Category Archives: Photography

Take a deep breath in and out, close your eyes, and imagine for a moment that you are a sought-after, professional photographer. Represented? What are your feelings? Feeling a surge of inspiration? Yes! Fine! And now, in order for your internal picture to become a reality, proceed to action. And the first of them: read this article to the end, because in it you will find many tips and recommendations that answer the main question: “How to become a photographer from scratch on your own?”

Forward to action, and even as you read, keep in mind your own image of a successful photographer.

How to become a photographer from scratch on your own?

#1 Look for answers to your questions

Questions are good if you have them, it means you are interested in something and want to develop. Asking questions and looking for answers is part of the learning process. Your question is: “How to become a photographer from scratch on your own?” brought you here to my blog about photography, where I share my experience and answer many questions of beginner photographers in articles.

There are a lot of useful materials about photography on the Internet, so learning the basics of photography is very easy. For example, by clicking on one of the following links, you can find out information about the topic indicated in the title:

• Camera aperture
• Exposure on the camera
• ISO
• Exposure in photography
• White balance

Try to read specialized literature on photography. Or get an article from a professional writer by https://collegepaper.net/. Photography blogs and podcasts also have enough information to help you understand the basics of photography and learn more about lighting, posing, photography equipment, and photo editing. Start small, with what you have, and then as you move forward and master new skills, you will feel more and more confident. Professional photography is one of the few areas where structured education at an educational institution is not a prerequisite for becoming a photographer, and having a certificate or other “crust” does not at all guarantee the level of future success and demand for a photographer.

#2 Online photography courses

If at some point in your self-study you want to learn more, but you are currently working full-time, then you can choose from a range of online photography courses that will give you a good grasp of the basics. While the really good courses are paid, there are also some free online photography courses that are quite good. You can take these courses in your spare time and improve your skills. You can also join weekend photography workshops to build your portfolio to form the backbone of your journey as a professional photographer. Also, if you are a supporter of academic education, you can enter the university to specialize in media. Some optional tasks can be delegated https://typemyessay.me/service/research-paper-writing-service/ and take the time to be creative.

#3 Photo equipment

Start with what you have, work with it. The artist is much more important than the quality of the paints and the easel, and also with photography, the photographer is more important than the camera. Improve your shooting technique as much as your current equipment allows.

Some genres of photography require special photography equipment, such as underwater photography, which I especially love, or macro photography. Just to become a photographer from scratch, there is no need to buy an expensive camera and lenses right at the start. A standard camera with a standard lens will be enough to study all the details of the theory of photography and learn to see beautiful shots, which is already happening on a subconscious level for a professional photographer. But to achieve this, a beginner photographer needs a lot of hard practice, and this can be done with a standard digital camera.

When you have a financial opportunity, you will improve your camera and purchase additional lenses. I did just that and wrote about it in the article: Start with what is.

#4 Assistant to a professional photographer

If you manage to get a job as an assistant to a professional photographer, it will help you get hands-on shooting experience. When you get the chance, focus on seeing the photographer at work during actual photo shoots, photo editing. Being in the company of a professional photographer will give you a chance to see how to run a business and how to communicate with clients.

Try searching for assistant jobs on job sites, or write directly to a photographer whose shooting style you like. Sometimes they may require you to complete the technical task and write a research, you can find help here: https://writemypapers.me/service/research-paper-for-sale/.

#5 P ractice and genre of photography

After learning the theory of photography, it’s time to start practicing, practicing and practicing again. Well, if you have the opportunity, take pictures every day. Even an hour-long walk with a camera in the area of residence is a chance to train their creative vision of the world.

At the very beginning, take pictures of everything that interests you, that you consider worthy of attention; it’s best to shoot at different times of the day so you can learn how to set up your camera in daylight, evening, or night.

Over time, you will gather a collection of photos, looking through which you can understand what you are most interested in photographing. And it will give you a hint in what genre of photography you would like to shoot. And then, after you decide, try to do more practice in the chosen genre. Do you want to shoot portraits, travel, weddings, fashion, concept art photography, reportage or commercial photography?

Research the niche you want to fill. For example, if you want to become a wedding photographer, find wedding photographers’ websites and learn from their work. And when you have the opportunity, then visit the master classes of professional photographers you like.

Follow your heart and trust your creative vision. This will help you develop a unique author’s style.

Related Articles:

In 1997, the then 20-year-old Joël Andrianomearisoa appeared on the cover of pioneering contemporary African culture magazine Revue Noire, when its 26th edition was dedicated to Madagascar. 

A little more than a quarter of century later, the art space he founded in the Madagascan capital, Antananarivo, is bringing the magazine’s photography collection to African audiences for the first time.

Indeed, the show The Spirit of Revue Noire: A Founding Collection (L’ Esprit Revue Noire, une Collection Fondatrice) is a story of firsts: the first exhibition of the magazine’s collection in Africa, and the inaugural international show at Hakanto Contemporary, which is itself the first not-for-profit art space to arrive on the Madagascan art scene.

From its launch in 1991 until its last issue in 2001, the bilingual (French/English) Revue Noire published work by more than 3,500 artists working in Africa and the diaspora across literature, art, design, dance, music, theatre and, notably, photography. 

The show’s curators (and two of the magazine’s founders), French architects Jean Loup Pivin and Pascal Martin Saint Léon, note that the mission of Revue Noire was to demonstrate the rich diversity of African art, largely overlooked in the mainstream western art world at the time; if the magazine was about showing the world African art, then the exhibition represents something of a homecoming. “The Revue Noire vision coming back to the continent – that’s one of the show’s main statements,” Andrianomearisoa, Hakanto’s founder and artistic director, tells Euronews Culture.

The choice of Antananarivo for this homecoming is not coincidental: “In Madagascar, photography has long been the main form of artistic expression. Tana (Antananarivo), particularly, has a rich history of photographic practices,” says Pivin. Nonetheless, only a handful of the 140 photographs on show – themselves but a fraction of the magazine’s collection – are by Madagascan photographers. 

Instead, The Spirit of Revue Noire: A Founding Collection presents a compelling survey of African photography, examining its development from the late 19th century to the contemporary age, and placing Madagascan photography within the context of the practice across the wider continent. “I’d like the audience to understand the importance not only of the collection but of the history and of the aesthetic; we are not just an island, we are connected to this African history, including in terms of photography,” Andrianomearisoa explains.

This mission is reflected in the show’s layout: an outer ring of rooms, tracing the development of photography across the continent via the work of nearly 30 international artists, encircles a second space, showcasing the 1997 Madagascar issue. Local photography, therefore, is highlighted and honoured, and at the same time anchored within the context of a wider African practice.

Grouped loosely into three chronological chapters, the journey through the show begins in the late 1800s with the “Pioneers”. According to Pivin and Martin, many of these first African photographers used their experience working in European studios or serving in colonial armies to set up on their own. 

This chapter charts the rise of portrait photography – first in customers’ homes, then in purpose-built studios, meeting the needs of what the curators describe as the “emerging African bourgeoisie”, as well as the steady demand for identity photos under the colonial administrations. 

It’s here that Madagascan photography takes centre stage: among the first photographers to whom visitors are introduced are Joseph Razaka (1871-1939), who opened the first photography studio in Antananarivo with his son in 1889; and Ramilijaona (1887-1938), known as the father of modern photography in Madagascar and a pioneer portraitist. 

In parallel, itinerant press photographers were tasked with touring and documenting the continent, with the image of Congolese photographer Antoine Freitas taking pictures surrounded by a crowd in the country’s Kasaï province among the exhibition’s most captivating. 

Photos of individuals surrounded by family portraits, courtesy of an anonymous photographer from Saint-Louis in Senegal (c.1939), suggest the high value placed on photography at the time. Pivin argues, however, that at this stage the impetus was a commercial one: “Photography was a business and a technical skill, not an art.”

Staged portraiture makes way for fluidity and vitality in the exhibition’s second chapter, “The Sun, Rise of Independences”. The 1950s-70s saw photographers venture out of their studios and into the streets, with many capturing the jubilation of freedom from colonial rule, together with the frustrations and challenges faced in the newly independent states. 

New technologies such as the electronic flash allowed photographers to record the joyful freneticism of the continent’s nightclubs, with young people beginning to see themselves in images akin to those so familiar from western magazines. 

Angolan-born photographer Jean Depara (1928-1978) was, for example, famed for his capturing the vibrant nightlife scene in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo; Malick Sidibé, meanwhile, chronicled the culture of 1960s Bamako, the Malian capital, in the wake of its independence. 

“The photographers present an Africa discovering a new freedom, a newfound pride and a new future,” Pivin and Martin affirm. Though studios remained popular, they too adapted, with set-ups taking on a new inventiveness: from Seydou Keïta’s (1923-2001) introduction of props and vibrant backgrounds to his photoshoots with urban Malian society, to the almost theatrical poses struck by subjects (clad in the latest fashions, borrowed for the occasion, or even wrestling outfits) at the Kinshasa studio of Angolan-born Ambroise Ngaimoko (b.1949).

The end of the 20th century, say the curators, saw photographers in Africa “participating in an essentially aesthetic pursuit”. Now acting as artists, photographers took on larger questions: identity, beauty and the human experience. 

It’s these currents that are charted in the exhibition’s final chapter, “Pursuit of an Aesthetic”. Though working with portraiture – a form once dictated by the desires of the subject – the meticulously crafted compositions of Nigerian photographer Rotomi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989) are undoubtedly the product of his own artistic vision and manage to be both intimate and political, exploring the tensions of race, sexuality, desire and spirituality. 

Bringing an even more personal dimension to this investigation of identity, some artists experimented with self-portraits. Particularly arresting is the simultaneous vulnerability and power conveyed in the “White series” of Congolese artist Alain Nzuzi-Polo (b.1985), his form variously veiled, broken and cast among fruits as part of a still life – fluid, abstract and freed from norms surrounding bodies and gender.

Notably, beyond being grouped into loose chapters and accompanied by texts introducing the artists (as well as screenings of Revue Noire-produced videos and a collection of the publishing house’s books available for browsing), the works on show are left open to interpretation. “We’re not historians, and we refuse to impose our perspective on African art […] because, in reality, history of art is history of western art,” says Pivin. 

This principle is in keeping with Andrianomearisoa’s vision for Hakanto as a springboard: “It is not, and will never be, a museum or a gallery,” he explains. “It’s an artists’ space.” 

For the creative director, who has his own artistic practice (including taking Madagascar to its first ever Venice Biennale in 2019), The Spirit of Revue Noire: A Founding Collection – despite being a historical survey – is future-oriented. “For me it’s an inspiration and I hope it will also be an inspiration for other artists,” Andrianomearisoa says.

Hosting such an international show in Madagascar, though, is not only about sparking local creativity – it’s also about demonstrating what is possible in the country, and growing its presence on the global art scene. “I think in Madagascar, we can do things – anything is possible here. We do it of course for the Madagascan audience, but it’s also Madagascar talking to the world.”

The Spirit of Revue Noire: A Founding Collection, runs until 31 March 2023, Hakanto Contemporary, Antananarivo, Madagascar, Hakantocontemporary.org​

Aerial photography

Digital photography is constantly improving, and these advancements are empowering photographers to push the boundaries and explore new styles of photography. A new style that has recently emerged reinvents the classic, pan and pace. Using a low shutter speed and a steady hand, this style allows photographers to focus on the subject – typically a lead locomotive – and track its movement through the viewfinder at the same speed. End results show a tack sharp subject with blurred foreground and backgrounds. Pan shots are more challenging as the photographer is typically stationary, while pacing is easier – providing you have a driver – as you parallel the subject, matching its speed. The results are often dramatic and evoke the essence of machinery and speed.

But today, this classic style is reaching new heights – literally – as photographers apply the same principles, though from the air using aerial drones. This makes achieving the end result more complicated. There are a few initial observations that make this a challenging style to execute.

1) Without the benefits of viewfinders, photographers must gauge the subject’s speed through a smartphone remotely connected to the drone’s controller or via another LCD screen. This is not as easy as physically eyeing the train and using a viewfinder to match its speed of motion. There is also the idea that shutter lag, or delay, may skew the focal point if the train’s speed differs from the drone.

2) Photographers must be familiar with the aerial territory to ensure no unexpecting obstructions are in the path of the pace. Towering obstructions in the vicinity of the pace limit the window of opportunity.

And 3) leveraging a slow shutter speed, oftentimes, 1/10^th or 1/15^th of a second, absorbs more ambient light, overexposing a photo unless photographers combat this with ultra-low ISO speeds or a high aperture, narrowing the amount of light. Not all drones are this sophisticated (yet), meaning the style of photography could be mostly limited to low-light conditions for some picture takers.

But one photographer has pioneered in this field, and I was eager to learn more about his success and experimentation with this dramatic style.

Aerial photography with Brandon Fiume:

Q: How many experiments did it take before you were content with your first aerial pace shot?

A: I’ll admit, I had significant beginner’s luck. During the first two days of trying to pace trains, I had a high success rate of one sharp photo for every two flights with each flight producing about a dozen frames. In fact, the first train that I shot yielded a sharp, well-exposed photo. I was certainly surprised that it worked on the first try, and I certainly underestimated the difficulty to reliably capture trains in this manner. Subsequent attempts have been less than fruitful, and I’ve had several outings where I didn’t produce a single usable image from an entire day of attempts.

Q: I understand the concept of slow shutter speed, high aperture, but how are you able to execute this in daylight without overexposing the composition and losing detail?

A: My drone has a fixed aperture of f/2.8, which makes controlling exposure quite difficult since I can only adjust shutter speed and the ISO. To compensate for a slow shutter speed, I use a series of fixed neutral density filters from ND16 to ND2000. The filters allow me to shoot up to 1 second in broad daylight and having a range of filters allows me to compensate for various lighting conditions. When the sun moves behind a cloud, I can only compensate by decreasing the shutter speed to ensure proper exposure since I cannot change filters mid-flight.

Q: What is your biggest challenge you have faced with this style of photography and what could be improved (by drone manufacturers) to make this process easier?

A: The biggest challenge is certainly trying to keep pace with the train, it requires a lot of precision with the controls to not only synchronize the speed and direction with the train, but also keep the train at the right point within the frame, all within a finite amount of straight track and flying range. If I’m flying faster than the train, I have to decrease my speed to let the train catch up, and then speed back up.  If I’m flying slower than the train, I have to increase my speed which may not be possible due to maximum speed of the drone. Time is of the essence with this process; a long process will yield fewer frames.

Many photographers have asked about using autonomous flight modes that can track the subject, and many are under the impression that the tracking features can be used for pacing shots. The active tracking modes can only be used for video, and the current implementation favors following the subject from behind and favors panning. Within the current technology, pacing trains is not possible using the flight modes. When a frame is captured during an autonomous flight mode, the video feed is interrupted, causing the drone to cease tracking the train and hover.

I would love to have the ability to have an adjustable cruise control, similar to that on an automobile. It would make the matching of the train’s speed significantly easier, and I wouldn’t have to worry about maintaining the speed.

Fiume is currently flying with a DJI Air 2S and his photography is published on his website here.