The Photograph You Nearly Didn’t Take

Last week we completed Photograph Your Holiday Better in 3 Weeks.

Over the course of the three lessons, we explored how to observe more carefully, how to get the best from the camera you already own and how to return home with photographs that mean more than a record of the places you visited.

Alongside those lessons, I shared fifteen practical Notes. Each contained a simple exercise designed to be tried immediately, whether you were travelling somewhere unfamiliar or photographing close to home.

When I began the series, I suspected that the photographs people treasure most are rarely the ones they planned in advance. They are often the photographs made between the attractions: breakfast on the first morning, someone waiting for a train, a handwritten menu outside a restaurant or the final walk before heading home.

They are the photographs we nearly didn’t take.

A famous landmark tells us where we were, but an ordinary moment can remind us what it felt like to be there. Years later, that difference becomes increasingly important.

This is why I wanted to collect the fifteen Notes into something more permanent than a series of posts.

I’m delighted to say that the promised field guide is now ready.

Photograph Your Holiday Better: A Practical Field Guide brings together all fifteen exercises from the bootcamp, carefully edited and organised into three sections.

The first week is about learning to see. You will work with one ordinary subject, examine the edges of the frame, search for light before searching for a subject and practise removing distractions.

The second week turns to the camera. Rather than overwhelming you with settings, it helps you understand what your camera does well, use your position more deliberately and become comfortable with the few controls that genuinely affect the photograph.

The final week is about memory. You will photograph the small details, the people sharing the journey and the moments that usually disappear between one attraction and the next.

The guide concludes with the final ten-photograph challenge: creating a small sequence that describes not only where you travelled, but what the journey felt like.

Everything has been designed to work whether you use a phone, a compact camera, a mirrorless camera or something larger. The camera matters far less than the attention you bring to the exercise.

The complete field guide is available below for paid subscribers.

Three quick notes before we get to the most important part:

• From today, my two weekly articles will be published on Monday and Thursday.

• I’ve started a new series on my blog, The Cabinet: objects, photographs and the stories I find along the way. A rather personal project.

• If you missed Learning Photography Properly, you can find it here.

And now, the part I promised you...