Portraiture is an exacting photographic art, and not to be confused with happy snaps of your wife and children.  A portrait has to look pleasing, even to an outsider’s eye, and must appeal to the ego of the subject.  Without those two features, a portrait is lost, and you can never sell it.  Piggy bank remains empty.

Do you have a professional-looking DSLR?  If you have, then be warned - you will be asked to photograph a friend’s wedding this Easter (because the wedding studios are expensive).  If you can, find a dying relative that you have to visit that weekend.  However, if you like flying in the face of danger, keep reading.

I have a friend who is studying photography via home tutoring.  I applaud her ideals in doing this.  However, one of my partners in a professional photography studio we ran was an acknowledged Thai photographer Tom Chuawiwat.  Tom always said he enjoyed professional photography because the client paid you to learn the craft!  No matter how you learned it.

Pro photographers do not rely on one zoom lens, even if it could cover 18-800 with one flick.  Pro photographers will have many lenses, but there will be enough prime lenses to almost cover that 18-800!

You may think that your particular neighborhood has nothing interesting in it.  So why photograph rows of shop-houses, for example?  Because it is interesting to know what was there before you came to live there.

Even though photography is often called ‘painting with light’, in actual fact it would be just as good to call it ‘painting with dark!’  Shadow is just as important, if not more so than brightness.

When I began professional photography, I was a dyed-in-the-wool film buff, using 6x6 cm negatives and transparencies and 5x4 inch transparencies when I needed a larger format.  Along with the best optical lenses available, I was always assured of pin-sharp images.  There was nothing to beat it.

Photojournalists can have a problem with morality and ethics.  The following test shows just how much stress there can be for these photographers.

The situation: You are in London.  There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding.  You are a photojournalist working for a major newspaper and you are photographing in the middle of this epic disaster.

Many countries have found themselves with the title of “raunchy”, and in fact, Pattaya gets its fair swag of sanctimonious finger-pointers, but Pattaya’s sexiness is commercial, not something in the DNA.

Having been involved in photography for many years, I have become progressively saddened by the influence of electronics in the art of photography.  In some ways, I suppose it is similar to the advent of electronic calculators to the science of mathematics.