I was having a bit of a surf around the internet looking for web sites related to another site I have just started about stock photography and I came across a post by David Huntley about being creative and I thought it was a great idea for a beginner. So all credit to David for the idea, I hope he doesn’t mind me pinching it.

So what do you have to do. Well David’s idea was to take one normal household object and take 100 different pictures of it. Yes, that’s 100. This is a great way to explore your cameras settings, so don’t be afraid of trying different modes on your camera, different aperture settings, different shutter speeds or different lenses if you have them. It also doesn’t matter at all if the shots don’t come out very well, you will learn more from your mistakes than your successes. You can also make use of different lighting too. Try using your flash or use desk lamps to try and create different lighting effects. It’s basically an excuse to go mad with your camera and just try out as much as you can.

The key to this task is to remember what settings you used on your camera, which menus you used to get to those settings or which dials or buttons you pressed. After taking 100 photos you should know your camera a lot more than you did before. It might be an idea to have a pad and pen and note down the settings you used for each image so when you come to review them you can see which settings produced the images that turned out best, and which settings you may need to experiment with a bit more.

So there you have it, just go for it and see what you end up with. I look forward to seeing some of your results.

After getting an email from someone who has visited this site, I asked them what they would like to see on the site. They said they thought some simple exercises or tasks for the beginner would be good. It can be hard to find inspiration sometimes, so I thought this was an excellent idea. Thanks Louise!

So the first task will test your eye for composition and the Rule of Thirds.

While this isn’t really a strict rule, it’s a good guideline to follow.

So what you need to do is this. Pick three different subjects, for example; a landscape, a portrait and maybe a subject that is moving. You don’t need to worry about any particular camera settings, this is just a composition exercise.

Follow the Rule of Thirds and take several photos of each subject, but try and stick to the guidelines. So check where your horizons are, for portraits check where the eyes are in the image, but try and make each picture different to the previous one.

If you have a zoom lens, then try a composition zoomed right out, try one zoomed in half way and try one zoomed right in. Try your camera in landscape orientation, and try it in portrait orientation and see what you end up with.

If you have a Flickr Account, join and add your pictures to the Photography Basics group and tag them “photographybasics task 1″.  If you don’t have a Flickr account (it’s free to set up if you want one) then either post a link to your image in the comments of this post if you have the image on another web site.

This task should help you get used to looking at the image in the viewfinder or screen before pressing the shutter button to take the image and thinking a bit about the image you are about to take.

I look forward to seeing your images.