10 Things in order to be the Best Photographer
1. Communication:
Conversation is all about quality, when you converse, you’re trying to get someone to understand something or vice versa, the more you have a conversation with this person, not only are you learning about their perspective on life but you also listen to the words they use to describe things, or they use certain history to help you understand something. We all explain things by associating with what we knew before, background knowledge. This helps to understand where a person’s viewpoint comes from and why it’s of value because it forms us as individuals. I put this as the first one because with photography, I want to know who I am photographing, what is comfortable to them, how they see the word. This changes the position of what you do with photography. Are you trying to get a cool picture and overlay a thousands effects to get “ooo’s and awwwes” or are you trying to share a photograph of someone’s being?
2. Take The Back Seat:
Let a story of someone’s life be heard. We are so eager to take control of a conversation and get excited about sharing all that is about our own lives, that we forget that a conversation involves two people. In order to get to know someone, be the person to ask about their life, question something you don’t understand, then make a connection by associating with what they have said. Photography has captured some of the greatest people that have lived, when an amazing portrait they usually ask, “who is this person?” Then follow with “who shot this photograph?” in retrospect, when it comes to effects , we’re so quick to be like “wow I wonder who made this.” It all depends on your goal but even then, in movie posters personalities are illustrated through someone’s pose and we can figure that out right away.
3. Take a dive into different things that catch your eye:
Photography is an artform. Great artists have created masterpieces from being motivated by a completely different subjects of art, politics, people alone, catastrophes, national impacts ,culture, movies, songs, and etc. So it’s a crucial part of stepping out of your boundaries to influence your creativity.
4. Learning Someone’s background + being:
This wraps up the overall reason in understanding someone. Photography makes people feel vulnerable, and it’s vital to provide a safe space for your model/ client when doing a project. The camera is used as a tool to capture your model’s being.
5.Lighting
Lighting is an important element to learn because lighting can set the tone of your image. There are different times in the day that can make your photos captivating or it can completely lose your vieweres interest. At night you want to illuminate your subjects so learning how to get the right calculation of how much light to let in your lense is something to look out for because without knowing how to control lighting , you will be very disappointed when you look at your camera roll and find the total opposite of what you want.
6. Moods
Learn about the different moods a day can portray in your photos, the lighting at 12 o’clock in the afternoon is the “energy hour” and using that in your photos can transfer that same energy to your viewer if they were looking at a model using running shoes to go run around a track. Twilight becomes more intimate and would be perfect to evoke an intimate photo of your client.
7.Colors
Knowing what colors compliment each other would help tremendously in your work because then everything will have a beautiful balance in color and it will illustrate how you want your viewers to see your photo.
8.Skin tones:
Skin tone is an important subject because there are so many ways you can accentuate someone’s beauty in their skin tone alone. Knowing what colors compliment certain skin tones would make your photographer more gravitating. We all have different undertones in our skin that balance well with other colors so lighting,color, and skin tone is the best way to start!
9.Body Types and Their Angles:
Everyone has an angle, everyone can look beautiful in a photograph, working with as many different body shapes will only help you advance in the your photography by shooting a range of body types.
10. Aperture, Shutter Speed, Iso
I put this one last because, I think before picking up a camera, I wish I would have taken the time to invest in books and more time to use the internet to learn the importance of those primary aspects. It’s easy to get lost in learning technical things first because people believe learning technicality will make them more creative but that’s not entirely the case, in my opinion. We get blindsided by the end result many times and go out to buy expensive equipment that doesn't necessarily give you strong or impactful photos. However, now that I’ve said what I needed to say about that, Aperture, Shutter Speed , and Iso is something that is crucial to understand, about your camera. It is the way to get precise results in sharpness, color, and focus point. So I definitely urge people to have a good understanding of that to understand how your camera works.