How to Start Photography With a Day Job: What I'd Do If I Started Again

If I had to work out how to start photography all over again, with the same day job I have now, I'd buy a used digital camera and keep the kit small. I'd learn exposure before anything fancy, shoot in aperture priority instead of full manual, take a lot of bad photos without worrying about it, and spend my free hours outside instead of watching one more tutorial. That last one would have saved me the most time, and it has nothing to do with the camera.

This is for you if you're just starting, you work full time, and photography has to fit into whatever is left: weekends, the odd evening, a trip now and then.

I picked up my first camera about 15 years ago. These days I photograph on weekends, on the occasional evening when the weather is nice, and when I travel and want to shoot for fun. That's my window. So everything below had to pass one test. Does it fit around a job, or does it quietly eat the little time I have?

Keep the camera kit simple

The first thing I'd change has less to do with which camera you buy and more to do with how much you buy.

For everything digital, I shoot with one camera, the Fujifilm X100VI. For a while I was also shooting photos and video on a Sony a6700. I sold it thinking I'd upgrade to something else, and then I never did. I kept the X100VI, and my photography got simpler. I wrote about what I gave up, and what never bothered me, in Is the Fujifilm X100VI Worth It in 2026?

If I were starting from zero, I'd begin with a used digital camera. Not a film camera, and not necessarily the one I use now. Something simple that lets you learn, without a long list of extras around it. Most of the accessories I've collected over the years, I'd skip.

That doesn't mean you can only ever own one camera. I have film cameras too. One is a Canon AE-1 I found on a resale marketplace for about 70 euro. It came with a bunch of lenses, some flashes and a few things I still don't know how to use. The other is an Olympus Superzoom 70G that I picked up not long ago. Having more than one camera works, as long as each one has its own job. My X100VI is digital, the Canon is film, and they sit side by side without me ever wondering which one is for what.

Where it goes wrong is when the gear starts making the decision harder instead of easier. More gear can lead to paralysis by analysis. You finally have a free afternoon, you stand in front of everything you own, and you think: okay, what do I take today? By the time you've decided, part of that afternoon is gone.

I've felt this even when filming videos. My old setup meant mounting the camera, putting on the right lens and making sure every setting was dialled in before I could start. Now I use a much smaller setup, and the gap between deciding to do something and actually doing it is shorter.

What to do with this: before you buy anything, ask what job it does that nothing you already own can do. If you can't answer, leave it in the shop. The goal is fewer things standing between you and the part that makes you happy, which for me is taking photos. If you're still choosing your first setup, I went through the order I'd buy things in, in Starting Photography? Buy the Lens Before the Camera.

Learn the basics before anything fancy

Once you have a camera, my suggestion is to focus on three things: exposure, composition and light. Those three take you further than anything else, both in getting to know your camera and in actually getting better at photography.

There are plenty of fancier techniques out there, double exposure and others, and if you're new most of them will sound like a different language. That's fine. Leave them for later.

Of the three, I'd start with exposure, then composition, then light. The order depends a little on what you photograph. I started with street photography, and on the street you don't control the light much. Composition, you can do something about. But the first thing to have nailed is knowing how to change your camera's settings so the exposure comes out the way you want.

When I say exposure, I mean how much light the camera takes in for the scene in front of you. You've probably heard it called the exposure triangle: ISO, shutter speed and aperture working together. I won't go deep into each one here. What matters for a beginner is that you understand how the three affect each other, because that understanding is what every other decision rests on.

What to do with this: pick exposure as your only focus for your first few outings. Don't try to fix composition and light at the same time. When changing the exposure starts to feel normal rather than stressful, move on to composition.

Understanding the exposure triangle doesn't mean you have to shoot fully manual all the time, though. That's the next thing I'd do differently.

How to start photography without shooting full manual

I started in full manual, and I wouldn't do it again.

The reason I went manual from day one was my need for control. I felt I had to know exactly what was going on with the camera and the picture. I thought: if I don't know how fast the shutter is, or how wide the aperture is, or what the ISO is, I'll never learn how this camera works.

In practice, I wasn't moving the settings much. I was just thinking about them a lot. Most of the time I opened the aperture as wide as it would go, set the ISO as low as possible, and then did what I could with the shutter speed. The shutter speed was almost the only setting I was really changing, and I was still spending energy on the other two.

What I'd do now depends on what you photograph.

For street photography, which is where I started, I'd use aperture priority. You set the aperture, or change it to suit the scene, and the camera takes care of the rest. You still need to understand what's happening, because ISO and shutter speed have a big effect on the photo even when the camera is choosing them. That's where exposure compensation comes in: when you know what the camera is doing, you can nudge it brighter or darker with confidence.

For events, I wouldn't use aperture priority. I'd use shutter priority. At events people move a lot and the light can change quickly, so it's easy to end up with motion blur. Unless blur is the look you're going for, event photos usually work better sharp, like a snapshot of the moment. Shutter priority lets you keep that under control.

And when the light is difficult, I've sometimes set the ISO to auto and controlled the shutter speed and aperture myself. All of these are fine. They all come back to knowing the exposure triangle well enough to choose.

In my day job I'm a product manager at a tech company, and a big part of that work is deciding which choices the person using a product makes and which ones the product handles for them. Give someone every decision at once and they freeze, or they make the same safe choice every time without learning much. Hand the right decisions to the product and the person can focus on the one that matters to them. Your camera is the product here. Full manual hands a beginner every decision at the same moment. Aperture priority, or shutter priority for events, keeps the one decision that shapes the photo with you and lets the camera handle the rest. With only a few hours a week, every decision you don't have to make is time back.

Let the bad photos happen

The next thing is simple to say and harder to accept: take a lot of pictures, and expect most of them to be bad.

If you're starting out, don't worry too much about accessories or settings beyond the basics. Once those are in place, go out and shoot, because that's what makes you better. Some people will have more misses than others, but all of us have a lot of them, especially early on. Most of my own early photos were misses. And to be honest, there are still walks where I take lots of photos and don't like a single one, years in.

Part of what makes this hard is what you see online. Most photographers only show a small, carefully chosen selection of their work, and professional portfolios are even more selective. So you end up comparing your whole pile of misses with someone else's few keepers. That comparison will always make you feel behind.

The only comparison I find useful is with myself: the photographer I am today against the one I was yesterday. If I've improved even 1%, that's already a lot.

What to do with this: go back to your old photos every so often and see how they've changed. If you've only just started, look through the photos on your phone. I talked about this kind of rediscovery in the video We're Better at Photography Than We Think. Sometimes you find a photo that's better than you thought it was when you took it.

The biggest time-saver: stop watching and go out

This one is close to the last, but it's the change that would have saved me the most time, so it gets its own section.

In the beginning, and sometimes still today, I watched a huge number of YouTube videos. Videos on composition, on exposure, on how to take photos, on everything. I didn't think I needed one video per topic. I thought I needed a hundred. And every time I had the time to go out, I'd think: one more video, then I'll go, I'll try it and it'll be better.

You might get a little better from that extra video. But it's marginal, especially compared with going out, taking pictures, looking at what you took, and then going out again.

If you're photographing around a day job, you probably have a few hours a week, mostly on weekends, and honestly it's never quite enough. With a window that small, the hours have to go to doing rather than planning. I wrote about how I fit those hours around work in How to Keep Photographing With a Full-Time Job.

I know it's a little odd to say this in a blog post, since you're reading about photography right now instead of doing it. So when you finish reading, do yourself a favour. Go out and take a picture, even if it's just one.

What I'd do if I were starting this week

If you're working out how to start photography with a job that takes most of your week, this is the short version of what I'd do:

1. Buy a used digital camera and keep the kit small. Give every piece of gear its own job.

2. Learn exposure first, then composition, then light. Leave the fancy techniques for later.

3. Shoot aperture priority for street, shutter priority for events, and learn exposure compensation.

4. Take a lot of bad photos, and compare yourself only with who you were yesterday.

5. Spend your few hours a week out shooting, not watching one more tutorial.

Learning still matters. It just doesn't all have to come from videos, and it doesn't have to cost you your shooting time. One of the ways I share what I learn is by email. Still Shooting is my monthly letter about photography, my own journey, the tools I use and what I find along the way. If that sounds useful, you can join Still Shooting here.

Then close this tab and go take that one picture.

[PM LENS: Deciding which choices the user makes and which the product handles explains why aperture or shutter priority suits a time-poor beginner better than full manual]