Learning the basics of any subject is very much important to understand the subject much better and perform well. When it comes to photography, there's no exception. Any genre of photography demands understanding the concepts of gears, it's technology, image processing and many more...Let me share my experience in learning photography.
All my learning (except shooting in the field) happened from online sources. For example, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and several articles. In photography capturing a photograph and image processing play equal importance. So, always we should learn both subjects. We cannot become a good photographer if fail to learn any of these two subjects.
YouTube channels provide a lot of opportunities to learn photography, starting with the basic working principle of a camera to printing/selling of photos. YouTube will help us to understand better through videos and practical examples and demonstrations. Certain channels have a playlist that includes multiple videos which is a good knowledge source to learn the basics. I recommend watching videos to understand things visually. Image processing videos are also available on YouTube.
If we encounter any doubts, Google can help us with lot of articles to read. Limitless knowledge sources are available on Google if are interested to learn more.
Social Media platforms like Instagram and Facebook help us interact with World-class photographers and sometimes we can even interact with them. The best way to create beautiful and meaningful photograph is to learn from the photos of professionals who are already in this field for decades. Looking at the masterpieces of these photographers will help us to understand how to approach any subject. The composition, timing, light, how they process photos, all can be learned from their photographs. Personally, I pixel peep into their photos to understand how they made the photograph. When we see epic photos, naturally we will also try to get better or similar results, which will definitely improve our skills. Looking into compositions of other professionals will influence our photography skills. Instagram is a good platform to learn from photos.
Remember, all these contents are completely free, take advantage of this enormous amount of knowledge. If you are ready to pay, Online Image Processing Workshops are also available. These paid workshops will have an in-depth image processing workflow. But, we can learn ourselves if we have the patience to share time with image processing software. Even online YouTube tutorials will help us a lot to learn image processing.
Then, why waiting??? take any camera, start shooting...Understand the capabilities and limitations of your gear, see the impact of light in your photograph, try different focal lengths, different angles, compositions and do whatever you can under different conditions. Over a while, you will see the improvements. Every frame will help us to learn and always we should approach this subject like a student...
