Guide and Tips on How to Become a Photographer
Guide and Tips on How to Become a Photographer
George Kroustallis - MINORSTEP
Photography:
George Kroustallis
Words:
George Kroustallis
1. Get Started
Familiarize yourself with everything that will sharpen your visual perception. Art, films, other photos. Shoot as much as possible. You’re probably not going to shoot many worthwhile images before your 15,000th click. Look and find what resonates with you the most. I found out I can mostly identify with the serenity minimalism offers me, from design to architecture to fashion to photography.
Then allow that thing you identity with to evolve or completely change as you get into it more. Try everything, stick with what you love the most.
2. Education:
Do You Need a Degree?
I’m not positive towards getting a degree in photography these days—it’s mostly redundant. If you’re one of the people who absolutely need tightly-scheduled guidance by an institution in order to get properly involved with something, maybe start with online courses or consider to choose a subject you’re more interested in.
The basic technical aspects of shooting you can learn easily within days. You’ll spend the rest of your life fine-tuning the rest—your ideas, your style, your retouching. There’s nothing a degree will give you that’s not available everywhere for free—besides perhaps the human aspect and connecting with others—which you might feel like you need or not.
Getting an internship or a mentorship with a professional photographer, however, might be the single most important thing you could do to accelerate your learning. There’s a lot to learn, from how you handle clients, to how you interact with your subjects, to how you get into studio lighting.
I happened to do it all by myself, with pure curiosity that was only getting more and more intense over the years. The internet has been my best friend. People often make the mistake of assuming that there will be this unmistakable clear passion before you even get into something, but that’s almost never the case. People start doing that something, and then, only later that something develops into a big passion.
“People often make the mistake of assuming that there will be this unmistakable clear passion before you even get into something, but that’s almost never the case. People start doing that something, and then, only later that something develops into a big passion.”
3. But Which Camera?
Ditch the DSLRs. They’re the dinosaurs of the industry as they really are dead.
Invest in the best mirrorless camera you can buy right now (there’s a broad price range) and you can always upgrade later. Sony is absolutely killing it right now and offers the best deals in the industry. Start with a zoom lens and expand to more lenses based on your needs later.
4. Learn How to Edit Photos
Editing and retouching your photos is seriously as important as the shooting process. Think of your raw photos as raw, unsculpted material that is only going to come together after editing or retouching.
Think of it in movie terms—capturing the footage is important, but it’s nothing without editing and color grading the footage together.
You need to master Lightroom and you need to master Photoshop. There’s no way around it unless you’re Annie Leibovitz and somehow finessed your way out of it. Fstoppers is a decent resource for retouching beginners, and you can always YouTube specifics. The learning curve is steep but don’t be daunted, just take it step by step.
5. Develop a Portfolio and Expand Your Exposure
Eventually, you will produce a body of work that you will be proud of displaying on your website and social media. Keep in mind your portfolio should never be stable. It will always be evolving. Start somewhere and don’t think it’s finished, keep changing it. Growing in photography will mean that your old work is now not good enough, and it needs to be out of sight and replaced by something better.
Build a platform. Show the process of learning, talking honestly about what you’re learning, and what you’re excited about. Connect with others who share the same interests and the same type of photography. Instagram has proven to be life-changing for most of us, from being found by clients to meeting life-long creative friends. Perhaps you’ll find your voice by posting a lot and asking yourself which audience do you serve—what is the community you see yourself doing your work for. What change are you striving for?
6. Strategic Decisions
Growing into a professional photographer will mean running a business and building a brand. As a creative professional, you’ll need a business strategy. I often use the following terms: Mission, Vision, Objective, Strategy, Tactics.
Your mission and your vision work together. To use myself as an example: My mission is to help elevate and reimagine the minimalist photography space. My vision is of a world in which brands and artists use refined art direction, minimalist aesthetics, and contemporary storytelling to reach their audiences and grow their businesses. In that world, the best of contemporary architecture, fashion, and design coexist in an exciting dialog.
In a business context, an objective is a clear business goal. These can change more often, like yearly.
A strategy is a focused approach to reaching the objective. There are usually multiple strategies that you can use to reach any given objective. For example, if your objective is to get yourself more known in your niche in order to get more work, you could choose from a bunch of different strategies.
Here are two:
1. Network IRL and connect with the right people in the industry.
2. Grow on Instagram and have a larger impact on social media.
Tactics are the day-to-day actions you perform to execute a strategy and achieve your desired objective.
Tactics would be things like:
1. Do in-depth, behind-the-scenes stories that will provide insight and build trust.
2. Engage, comment, and DM with a certain number of accounts on Instagram.
Here’s a recent article I wrote about that, going more in-depth.
7. How to Get Experience When You Have no Experience?
When we’re starting out, we’re usually presented with a dilemma. How do you justify being the expensive option when the competition has multiple years head start? How will clients trust you when you have no experience? And of the course, the eternal catch 22: How do you get experience when you have no experience? Here’s the deal: Clients don't want experience. They want results.
If you can prove that you can effectively solve their problems and clearly demonstrate that you have delivered results, clients will be willing to overlook a lack of experience. This happens all the time. It’s literally how I booked my first jobs. So get that good portfolio work in.
Again, you can read the full-length article I wrote covering this here.
“Clients don’t want experience. They want results.”
8. Hire Clients
Yep, hire a client. If you’re looking to turn this thing around, you need to reverse roles. You don’t do it because you need their sale, but you’re happy to help them if they’re interested in working with you according to your rules of engagement.
You solve creative problems for clients that are currently unable to get to their desired destination by themselves; you are the doctor—they are the patient. If you’re going to responsibly take care of them, you need to take control, understand what, how, and why.
This usually happens through a conversation, which should include these three points:
Help them to define their pain. They’re not doing a photo campaign because Instagram isn’t full of them, they’re trying to solve a business problem, which is usually related to money or growth. Get to the root of the issue. Every time they lay out a problem or goal, ask yourself why. What’s the emotional heart of the situation?
Inspire them with beautiful possibilities. How strong and effective can your images be? What could it look like? Start painting that picture for them, the one that replaces their pain with a better situation. By knowing what’s at the heart of their issue, you can search for proper ways to address it.
Encourage them with past stories. Every brand or individual feels like their problem is entirely unique until they understand how exactly you’ve helped 27 other people with similar problems. People evaluate through social validation, and nobody wants to be the first client, so tell them about the past ones. If you’re still trying to get those first clients, try reading How to Get Experience When You Have no Experience.
The beauty of putting yourself and your work out there (however you're marketing yourself) is that it promotes all these three points before the clients even get to chat with you directly.
9. Book Suggestions, Podcasts, Etc.
Book: This Is Marketing by Seth Godin
Blog: A Minor Blog by George Kroustallis
Podcast: The Tim Ferris Show by Tim Ferris
