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Education

Why Photography Makes for Such a Great Solo Hobby

Chris Gampat
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Last updated on 09/22/2025
11/10/2025
2 Mins read
A Nikon ZF camera with a green strap rests on a brown bag with leather buckle details.
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I am an extrovert — and I love humanity while not always liking humans. That also means that I love sometimes going shooting photos and excursions with buds. But at the moment, I’m writing this article while having barely left my apartment for the past week. I’ve currently got bronchitis, and when this article is published, I’ll have long gotten over it. There’s something very isolationist about what I’m going through right now that reminds me so much of the pandemic. And if you don’t let the depression of being sick get to you, you can transmute your creative feelings into images that will make you very happy. Here are a few reminders to yourself on why photography can be such a great solo hobby.

You Can Always Use Your Favorite Lens, and No One Can Tell You Otherwise

Often, my favorite lenses are not the ones that are best for me to do work with. So instead, I end up not always using my favorite lenses for paid work. But when I’m shooting for myself and my love of photography, then I can use the lenses that I like. This ultimately makes me feel more connected to the project because it’s that much more personal.

You Can and Should Try the Things You’ve Never Tried Before

Use a ton of in-camera techniques. Maybe it’s spinning the camera. There’s also the in-camera movement technique that makes very painterly photographs. Plus, there’s stuff like double exposures that work really well too.

You Can Embrace the Idea of Absolute Manual Mode

Absolute manual mode is something that I’ve been embracing more and more as AI and scene detection have crept more into our lives. Here are some of the things I do:

  • Put the camera in manual mode
  • Turn off the exposure preview/live view setting effect
  • Set the aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance manually
  • Use a manual flash of some sort or manually make adjustments to the lighting around you
  • Manually add some sort of lens filter that will fundamentally alter how the image that you’re shooting works. Have it play with the light in various ways
  • Use manual focus
  • If you are using autofocus, completely turn off scene detection/AI detection
  • Use a single autofocus point in AF-S mode
  • Work to get the image to be something that you’re happy with in camera. And if you’re not, then make adjustments in-camera by adding things. Don’t rely on post-production.
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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