Capturing Beauty: A Beginner’s Guide to Fine Art Photography

Fine art photography is an incredibly beautiful and unique form of both art and photography. It can tell a story, evoke emotion, and have the same effect as a painting or sculpture. Here are a few tips and ideas to help you get started on your fine art photography journey.

Understand the Purpose

The first thing you need to do is understand the purpose of fine art photography. In simple terms, it is a form of photography that doesn’t serve a commercial or documentarian purpose, much like many other forms of art.

Using your cameras, you create something that goes beyond trying to sell anything. It is hard to fully define,  as art is completely subjective, but as a beginner, if you just keep the above points in mind, you are already on the right path.

What Makes It “Fine Art?”

Unlike other types of photos, fine art photos can be defined as ones that have compelling content, are well constructed, and have some kind of conceptual engagement. However, it is still important to note that this is all subjective.

As long as you follow three simple rules, you will be well on your way to creating gorgeous fine art photography; with great content, perfect composition, and beautiful use of light.

Define Your Vision

When starting, it is important to define your vision and have something to focus on. Much like painting, it is important to test out different mediums before focusing on what you enjoy the most and what would convey your message ideally.

Therefore, part of defining your vision should be photographing a multitude of different subjects and items, and then figuring out which would be ideal to convey your vision.

Study, Study, Study

Another important aspect of fine art photography is to study it. It will be near impossible to get right from day 1, but studying at least allows you to see what your photos should and shouldn’t look like.

This will also give you a chance to copy ideas, capturing methods, lighting, angles, etc, and then take those ideas and adapt them to your style. There is no better way to become the ideal than to learn from the greatest.

Shoot What You Know

One of the good places to start is to photograph what you know and like. This is because you know what makes it beautiful, what makes it appealing, what it means to the world, etc. This gives you insight into how to capture the image.

If you translate this to painting, an artist who loves and knows portraits won’t do an equally great job painting landscapes, not because they aren’t talented, but because it isn’t what they are passionate about. You will see that in the final product.

Understand Your Tools

Another crucial step is to have a complete understanding of how your camera works and what it can and can’t do. Even the simplest point-and-shoot cameras will more than likely have several settings that you just don’t know about.

The next thing to do is to spend a few days, even weeks, shooting with different settings, lenses, combinations, etc, and have a holistic understanding of your camera’s abilities and limitations. Don’t forget, even basic, limited cameras allow for a wide variety of fine art photography opportunities.

Lighting/Shadow

Lighting and shadow play a huge role in this form of photography, with many believing it can make or break an image. Both of these things can be very tricky to get right and master, and therefore they will require a lot of time and effort.

A great beginner exercise is to take one item, such as an apple, and adjust the lighting and shadow for it multiple times and see what you capture. The goal here is for you to see how the mood, message, and general look of the item will change as you adjust the light and shadow. You will surprise yourself when you see how you can make an apple look hopeful or depressed.

Perspective

Perspective is another aspect of fine art photography that can’t be overlooked. Considering it plays a role in all types of photography, it is no surprise that it has its role here, too. Perspective can drastically change the message you are sending with your photographs.

Once again, this is a factor that will not be mastered right away, and will most likely take a very long time to fully understand. Like the exercise mentioned above, do the same thing but change the perspectives of your shots and see how they influence the subject.

Try Different Mediums

Once you start getting your head around image content, lighting, perspective, etc, you should start playing around with different photographic mediums. However, this step isn’t essential as purchasing and owning multiple cameras can be expensive. On the other hand, the world of secondhand cameras is vast, and you can easily find some old models for a good price.

Take the time to experiment with instant cameras, film cameras, vintage models, and everything in between. You may find that you aren’t quite getting the photos you want because it’s the camera you are using, and not the content of the image itself.