the best advice i can give to anyone who wants to be a working photographer is to be a person. what i mean is, be human. kindness, a malice-free sense of humor, and an understanding that you’re being paid a significant hourly wage to do provide images that are leaps and bounds above what they can produce with the camera in their pocket.

from a technical perspective, this can be accomplished through a variation of focal lengths and apertures, and a mixture of ambient and artificial light.

the technical aspects of photography are crucial to producing quality photos by intent rather than accident. but more important is the human element. anyone can learn to operate a camera and produce technically excellent photos. but only a certain mindset will take the photos to that next tier, the level that clients are really hoping for when they hire you.

my approach is to be observant; to learn quickly from what i see so i can adapt to the actual situation in front of me rather than simply forcing the situation into the templates i’ve decided upon in advance (that doesn’t mean i don’t go in with templates in mind, just that i build them from malleable clay). i strive to delve empathetically into the personality of my clients so that i can draw out images they will look at and say, “that is so me!”

what im getting at is, if you want to capture a person, you need to think and feel like a person. it seems ridiculous to have to say that, but i’m often surprised by how easily people forget that.