So this is my second blog post centred around photography advice. Last time I gave simple tips and shared what I wish I knew when I first started photography. These first few posts are targeted at beginners but soon I will get down to the nitty gritty elements like editing, lighting and so on!
But first, I will discuss photography accessories I can't live without. These things may seem incredibly obvious because, honestly, they are! However, the amount of people I know who don't have these things is crazy. So this blog post goes out to them and others alike.
Camera Bag For Your Photo Gear
Stop carrying your camera around in back packs or tote bags. Not only is this really bad for making your lenses really dirty and prone to scratches, but it also kills your shoulders and back not having a good camera bag. There are some really great small camera backpacks which you can pick up on Amazon and I strongly recommend buying one... even if it is just to save you the shoulder pain.
Hard Drive
Having a hard drive to back up all of my images is vital for me. Having them in a seperate place from my laptop memory is great; it keeps all of my files organised and means I don't have to worry about deleting files to make room. I personally think it's really important to keep all of your unedited pictures on there as well as the edited versions becasue you never know when you may learn something new on Photoshop/Lightroom and want to re-edit it!
Wacom Tablet
A lot of proffesional photographers use graphics tablets to edit their images on. I never saw the need to invest in one but after developing terrible pain in my hands after editing for days on end, I thought it may be worth the money after all of the good things I had heard about them. They weren't wrong. Editing on a tablet is life changing- it's the best purchase I have made recently and has made the editing process so much easier, quicker and more precise. If you have no idea what I'm talking about here, type into youtube something along the lines of 'photo editing with Wacom tablet' and you'll get the idea. Don't under estimate its power!
Spares
This is one of the most important photography accessories. Don't be that guy who carries no spares because I can gaurantee you'll then be that guy who has the terrible luck of needing them when your camera randomly dies or you run out of memory on your SD/CF Card. Not only is that a massive bummer but also incredibly un proffesional if you are working for a client. Just carry spare batteries and cards because you never know when they may save your arse. It's not even like they are that expensive either.
External Flash
Having an external flash is one of the photography accessories which will change the quality of your work. I take it with me on any shoot because you never know when you will need a little more light. I urge any beginners to buy one- try pointing it in different directions to give yourself an idea of what it can do for your images. I even use it when doing outside shoots to fill in shadows when using a reflector may not be necessary.
Reflector
For those of you who don't know, a reflector is one of those big round silver and white things which pop out of their bag like a pop up tent- its that thing people shine towards their model and, unless you're a photographer, you never really understand why. Long story short, it does what it says on the tin. It reflects light back onto your subject in order to fill in the shadows on their face. The black side can also be held up to create shadows instead. It's something that is vital for giving portraits a little more character and creativity, so it's definitely an important accessory! Again, they're super cheap.
Lightroom/Photoshop Subscription
Okay, so its not a photography accessory as such. Pretty obvious point, but I thought I would try and endorse Adobe in the hopes they'd give me a free subscription. Anyway, these two software's are crucial to my editing and I honestly don't know what other software I'd use without it. Don't be a cheapskate- invest in the software and you'll see the difference in your images instantly. Don't use any of that free software you find online either, it's not worth it.
Tether Cable- A Simple Photographic Accessory
For those of you who work in the studio, having a tether cable is great. Plug your camera into your laptop (with the same cable you use to upload your images), enabled the tether mode in Lightroom (google how to do this) and away you go. It means that as you are taking these images you can instantly view the pictures on your laptop to see where you're going wrong straight away because sometimes simple using the LCD screen on our camera isn't enough to show us the smaller details. I only tend to use it in the studio, but you can use it in other scenarios too if you wish!
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