Practice Round: Shoot the Same Thing Five Ways
This is the last lesson in the module, so no new concepts today — just practice, which is the part people skip and really shouldn't.
Understanding tap to focus and exposure lock in your head is one thing; getting your thumb to know what to do is another. That only comes from doing it a bunch of times on a real subject, not a demo. So today you pick one thing in your house and shoot it five different ways. Same object. Five photos. That's the whole assignment — and it's very doable.
Pick something boring
I mean that. Don't pick your kid, don't pick anything precious. Pick a coffee mug. A shoe. The fruit bowl. Something that'll sit still and won't get self-conscious about being photographed forty times.
I do this all the time with fabric, actually. Grab a scrap off the cutting table, set it on the counter, and just work through it. Nobody's watching, nothing's precious, and you can mess it up as many times as you need to.
The five shots
1. Overhead light on, straight at it, standing up.
This is your control photo. Standard height, standard light, nothing fancy — just something to compare against.
2. Same spot, overhead light off, near a window instead.
Move the whole object if you have to. This is the light lesson again — I'm not letting you forget it. Ninety percent of a bad photo is bad light, not a bad camera, and you'll see it plainly the moment you compare these two.
3. Get low.
Get down to the level of the object, or below it, and shoot up a little. Most people shoot everything from standing height, five feet back, and that's exactly why so many photos come out boring. Kneel on the floor if you have to. Feel silly. Do it anyway.
4. Tap to focus somewhere unexpected.
Not the obvious center of the thing. Tap on an edge, a texture, a little detail. See what the phone does with it. At this point it's just muscle memory for your thumb, which is the whole goal today.
5. Lock the exposure, then move the phone around before you shoot.
Tap and hold to lock it, then shift your angle a little — get closer, get farther — and take the photo without re-tapping. Last week I told you about losing that sunset shot over the point of the mountain because I kept undoing my own lock. Don't undo yours. Trust it and shoot.
Now look at all five side by side
Pull them up together if your phone lets you, or just flip through them slowly. Don't judge them "good" or "bad" yet. Just notice what changed. The window one is probably better than the overhead one. The low angle probably surprised you. That's exactly what this exercise is for — to make the lesson visible instead of just theoretical.
The dinner table story
Let me tell you about a mistake I made, because it's such a common one — I see it constantly in this class.
We had a family dinner a while back and I wanted a group photo. Everybody sat down at the table, I lined up the shot, and every single person came out as a silhouette. Just dark shapes with a blown-out white rectangle behind them. Nobody looked like themselves. The trouble was the sliding door right behind them, letting in bright afternoon light, and the phone had no idea what to do with faces that dark next to a window that bright.
The fix was almost embarrassingly simple once I saw it. I moved everybody to the other side of the table so the window was in front of them instead of behind them, reshot it, and it worked immediately. Same phone, same room, same people. I just moved the light from behind them to in front of them.
That's a mistake you'll make at some point too, probably at your own dinner table, so I wanted it in your head before it happens. If your people are turning into shadows, check what's behind them before you check anything else about the camera.
A word on patience with yourself
This practice round is going to feel a little tedious. Five photos of a coffee mug isn't exciting. But take the second photo, and the third, and don't stop at the first one just because it's fine. The first one is almost never the good one. I reshoot constantly — more than people expect — and it's not because I'm bad at this. It's just how the work goes. One problem at a time, and sometimes the problem only shows up after you've already taken the shot.
Before next time
Do the five-shot exercise on one more object before we meet again — something different from what you used today. Bring both sets on your phone so we can look at them together.