of these as progressively more difficult techniques for your new instrument!

Step 1: Full Auto
Put your camera on full automatic and see what it can do - shoot into the sun, try to focus on something non-intuitive, see how contrast works... experiment. It's just digital memory. As my dad says, the secret to taking good pictures is to take a lot of bad ones! Right now, don't use your flash, since your flash will confuse the learning process. If you need to get some pictures in bad lighting, use the flash, but don't make it part of your learning yet.

Step 2: Time Priority
Once you get a bit bored with that process (and you don't have to have mastered it), try time priority. It's pretty simple - you give the camera a hint on how long to keep the shutter open, and it computes the other variables for you (and it'll do the best it can if you're way out of range). Take the same picture with multiple time exposures. Run through the entire range of times - longest times in low light, highest times in sunlight. Try to shoot something that's always running and play with the blur effect: waterfalls and fountains are best, but cars will also do.

This technique is used to master the art of capturing blur.

Step 3: Aperture
This is the step where you'll get some really neat results that you just couldn't do with smaller cameras. Try aperture priority. Take multiple shots, experimenting with "depth of field". (See the pictures here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field) Get a hang for "large aperture or low f-stop = shallow depth of field and lots of light" and "small aperture or high f-stop = deep depth of field and little light".

This technique is used to master the art of 'framing' the shot by choosing how to draw the viewer's eye through selective focus.

Step 4: Timing
Get addicted to your shutter speed by trying to catch something at just the right time - a car passing by in the right place, or catch a water droplet from your sink. Your DSLR is MUCH more responsive from button press to picture. See if you can exploit this by finding the exact right time.

This technique - along with the other two - are used to capture just the right shot at just the right time. The correct time slice of the smile, or the perfect fleeting composition.

Step 5: Shoot, shoot, shoot (aka practice, practice, practice)
Master those things above. When you don't have your camera, think about how you'd line up the shot - roughly what parameters you'd use, and whether you'd do full-auto, timing or aperture priority.