Thursday, March 6, 2008 | by nathan

John Hedgecoe’s Photography Basics

In the summers my dad taught at a science and math camp for high school students. One of the things he offered his students was a weekly class in photography, including how to take and develop one’s own photographs. He retired when I was 15 and I grabbed John Hedgecoe’s Photography Basics from his office, hoping to become some creative, excellent black and white photographer a la Natalie Merchant in that video for "Carnival." Yeah, oh I was the epitome of awesome.

Anyway, fast forward twelve years and some odd, and I finally pick up this book. Digital photography hasn’t quite been the revolution people think it is - at the end of the day one still needs to know what constitutes a good photo and what doesn’t, and Hedgecoe’s book does a good job both of describing the rules for taking good pictures and for including enough good photographs so that one can see what a good photograph looks like.

What he doesn’t explain, and what I think bears repeating here, is that if you want to be good at photography - and this rule applies to pretty much anything you want to be good at - you have to take a whole lot of photographs. You have to take photographs almost every day, and you have to take tons of them, because if you’re lucky, maybe five percent of your pictures will be good.

The good news about this is that in this age of digital photography you pretty much get instant feedback. You can see the photos the instant you take them and don’t have to waste time and money getting bad images developed. It’s easier to get good at taking pictures more quickly now, but you still have to invest the time. All the awesome camera equipment in the world won’t do you a bit of good if all you’re doing is sort of vaguely aiming the lens at something and pressing the button.

Still, even if you’re just doing that, it can’t hurt to give Hedgecoe’s book a quick peruse just to see what you might be missing by not investing an extra 10-15 seconds every time you set up a shot. Some of this stuff seems horribly obvious, though if you flip through random photos over at Flickr, I think you’ll agree that a few more people could stand to bone up on their basics. This includes me; that’s why I picked it up, and that’s also why I found it helpful.