There are so many people in the world that consider themselves to be a photographer. You don’t need a degree to be able to charge a lot of money to take people’s pictures. It’s better to have a reputable source behind you, but not always necessary. As long as you are good enough, the word about you and your ultrahigh-speed camera will spread like wild fire and soon you’ll be taking every new parent, bride and senior’s pictures in the city. People care about various things when hiring a photographer but here are a few things that you should make sure you have in your repertoire.
Be Comfortable With Your Equipment
It’s not very inspiring to see your photographer fumbling around with his or her camera, looking for lenses and checking descriptions or reading a manual. You need to know everything about your equipment before you start trying to take pictures. If you have an 1000 fps camera or ultrahigh-speed cameras or even a phantom flex 4k, know it like the back of your hand. It is the weapon of your choice and you do not want to show up to a gun fight with a knife, thinking it’s a gun, so to speak.
Be in Control
You are in charge of your photo shoot so you need to be comfortable telling people where to go, how to pose and what to do. The worst kind of photographer is the one that stands there nervously looking at the subjects messing around (picture a wedding party) and does nothing but wait. It will frustrate the bride, you likely won’t get very good pictures and it will just be a waste of time over all. If you aren’t comfortable being assertive and getting the job done no matter what the other subjects think of you, then maybe being a photographer is not a good idea.
Be Sensitive
At some point in your photography career, you are going to have times where you either don’t agree with the situation you are photographing or it is very emotional. If you are pointing your ultrahigh-speed camera, phantom flex, at a still birth session, you need to be sensitive and empathetic to what the parents are going through but still be able to reign in your emotions enough to capture what the parents want to be able to keep. You can still be a photographer even if you think you aren’t going to be able to be sensitive or balanced; you can just deny certain shoots if you don’t want to do them. This will however, hurt your clientele base and you probably won’t get a good referral from someone that you rejected.
Have Ideas
Enter the session with plenty of creative poses that you’d like to try but keep in mind that the subjects may have some ideas to. Be willing to switch it up and flexible enough to forego some of your ideas when necessary. However, having no ideas and forcing the subject to come up with all of the poses is unprofessional. Let your creative juices flow during the session. There’s nothing better than a photographer that stops everyone all of a sudden and excitedly re-positions the group for a pose that she just thought of. Or seeing her or him whip out slow motion cameras to take some video of an awesome shot they just noticed. It’s that passion and excitement about the session that people want to see. It builds confidence and expectation.
Have Different Ideas
Make sure that not all of your ideas are exactly the same all the time. If you really are good then you will get your clients’ friends and families coming to you. You don’t want Sally to realize her cousin’s Joan’s wedding pictures are exactly the same as hers. You can have your basic poses that are your go to stances but you should always be researching and finding different ways to do things. This refers to your poses as well as your equipment. If an ultrahigh-speed camera won’t work for a certain affect, then switch it up. There’s nothing wrong with having several cameras if you can afford it. It might actually look good.
