Like
all things in this life, practice makes perfect. It is the same for photography
- the more photos you take, the better you become as a photographer.
Sometimes I find some old photographs that I took as an
enthusiastic amateur, and I am sorry to say that there are very few that I am
proud of. The concepts I explored were good. The delivery of those concepts was
not.
I have written before about how a friend delivered a very
expensive camera outfit to me on his return from an overseas trip. I had asked
him to enquire how much the Hasselblad cameras were in the duty free stores, but
he decided that I had empowered him to buy one on my behalf. In the long run
that was a good decision, but in the short term it was a huge financial drain,
just when I didn’t need it. It was at that moment I decided that the Hasselblad
was going to have to pay for itself. And if it were to bring in money, it meant
I was going to have to become good enough to charge for my photographs.
The next step in my photographic career was to go to all the
bookstores and purchase books on photography. Initially I was selecting ‘how to’
books, especially those which gave examples of photo projects. These I devoured
until I could reproduce the results that professional photographers like Michael
Freeman explained in his instruction books.
After that I began to give myself my own project subjects,
imagining, for example, that I had been hired to do the photography for a
catalogue of artificial flowers. I had a friend who did import these, so it was
not too difficult to borrow some for my own photo shoot.
In this way I learned to shoot to a layout and was able to
size the photo illustrations to fit. I also, from the books, learned how to set
up a small studio at home in the spare bedroom. Rolls of background papers were
found and the catalogue items photographed against them. I had no expensive
flash heads, but used internal reflector tungsten lights. I very quickly learned
how this changes the overall color of the shot, and how by using blue gels I
could correct for the overly warm tones of the tungsten lighting. I also learned
to be critical of my own pictures.
By this stage, I began to give myself projects to be
photographed outside. These were mainly “advertising” style of shots with models
in some physical setting, looking like a fashion style of layout. Fortunately
there were enough amateur would-be models wanting to parade in front of the
would-be photographer’s lens in return for a few prints. We all learned
together!
I also began to learn to use shadow, instead of bathing the
models in floodlight (or the sun). All of a sudden, my shots began to have an
air of mystery and were starting to look professional, as well as now having a
3D look to them. Shadow is the photographer’s friend!
Eventually I was ready to present my work as a professional,
and to do this you place your best shots together, which is called your ‘book’.
This is not a real book, but should show your work in the best possible way. The
local photographic equipment store showed me some ‘books’ belonging to semi-pro
shooters and I made the decision to present only transparencies (slides), but a
minimum of 6x6 cm (the Hasselblad size, otherwise known as two and quarter inch
square), with the rest 5x4 inch. This made it look as if I had a 5x4 camera,
which I didn’t, but the Hasselblad transparencies were sharp enough to be
duplicated and enlarged (known as ‘dupes’ in the trade).
I bought a portable light box, mounted all the transparencies
on heavy dark card so that they could be thrown on the light box for viewing,
and I was ready to meet the art directors - the people from the ad agencies who
dole out the work to the photographers. Eventually one gave me an assignment,
and I went on from there. Get one and the rest are easy.
