You need to have some guts, turning your dream into reality. But being professional photographer is really excellent choice for future career. It’s also great way of getting paid for your creative talent. It’s one of those careers where college degrees, age or diplomas are not necessarily, most important is being disciplined with quality product and good eye. When you start, prepare to start with small steps as competition is really big field. By perfecting your craft and building portfolio of your best pictures you can start to be professional photographer. If you think there is right or wrong way in this field, you are wrong. There isn’t. To become better photographer many people go to college for art degree or take classes for photography focus. But large number of people believes going to college is just wasting time. You can teach yourself about world of photography from experimenting and reading various books or learning directly from photography professionals.
The type of camera you will buy depends on what kind of photography you want to shoot. You will probably end up buying maybe 2 camera bodies with different choice of lenses for different shooting along with good software for editing. Know the camera you’re working with. You should know and learn all error messages, every settings, and different lenses types. If you start to fumble with camera you might look unprofessional and even affect final quality of photos. Reading the manual of your camera should help you in getting to know your camera better. You can start to practice home, experimenting with different angles and shadow manipulating different things. Take some books, magazines or even online articles that have much information for camera settings. You could even find out new ways of using your lenses and camera to capture stunning photos.
Get Photoshop or any other editing software. Even the best captured images may require some of editing which can transform them from good to superb. But be careful not to put to much special effects cause your clients might not like it. If you want to get hired by someone professional you need to have full portfolio so you can show it to your clients. But be aware, you need to have at least 5 to 10 photos as people will be interested in all great work you have done. Experiment with various areas for photography, maybe wedding occasion, sport game, portrait or landscape photography. In the end it’s all about giving the clients what they want.
The secret to being great in photography is not to loose your passion, and keep working on your projects all the time. Find time to shoot what you want and your passion and desire will keep growing along with your confidence. This is worth not just for photography but for any business. Don’t be cheap when investing in great editing software. Even though most of pics should be edited manually, it doesn’t hurt to have ability to make quick adjustments and edits to your photos. As the saying goes ” customer is always right ” so keep in mind that when you are paid by other clients to do photos you are expected do fulfill their wishes and not your artistic desires. Making photographs each day is great, but don’t expect to grow too fast, always start slowly and grow yourself. I always loved photography as my grandpa too. He had his own studio where he developed pictures so I suppose I got the love for photography from him. 🙂
