Photography is a very powerful form of artistic expression. To become a photographer, it is secondary to have DSLR, photoshop in laptop, selfie stick. As per recent trade, Facebook / Instagram is the medium for so called photographers. Buying costly photographic equipment will never make you photographer. No doubt, they help to spread your work to the world, but to become a photographer in a true sense, you must possess some artistic qualities along with a creative mind. Although I treat myself as novice but I do photography passionately.
Below are ten key points to become a great photographer as per my understanding.
Power of Imagination
A simple moment also may become extraordinary if your eyes have that much of imagination. Real photographer has the quality to go inside of any event and can imagine in his own way. Imagination has huge power and specially creative people should have it but it is inbuilt quality and you never can adopt it.
Sense of Angle
A normal scene can be awesome if you have the idea to capture any photo from different angle. It makes a shot unique and eye catching. For that if you need to bend, need to use tripod or need to sleep then also it does not matter. Your objective should be to capture the photo as per your thought process.
Learning Nature
No one is perfect and cannot learn everything in single second. Even world’s most promising creative personnel also believe in this. A good photographer never gets satisfied with what he knows rather try to learn each and every day. Practical learning is much more important than theoretical so for practical learning capture photos and for theoretical you can learn from other professional photographers’ work, or from the websites like pixoto, dpreview or flickr.
Why DSLR
Definitely DSLR plays prime role but if you have that then you should know about the functionality properly. It is not crime to capture photos in auto mode like compact or bridge camera but you should utilize the features of DSLR as much as possible. Additionally a DSLR should be treated as medium not as primary object as you need to control the machine.
Basic of Photography
Before you jump in the river, you know swimming. In the same manner, you should know the ABC of photography. Like – ISO, Shutter Speed, Contrast, Aperture, Focal Length, Depth of Field, EXIF, White Balance, View Finder, Aspect Ratio, Composition and thousands like these. Most importantly a photographer should have very good sense about Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, Full Manual and Auto mode that which mode should be used at which point of time.
Don’t be Shy
If you are shy then photography is not your cup of tea. You may need to travel several places and need to meet different kind of people. You should have the capability to reach everyone if that is relevant for your photo.
Observation
Wherever you go, you should observe each and every inch. This approach will help you to get some photos which are not visible to others. For a photographer, there is no limitation of sides, angles and poles so be open to all aspects.
Experimental Nature
If you capture 100 photos, may be one of those is good to use. You should go for experiment as much as possible and it will help you to get the perfect one. Keep experimenting with every moment and objects because you can easily delete unnecessary photos as all are digital now.
Be a Traveler
If you stay at home and imagine becoming a famous photographer then it is just a day dream. You should come out from your comfort zone and need to travel different places and need to meet different people. Safety of yourself, safety of your team and safety of all costly equipments are also part of your travel as you face lots of unwanted incidents made by strangers.
Be Brave
There is no need to distinguish any specific subject for this point. Overall you need to be brave because you need to address several things where only bravery can save you. Even if anyone criticizes your work then also you should have the guts to face that and to reply him back.
I would like to complete the article by mentioning one famous quote about photography and that is:
“What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
Note: All the photos are collected from Internet and meant to be self-explanatory
