General Advice Thread

[Sirius Glass]

I should have started developing my owb film earlier.Iwas scared of it for no reason and I can do a better job of it now than any lab I know.

I wish that I had started developing color film sooner.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

I have a lot of family photos with no useful identifying information - it would've helped to have full names, the location, the date, and the event.

 

[blockend]

One camera, one or two lenses. Photographs with people are more interesting than ones without - we are are people, so they must be. Leave bugs and flowers to entomologists and botanists. Experiment with film and developers as much as possible, then stick with ones you like and don't go back. Look at the photographic greats, briefly despair, then get on with the business. Gear is nothing - any fool can buy equipment. Don't take boring pictures.

That's the advice I'd give my teenage self.

 

[MartinP]

Write where, what, when, who and why - so far as they are applicable, of course - on the neg filing sheet. Information that is very useful later on, especially decades later on. (And use something stable, such as pencil, not an oily inked pen).

 

[Theo Sulphate]

The advice here has been very good. Maybe this thread should be a sticky?

 

[MontanaJay]

Looking back on my 64 years of photography, there's two traits I wish I had had when I started out -- patience and an obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Patience is a tough one when you're young, but taking your time with composition and waiting for the right light can have great rewards.
The OCD includes, as other have mentioned, documenting, dating and cataloging everything you shoot as well as developing a storage method that you'll be comfortable using all your life. It also means learning and following the darkroom cleanliness discipline, and, again, patience.
And always carry a camera. What kind is almost irrelevant.