When meeting people who don’t know us, usually during the conversation, they wanna know what we do for a living or enjoy doing as hobbies.
Once we say we’re photographers, the next question will probably be, “What type of photography do you do?”
Considering myself a generalist, that’s always been a rough question to answer.
However, I do answer by saying that my background in photojournalism and my approach to any type of work are usually the same.
If we understand photography, we can do any work we want.
The only work we
shouldn’t be doing is the work we don’t wanna do.
While working as a photojournalist, I photographed people, places, things, planned events, and news.
Although I can photograph a lot of different things as a professional,
there are some I don’t specialize in.
Architecture would be one because of the equipment needed, and sports photography would be another because I’m just plain bad at it and have no desire to get any better at doing it.
When I meet with photographers during my classes, a lot of them say they wanna be this type of photographer or that type of photographer.
And that’s great that we can have that direction, but before we could become any type of photographer, we have to be a photographer first.
That means understanding the relationship between camera operation, composition, and light-that’s the foundational stuff photographers learn when they participate in my Photography Basics (Introduction To Photography) class.
When I give homework in that class, I explain that the techniques we covered should be practiced in a way relevant to each photographer.
In other
words, if someone wants to be a portrait photographer, they should do portraits and apply the techniques we learned during the class; the same would go for landscape photographers, food photographers, wildlife photographers, etc.
It’s
great that we know what type of photographer we wanna be because it gives us direction and a context for our studies and practice, but if we don’t understand photography, we’ll never become that photographer.
I'll help you be a better
photographer—study and practice photography with me.