Yes: it’s not natural light vs artificial light. It’s found light vs controlled light.

If you’re shooting something light, define it with shadows. If you’re shooting something dark use specular highlights to give it shape.

Use gels to create color differential. Sunlight should be warm, shade should be cooler. Not much, just a little will make it feel natural.

Big defuse light sources, light from windows is very soft. Light through a cheap sheet or bounce off a big wall off frame.

That’s basically what happened when I got my first 2400 watt strobe. Nearly set the dog’s bed on fire.

Other than strobist, find a project you’re interested in. Try and start with an idea and then figure out how to execute it. Often the idea is harder than the light. (And remember: it’s not natural light vs artificial light, it is found light vs controlled light.)

There is a flattening effect of focal length, but it comes from changing your preferred working distance rather than an optical effect. If you take a picture of someone at 10 feet with a 20mm and an 85mm then crop in the 20mm picture it will look the same. However, if you fill the frame with a persons face with a 20mm and then with an 85mm by foot zoom you’ll get different pictures due to the change in the ratio of distance to the lens.

If you have something 1 Unit wide and it’s 1 Unit away from you, then you move it so it’s 2 units away from you then it goes from taking up 60 degrees of your field for view to 28.96 degrees. However, if it starts at 10 units away then moving it one more unit goes from 5.7 degrees to 5.2 degrees. So yes, it is just cropping, and not distortion but it still changes the look of the photo by changing the effect of distance on relitive size in the final image in a lot of typical uses.

You can see the same thing in huge murals of people: from a distance they look like normal propotions, but when you get close and at an angle they start to look really weird because the relative distance between parts of the painting is different than how we’re used to seeing people.

Using hyper focal distance with landscape.

Cull, cull then cull some more. I shoot fire dancers a lot, and when I’ve got a few thousand photos to go though I will filter light room to only unflagged photos, then press X to reject and P to pick. Just bang it out: if the position isn’t great or there is something clearly technically wrong, just press X and don’t look back. If you realize nothing interesting happened in a set of burst shots, just select them all, hit X and don’t look back.

Speed comes with practice and recognizing the stories that you want quickly. Then that will carry over to your shooting: you’ll know where to look on the field and where the stories are likely to show up so you’ll not take as many bad pictures.

Also, especially as another student, be a little careful about unflattering stories: a near miss is an amazing story that people love to see, but the person who missed it may not be happy about having their failure frozen in time and shared around. If you’re shooting the same people they’ll get to know you and perceived insults stick in people’s minds a lot longer than complements.

Good to make sure the tree does not get away.

For myself I find it most helpful to break down why the photos are not keepers/sharers: technical mistake? Just a boring picture? Missed the moment? Is the picture good, but I’ve got a better one? Is the idea good, but I got a better one? Does it not tell an appropriate story?

I do action and portraiture. It’s hard to switch gears, and sometimes I end up with like 80 nearly identical shots because I just keep hitting that shutter button by reflex.