- Landscape
- Portraiture
- Product/Still life
The main group I am interested in is Portraiture as I feel confident with my work in this area. I have done a lot of studio portraiture and a few location portraits so I feel that this is a good one to pick as I enjoy it. I also have an interest in Landscape photography as I have done a few landscape shoots that I have been pleased with and product/still life I have experimented with in the past and I was pleased with the outcomes.
Landscape Photography
Landscape photography is the photography of any natural scenery usually with minimal manmade disturbances (houses, factories etc) but may include urbanized areas like cityscapes. This could be coastal (if mainly the sea then often referred to as seascapes), agricultural (farmland), woods, forests, mountainous places, areas of water like lakes, rivers and ponds and most wilderness.
A landscape photographer would most commonly use a wide angle lens as landscape photography often includes large areas of scenery which you would not be able to fit in your frame using a smaller fixed lens.
Panoramic images are most commonly used for landscapes as some landscapes are so vast you can't fit them in the frame even using a wide angle lens.
Landscape photography is often found in magazines like National Geographic, Outdoor magazine (camping etc), holiday brochures, fishing and gardening magazines. It is sometimes used within advertisements. The audience of landscape photography would usually be people interested in the outdoors, fishing, gardening, nature, wildlife, cultures and travelling.
The potential employment routes for Landscape Photography; You could do commissioned work for a magazine like National Geographic in which you would travel and take pictures of landscapes around the world, you could do the same for an outdoor magazine but work in a selected area/country. You could also sell your images as stock images for other people to purchase to use.
In order to do this you would need a range of equipment: Camera body (Canon 5D Mark2- around £650), Camera lens, probably 3, ultra wide angle lens (between £800-£2,500), mid-range lens (£400-£1000) and a telephoto lens (£1000-£2,500) (for long distance shooting) All with a large aperture like f1.8-2.8, The focus range of these lenses would be around 16mm-200mm. You will also need 1-2 large storage memory cards (64gb) costing around £20 each and also a laptop to transfer your files over to and a harddrive. Laptop-£500-£1000 Harddrive- £60-£100, as a Landscape photographer it would probably be best you purchase more memory cards so you dont have to travel with your laptop and harddrive to free space.
You would also need a sturdy tripod which you can purchase a decent one for around £40.
A polariser filter essential to reduce glare from surfaces such as water and increases saturation - £50-£100 for a decent one.
Nuetral density filter which acts like sunglasses, essential for blocking out light so your camera is forced to let more light in, handy for long exposures and blurring - £40
Graduated neutral density filter (essential for making the sky light less harsh to look equal light to the bottom of the photograph) - £35
UV filter essential to protect from UV light haze - £20
Hot shoe spirit level -£5 essential to keep camera straight ensuring even imagery.
Equipment bag essential to keep your lenses and body safe whilst travelling - £60-150
Shutter release cable essential for long exposures or tricky situations- £10
I don't think you would need any qualifications to be a landscape photographer but you would need a great portfolio to show people who would like to use your services and the better the portfolio, the more likely they will be to employ you for commissioned work.
A landscape photography training course would probably be beneficial and would also help with your portfolio.
Although I lack lens equipment I could still take decent landscape images with my 18-55mm along with my UV lens. I could then show a portfolio of images to someone doing Landscape Photography training so that they could help me improve my skills and then I would develop my portfolio further to get commissioned work.
I enjoy the work of Ansel Adams:
Ansel Adams is known around the world for his landscape photography, mainly from Yosemite National Park and Yellowstone National Park. I think this is because his images really stand out amongst other landscape photography (especially during the time he took them in around 1958) as they have such sharp detail due to the tiny aperture which allows an infinite looking depth of field and also keeps a detailed sky so he really captured as much detail as he could and this is what makes his work so noticeable within other work. The reason I like his images so much is because of the immaculate detail and high contrast as there is no focus point, you look around the entire image and see detail everywhere. I also think that this is the main reason he is so successful as well as the location of his images as people want to see picturesque images like this.
I love the high contrast of Ansel Adams work and as I prefer black and white photography due to more focus on detail I like them even more than I would usually like landscape images.
Portraiture Photography
Portraiture is the photography of people or a person, their face doesn't necessarily need to be showing and it can be done on location or in a studio. I will focus on studio portraiture.
Portrait photography is used for a lot of things. These include advertisements (charity, makeup, skincare, haircare, phone adverts, healthcare etc), used for magazine front cover and inside the magazines (vogue magazine, celebrities, gym advertisements, gossip magazines, tv magazines), newspapers, school photos, prom photos, family portraits, clothing advertisements, fashion portraits, newborn portraits, photography exhibitions, pet photography and more. It is most commonly seen for advertisements, I'd say the most popular would be makeup advertisements. The audience for these is very large, families, beauty enthusiasts, fashion enthusiasts, I'd say everyone is the target audience;
There are a few employment routes for Portrait Photography: You could be a freelance family/newborn portrait photographer in which you could invite people to a home studio who want to use your services or travel to them. You could be a school portrait photographer in which you would have to apply for this position at schools around your area and surrounding areas. You could do commissioned work for magazines like Vogue and also for makeup companies like MaxFactor and Loreal, also for clothing companies like Topshop and Newlook. You could also sell images as stock images if the person/people in the images allow for your work to be used elsewhere.
There is quite a lot of equipment needed to be a portrait photographer whether this be for a home studio or on the move to do commissioned/freelance work;
Camera body- £600-£1000 Essential with lens to take portraits
Lens-85-135mm for portraits, 14-50mm for family shots. £500 for 14-135mm lens
Tripod-£40 essential to keep the camera still
External flash-£40 essential for when the tripod and lighting kit isn't being used, can take on location to have back up lighting to natural light
Lighting kit-£100-£300 essential for studio type work to light the subjects
Ring flash - £70 essential for close up portraits to create a soft light to blur imperfections
Softboxes-£20 each, preferrably 2 essential for diffusing harsh light to remove harsh shadows and create a soft light to blur imperfections
Umbrella reflectors-£20 each (preferrably 2) essential to reflect light on to the subjects
Backdrops-£40 each (white backdrop priority colour) essential to remove busy backgrounds
Reflector-£12 essential to light parts of subjects that are dimly lit
Shutter release-£10 this is essential so you can move away from the camera to direct your subjects and take a photo when needed
Flash sync-£20 this makes the flash go off at the same time you press the trigger
Memory cards (64gb)- £20 each along with laptop and harddrive these are essential for storing and transferring photos.
Laptop- £500-£1000
Harddrive-£50-£100
$37,190 would round to £25,810
I have experimented with portrait photography during my university course and this portfolio could help me get small commissioned jobs but I would probably do on the job training to improve my skills further to help me get better paid commissioned work.
My favourite studio portrait photographer is Rankin who is well known for his portraits of celebrities.
This is some of his work:
I love how he doesn't have just one style of photography, all of his portraits are different. He creates different lighting and compositions in his studio to create each image and tried to capture the peoples personalities in the shot. This makes viewing the portraits more interesting as you get a sense of what that person is like. I think he is succesful because he captures famous personalities and lots of people around the world want to get to know these celebrities and see pictures of them as people often look up to celebrities as idols and inspiration.
Product/ Still life photography
Product photography is the photography of items, mainly those that are being sold by companies, you would see these images in magazines, catalogues, shop windows, billboards, newspapers and food advertisements. Still life is creating art by photographing/painting inanimate objects. Still life is studio-based. I would say the target audience for this kind of photography (product) would be everyone;
My favourite still life Photographer is Irving Penn:
Irving Penn took his still life images between the 1940's and 2001. Although there was so much time between each still life he still had his own individual style which distinguished his work between others. My favourite thing about his still life images is the simplicity. They are very minimalist which I love. I also like how he uses whatever props/items he can find like cigarettes or mouldy apples as many artists like clean, shiny, pleasant whereas he creates images with the opposite but still creates work 'beautiful' to look at, regardless of it's content.
I think the reason that he was successful is because of his individual style that didn't seem to change over the years as all of his still life work has a kind of similarity in style so you would recognise his work among others straight away and the minimalist style he used was very eye catching due to the objects he photographed whether it be raw eggs and meat or cigarette butts or mouldy apples. Each image is eye catching in its own way.
The employment route for product photography would be to be a free lance and sell your images as stock images or do commissioned work for companies who require your services to sell/advertise products. You could be used by companies like Argos, Mothercare and ASDA to photograph products for catalogues and leaflets to advertise their products.
Salary of $29,280 in the UK would be around £20,320.
I have dabbled in product photography during my time at college/uni and at the end of my courses I shall have a degree which could help me get commissioned work along with a portfolio.
Equipment you would need to be a product photographer;
Camera body- £500-£1000
Lens-18-200mm lens£400-£1000 Using this lens enables you to get the focus range and framing you need for small and large products that you are photographing
Tripod-£40 essential to keep the camera still
Lighting kit-£100-£300 essential for studio type work to light the subjects
Ring flash - £70 essential for close up shots of smaller products
Softboxes-£20 each, preferrably 2 essential for diffusing harsh light to remove harsh shadows and create a soft, even light
Umbrella reflectors-£20 each (preferrably 2) essential to reflect light on to the subjects
Backdrops-£40 each (white backdrop priority colour) essential to remove busy backgrounds
Reflector-£12 essential to light parts of subjects that are dimly lit
Shutter release-£10 this is essential so you can move away from the camera to position and move products with ease
Flash sync-£20 this makes the flash in the light kit go off at the same time you press the trigger
Memory cards (64gb)- £20 each along with laptop and harddrive these are essential for storing and transferring photos.
Laptop- £500-£1000
Harddrive-£50-£100
How photographers advertise their services
Leaving business cards in the areas of their target audience - For example, if they were doing family and newborn photoshoots, they could leave business cards in school receptions, hospital maternity receptions and at family events held in local areas. This is very effective as you are getting the attention of your exact audience so are more likely to get a customer asking for your services rather than leaving them in a random place and people who are not interested picking up your business cards as they probably won't use word of mouth to promote your services either whereas at schools, mums and dads and carers will tell other mums, dads and carers about the services if they see your business cards.
Newspaper advertisements- This is quite an effective way to get customers but you have to pay weekly for your advertisent and these days, a lot more people are reading online news so you may not get as many people requesting your services as possible.
Facebook Page/social media page- This is a very effective way of broadcasting your services as social media pages and posts can be shared with the click of a button and can be seen by a lot of people each share, the more shares, the more likely a customer will appear. Most people today have an online social media account so this is a very popular way of advertising and promoting your services by posts and page. You can also use these social media sites as portfolios or have links to portfolios so people can view your images.
Networking- "Business networking is an effective low-cost marketing method for developing sales opportunities and contacts, based on referrals and introductions - either face-to-face at meetings and gatherings, or by other contact methods such as phone, email, and increasingly social and business networking websites" This is extremely helpful as you are paying to go to the networking but you are more likely to get customers as you are definitely being referred to other people.
