How To Become A Professional Photographer
How I Started My Photography Career
I have to admit I started photography at a later time in my life. It was never something I ever thought about when I was younger, however, I always did have a creative side to me. Art always appealed to me, I loved drawing and was always drawing in my free time. With some time I got really good at it, but where I’m from, there isn’t any way I could make a living from it, so I never got too deep into it.
In 2020, I was working as a Real Estate Agent when my husband asked me what I thought about doing photography. I thought about it and thought why not, so I decided to give it a try. After a few courses and grew to love viewing the world through my lens.
At first it was purely practice for me, when I first got my camera, I went around taking photos of everything, of course I knew the theory of it but putting it into practice took some trial and error. Watching a lot of YouTube tutorials, researched other professional photographers’ work, I seeked advice from other photographers as well. After which I was still figuring out what area of photography I wanted to be in, what area I was most passionate about.
Choosing My Area Of Photography
Nature Photography is a passion of mine and I originally wanted to do more of that but realistically I could not make a living by doing that. So I did the next best thing; Portrait Photography, because I came to love photographing people in their element, in their unexpected moments. A picture is truly worth a thousand words, it tells a story and being able to capture those moments for my clients is truly special and pleasing to me.
Being a photographer you have to be several things, it is also unique to everyone. For me, I had started wanting to do Nature Photography then transitioned into photographing people, which I came to really love doing. As well as, getting into several other areas of photography and also evolving into being a Graphic Designer, to learning how to build my own website. In other words, by taking up photography, I learned so many new skills, which has helped build my photography business to what it is today.
Obstacles In Photography
Some obstacles I’ve faced is with the start up, with getting clients. There are so many people who are getting into photography and who have been doing it for a long time and have the experience, so as someone who is now starting, you find that people end up going for someone with experience and it’s easy to get discouraged when that happens.
My advice would be to work along with other, more seasoned photographers, be their second or third shooter if you have to whenever they have an event or wedding etc, because not only do you get to learn and gain experience on how to go about shooting those events, you also get the exposure as a photographer without the pressure that comes with being first shooter. As second shooter you get to take those creative shots that the first shooter might not be able to take, and if you do a great job, that photographer is likely to book you again whenever they have big jobs.
Future Goals For My Career
I would like to build up a regular client-base, with my business having a high ranking when it comes to producing professional photos that satisfy customers’ needs. To have an expansion of the business, where there is a central studio building for photoshoots and the grand set-up that I envisioned.
Mostly I want my clients to be able to say Ashley Media always delivers excellent work, with all their photographic needs catered for and knowing that all of their celebrated moments are important to us too. As we aim to capture those precious moments that they’ll be able to look back on and cherish.