From Beginner to Pro Photography Guide

Beginning a journey in photography is like starting anything else. It’s trying to figure out a starting point and moving on from there. Hi! My name is Michael B Clark. I have been working in the photography industry for the last 7 years professionally, but really my journey started back in high school, and I’m not going to say how long ago that was. 

I have loved taking pictures and video for years and I’ve always wanted to improve my skills and my eye for a good photo, and I still am looking to do that today. I love being able to take something that we see everyday and make it look amazing and surreal, but how do we get from starting our journey to taking photographs that we want to show off and everyone will want to see. 

Well first I would say we need to get into what we want to take pictures of. There are so many passions and genres of photography, which one do we want to pursue? Now that doesn’t mean we can’t focus on multiple things, but it’s nice to know what we’re passionate about. Exploring and dabbling in many different styles and genres of photography will help us discover and learn what we are truly passionate about, and when you care about something, it tends to be easier to grow with it, and make it look that much better.

Next we will need the right gear. The first thing that most beginners will think is that they need the best and the most expensive camera. That is entirely NOT true. I had a professor once tell us that “the best camera is the one you have on you”. Honestly we can get some incredible pictures from any camera. I myself will just use my phone every now and then just because it’s the most accessible at the time and I still get some great shots from it. It’s better to learn the fundamentals on an easier camera in the beginning, so don’t worry about what camera we have, just have the camera that works in our budget and feels right to us. 

Learning the fundamentals of photography can seem overwhelming especially when we start hearing some of the more complicated terminology. There are several things that make a photo look great, but let's start with composition. Composition is everything in the picture that gives us, well the image. There is the subject, the background, and the foreground. For an example, we could have a tree as our subject, a sunset in the background, and some tall grass or flowers in our foreground. Now where do we place all things in the frame? The easiest composition rule is the “rule of thirds”, basically dividing the frame into nine boxes, we can now place our subject where we want it. It could be centered, on one of the intersections, or in one of the boxes. This rule is just 1 way to help you place your subject, it is not law. There are several other things to look for when composing your photo, but that is a whole other blog post. PetaPixal has a great article on composition. Just remember that practice makes better, as we take more and more pictures we will begin to understand where we like the subject and how we want to reach our audience with our photography. 

When it comes to practicing our craft, or any craft at all, we should start small and easy. Jumping into anything head on can be difficult and discouraging, so we want to start small and work our way up to more difficult and challenging tasks. Starting by shooting things in our home or yard is a great way to get some good practice in. I personally started shooting some of my mothers decorations and knick-knacks and a few pictures of my dog. While I was in school, one of my favorite assignments was getting a fortune cookie and taking a picture of what I felt represented that fortune. This exercise was great at making me think about what I wanted to photograph instead of just reacting to what I see. My first time doing this though was a picture of my sister reading a letter. Once again, something or someone in my home as my subject. Take the journey into photography at our own pace and develop the skills that we want to have and use in the future.

Once we are comfortable with our style and our work and we feel consistent with our work, It’s time to establish ourselves. Are we doing this as a hobby? Work? Both? Either way we should look into getting some sort of photography website. If we are doing this as a business, what should our business be called? You can pick some catchy name or just use our own given name. Even a name as common as mine I’ve made work for me. Either way, this is how we want people to know us. The best way to price our services is to just look up what other people are charging in the area for similar services. If we are too cheap, it may come off that we don’t know what we are doing, but we don’t want to over-sell ourselves either. It is important to price ourselves competitively and fairly. You are worth more than you think. 

There is a lot that goes into building ourselves in photography, but whether we are beginners or professionals it is important to keep up with the basics, know the rules, and keep practicing. As we get better and better and more established, all the beautiful equipment will come. I remember the day I purchased my first full frame camera, and boy was it a purchase, but I loved what I did and it still took me several years to get there. We just need to take our time and focus on what we want to do and we will get there eventually. Subscribe to my blog for more tips and tricks into social media, marketing, video and photography. I plan to expand more on all these topics and how they all weave together. You can also follow me at @michaelblclarkmedia on most social media sites. I am working on getting a podcast and Youtube channel going, so those are coming in the future. Thank you and remember, the camera doesn’t take good pictures, We do.