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What it takes to become a professional photographer

I'm not going to talk about business plans, marketing or having the right sales acumen. There are many sites and publications out there that talk about that sort of thing. If you're planning to pursue a career in photography, I'm sure you'll have an idea that these are given attributes.

What I am going to talk about are the three P's that any professional photographer worth his/her salt should have. Before I get started, let's clear up the ambiguity behind what a professional photographer is. Some may define it as someone that earns an income from their photography. On the other hand, I define it as the individual whose attitude and skill towards photography more often than not demands and receives the proper respect and recognition.

Why the distinction between income and something as subjective as respect and recognition? Professionalism is just one third of the package. It is the first P of three. The money-making aspect is something else entirely; it is often the end purpose for shooting. It is the second P.

The last, and possibly the most important, is Passion. Passion is the driving force behind every great photographer. They shoot because they want to shoot. They love what they do. They continue to learn because they love their craft.

It is not to be confused with Purpose. Some people say the reason they shoot is because they love to do it; mistyping this as their purpose. Love is part of your passion. Purpose is the motivation to steer their passion into something even greater. It is easy to be passionate about something without having any real goals.

These are the three elements that must be present in the professional photographer.

The photographer without passion works in and out for the purpose of making money. He/She may be quite good at the business aspect of photography and has the professionalism to work well with others, but at the end of the day, they're unhappy. They're there for the billable hours and then they're gone.

The photographer without professionalism is the overbearing and boisterous one who sees no limit at getting that perfect shot. They love to get paid for doing what they love and may chase high-paying jobs, but often at the expense of others. They will step over you to get where they want to be. They're the ones breaking-and-entering and then selling compromising photos to the highest bidder.

The photographer without purpose loves photography, is great to get along with, but hasn't nailed down exactly why they do it. They may not have looked into how they can actually turn their passion into a business, but purpose is not limited to making money. They may not call themselves a particular type of photographer, because they haven't figured out what they really want to shoot. They don't have any short or long-term goals because they don't know what they actually want to do.

So there you have it. Have a think about yourself and other photographers (both successful and not) and how the three P's are working for them. If you're honest with yourself, it's surprising to find out what you're missing out on to really pick up your game. I know I certainly need some work in one of those areas.

How to improve your photography

Whether you're someone that has been shooting for a while, or has just gotten into the game, sooner or later you're going to wonder how to improve your craft.

First and foremost, you must practice. If you don't want to hear this, then ask yourself whether you really enjoy photography at all.

If your camera is sitting around most of the time, you're not getting any better. If you're shooting every day and you don't find yourself getting any better, then you're not reviewing what you're shooting, or you're not practicing the right sort of stuff!

Shooting in a different environment to what you're used to is a way to get yourself out of your comfort zone. If you shoot predominantly in natural light, take on the challenge of low-light photography. Different environments will force you to think differently about how you shoot.

On the same line of thought, shoot some new subjects. If you're always shooting portraits, think about shooting something out of the ordinary. Panning doesn't have huge applications outside of (motor)sports, but could it be used on someone on a swing? You'll need to shoot other subjects and learn how to employ techniques traditionally reserved for those subjects before you can nail these shots off the bat.

Set yourself some new challenges. Pick a theme to shoot over a comfortable period. How many different ways can you find to shoot the same subject? Pick your "weakest" lens and learn where its greatest strengths lay. Think you already know where? Then create a gallery that shows it.

Lastly, because it's so expensive, you may want to upgrade or change your gear. I recommend doing this after you've come to terms with what you can currently do with what you have. If you're consistently frustrated by the limitations of your equipment, you should first figure out to what extent you can minimise their weaknesses. Sometimes, with a well planned arsenal of lenses, there isn't a need to upgrade or replace, but instead you should look for something new and different. Fish-eye lenses, a tele-converter, some filters or perhaps different flash equipment may change the way you view shooting.

So you've practiced, you've set yourself challenges, you're tried shooting in many different ways, but you're not sure if you're getting any better.

Review your past photos. Would you consider your older "keepers" to still be so? Or has your standard been raised? How many keepers do you come out with at the end of a shoot? Is the rate improving? Just don't fall into the trap of lowering your standards to increase your keeper rate.

When reviewing your photos, look at the ones that didn't quite turn out. Look at your shooting settings. Why didn't they make it? Was your shutter speed too slow? Could you have had any better shooting settings? Why didn't you make them? If you find yourself noticing that the only reason they're not turning out is because you're at the limits of your hardware, then perhaps upgrading your equipment is justifiable.

Conversey, go back to your old equipment and see if you can take the same photos. Are they better than when you previously used your old gear? Be painfully aware at this point if the only reason the photo is good is because of your gear, then you know what makes the better photographer. Does that mean you need to improve your photography? Sure is. This is why I recommend upgrading equipment as the last resort.

Start practicing!

Five rules and tips for wedding photographers and when to break them

Rules are meant to be broken, but only when you know what the exceptions are. Here are a just a few of the most important rules that I think most wedding photographers should follow when shooting, and when to break them.

Stay invisible
If you want those candid, fly-on-the-wall shots, you're going to have to stay invisible. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, a good, long tele lens allows you to walk outside the "circle" - most gatherings tend to form in a circle and most people won't notice you once you're outside of it, even if you're walking around with a large, white-barrelled lens. Don't disturb guests unless you want to stage a reaction, and don't detract from the couple's day. Hug the walls, stand next to pillars, and don't raise your camera until you need to.

When to break the rule: As the couple's photographer, you are in the unique position of being able to move around during those times where everyone else would be seated, or busy enjoying themselves. No one else would dare dream of standing in the middle of the aisle for a better view, but you afford everyone else that opportunity once the photos come out. No one else would come alongside the registry at the time of signing, but they would all expect to see it. Try never to block anyone's view for longer than necessary. If you must, be sure that whatever you take is worth it. Can you safely say that the photo you took is just as though you were there?

Be polite and discreet
While this may be work, it is also someone else's special day. The comfort of the bride and groom's guests is also part of that day. Just because you are the photographer doesn't mean others should give way to you. While you may take a photo to immortalise the moment, don't make it at the cost of someone else who will never see it. Yes, get the job done, but do it quickly, discreetly and move along. Lower your camera to let others know if you're not shooting. If you're invited to, enjoy some refreshments, but always maintain your professionalism. Respond to queries if asked, but don't flirt or get into arguments with guests (and as much as you may want to, don't hard sell your business - a business card will do and your finished work will speak for itself). If done right, most people will never think twice about your presence and some may never even realise you were there.

When to break the rule: Your role as a photographer is not just to take photos, it is to organise and take control of the situation where necessary. For a formal portraits, you should ensure that people know you're taking a shot and that they either need to be in it or to clear the area. You need to give direction when arranging people. You must be firm, efficient, but still friendly. No one wants to spend too long standing around, plus cheeks will start to hurt from smiling after a while. Be remembered as the person who knew what they were doing, got the job done, and did it right.

Stick to the bride and groom
Always know where the bride and groom are. They are your clients and you are providing a service to them. When they look back and think about a moment at their wedding, hopefully you were there to capture it. You can only do this if you know where they are and what they are doing. Know their schedule of events if they have one. Do you know when and where they will be? You can't possibly take a photo of the groom helping his bride out of the car if you don't know what time they are arriving. Worst of all, don't miss things like the cutting of the cake.

When to break the rule: As much as the bride and groom would love to remember what they were like on the day, they are not the only subjects at the wedding. You play an important role as an extra eye for the couple. They will never realise that a relative was crying with joy for them as they kissed, or how much their friends enjoyed each others company at their reception. Neither may notice an anxious, but proud father re-reading his speech in a quiet back room, and they'll never know if you're always stalking them. You are, in a way, their ambassador, but don't lose track of where they are!

Only carry what you need
What gear to bring to a wedding is a whole different topic, so I will keep this short. Be mobile enough to get the job done. This also ties in with being invisible. If you're flailing about with giant umbrellas and giant bags stuffed full of equipment that scream, "Look at me!!", it will be difficult to stay discreet, let alone invisible. Travel light and carry only what you need. For most this means two bodies and a small pouch for a lens or two. That's three to four lenses to choose from at any given moment.

When to break the rule: Always carry backups. If your camera dies, you do not want to be dead in the water. No one is going to stop their wedding for the sake of some pictures. I actually recommend carrying multiple bags - one full of all of your gear that isn't meant to be carried around (and in fact become a semi-base of operations) and a small, lightweight hip bag for only what you need. Bring some food and water. Bring some gaffers tape. A bit of candy for the kids. Some headache tablets for after a long shoot. Be remembered as the photographer who not only did the job, but had thought of everything in advance. Oh, and bring a padlock or a security chain for the truly paranoid.

Smile
Bring your smile. When someone smiles at you, the instinctual reaction is to smile back. You may argue that this may be manipulating people, but not bringing your smile and being seen as that indifferent, shady guy also manipulates people. Besides, this is what you love to do, isn't it? If not, smile anyway! You'll feel yourself getting happier by the moment. So many photographers are seen as not being interested and not having any passion in their line of work simply because they never smile and are too worried about the end result. When you take a formal portrait, get into the habit of lowering the camera, smiling, then taking a look at your screen. It only takes half a second, but it says, "You're more important to me as people than as a bunch of pixels on my screen." Make sure you believe it.

When to break the rule: This is the unbreakable rule. As someone who sees everything in the day, if you're tired out and just want to go home, that reflects on the day as well. You are meant to be the provider of the highlights of the day. Never mind that your bag is heavy, your shoulders and feet are sore, and you haven't had anything to eat all day, you need to maintain your smile. It's okay if you're tired, no one expects you to be superman, but never act like you'd rather be anywhere else. While you may be doing a job, to be at someone's wedding is a privilege.

What you should know about flash photography – Canon E-TTL

Basic flash photography is not difficult, if you know a couple of ground rules.

The first-time flash shooter will most likely dial in their favourite exposure mode, whether that's P, Av, Tv or M, jam on the flash and hope for the best.

The first thing you should know about flash photography? There are two exposures to be made. One from the ambient light and one from the flash's light.

The second thing you should know? What exposure mode you are in changes what your flash thinks you're doing.

Once you understand these two rules, so to speak, you'll understand why you get a good picture some of the time and why you don't at others. I'm not talking about getting the flash off your camera, or setting up umbrellas and bouncing light around, I'm talking about why your subject looks like they're a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. You know the sort - there's just an empty dark background, nothing to provide a reference point, and your subject is blown out. I'm talking about actually knowing what your camera and flash is doing, rather than trying to figure it out over hundreds of frames. I'm talking about why there are no "magic" settings you dial to when taking a photo with flash.

So let's get to it.

Twin exposures
When you shoot with flash, you're shooting with two sources of light at the same time. There's the ambient light, what you would have to work with if you didn't have a flash at all, and there's the light from the flash, which I'll call the flash light for want of a better word.

Figuring out the exposure for ambient is simple enough - it's exactly the same as if you didn't have a flash, but that usually means it will be underexposed. Forgetting about our deer in the headlights being blown out, we can see that underexposing our ambient enough will lead to complete darkness - that taken in space feel.

Figuring out the exposure of the flash light is even simpler - you don't. With E-TTL, your camera communicates with your flash and tells it the distance to what you have focused on - your subject. Now that your flash knows what your subject is (most of the time), it can figure out the correct exposure for it. When manually setting the power of a flash, most people will take a test shot, take a look, then gauge whether the power needs to go up or down. Done enough times, one could easily look at a picture and instantly know how much to compensate for. E-TTL does this exact same thing, but in microseconds. It fires a test flash just before the shutter opens, "looks" at the exposure of the subject and adjusts the output of the flash for when the shutter does finally open some tiny fractions of a second later. It'll even tell you if it thinks it got it right, with a little green light on the back of your flash.

So it's all the flash's fault, right? Right? Well, if you were willing to say that, you'd have to say you never take any good photographs using flash since it's all the flash.

No, it's how you manage the ambient side of things.

Exposure modes

Your flash has very little idea of exactly what you want it to do. You may want it to get a correct exposure of just your subject, no matter what. You might want to have the background in there rather than having your subject shrouded in darkness. It doesn't know, unless you tell it so.

Av - In this mode, you're free to select your aperture. For flash light exposure, the flash will compensate (to its best ability) to provide a proper exposure of your subject. Exposure is a function of flash power, aperture and ISO. There is nothing to do with shutter speed for correct exposure of your subject.

For ambient light exposure, a combination of shutter speed, aperture and ISO determine the correct exposure. If your camera knows a flash is attached, it'll tell you that a "correct" exposure can be achieved with a faster shutter speed than if you just exposed for ambient with no flash. Try it on your camera. Dial it in to Av and look at the combination of shutter speed and aperture. Turn your flash off and take another look. Whether this is correct or not is really up for debate. A perfectly fine photo can have the subject correctly exposed against a background (this is your ambient) that is a few stops underexposed. I'll talk about that a bit more later, but basically you are sacrificing a few stops of exposure in Av and having a properly exposed subject.

Tv - This is similar to Av, only you are limited to as fast as about 1/200 of a second. I won't go into detail, but basically any faster and there isn't enough time to expose the sensor to the flash's output. Remember, the shutter is only open for a fraction of a second, and the flash is doing all the exposure calculations and even then trying to flash the precise moment of time the shutter is open. It makes you realise that your equipment is quite a precision tool!

P - In this mode, the camera says, "To hell with any ambient!" and relies on the flash for correct exposure of the subject.

M - This is probably where you want to be. You can forget about the exposure of your subject, or flash light (to an extent), and think about the ambient. For a balanced photo, you should set your camera to expose the ambient correctly. Given that you're working with little light (I'm assuming that's why you have the flash out), you can underexpose your ambient. How much you underexpose is subjective, but others typically recommend 1-2 stops. Sometimes you won't have that luxury of choice. Get this right and understand it and you'll suddenly find there are so many more doors of opportunity to open.

What went wrong?
So it sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Just expose for ambient and let the flash expose for the subject, right? Well there are a few hiccups that can occur that might seem a little counter-intuitive. I'll go through a couple of common scenarios.

You might go to take a picture, the flash fires, but your shutter stays open for far too long and you end up with a ghostly image of your subject, with trails of light dancing all over their face. In this instance, your camera is trying desperately to expose for the ambient when there barely is any given the settings you've given it. Is your ISO high enough to allow for a fast enough shutter speed? Do you have a tiny aperture (small f number) that requires a long exposure? You're probably in Av mode and have set a pretty small aperture, or quite a low ISO. Fix your ambient first.

It's day time, you want a bit of fill flash or you're shooting at a subject that is backlit. You take the photo, but everything is blown out. The fastest shutter speed your camera will allow is probably about 1/200th of a second, even though the ambient may require something like 1/1000th. There are way around this, such as high-speed sync, but I won't go into that here. This is a bit of a balance between flash power and finding a correct ambient exposure. The hitch is, in order to get a slow enough shutter speed, you need to stop your lens down by closing the aperture (large f number) or by reducing the camera's sensitivity by lowering your ISO. This in turn means your flash has to work harder to get enough light to the sensor, which may simply not be enough. In this case, your ambient exposure is greater than your flash's subject exposure, so everything appears washed out. Fix your ambient. This may mean you need to slap an ND filter on.

It's day time and every time you shoot, you only get some of your subject exposed properly, or there is a dark band across some of your photo. This is a case of your shutter speed being too fast for your flash. What you're seeing is the shutter blocking the sensor at the same time as the flash goes off. You need to drop your shutter speed down, or find a faster way to sync your flash. There are a few tools to do that, including a few built in to some flashes, but you'll thank yourself if you understand why you need it and when.

Some closing thoughts
I hope by reading this you've gained a bit of an insight into how your camera and flash work together with ambient light. The great misnomer that often lead people to buying a flash is that it become the light they can take with them everywhere to illuminate everything. Yes, you can do this, but it usually requires several flashes (say, one for your background, one for your subject).

After reading this, you should understand that there is no magic combination of f/stops, shutter speeds and ISO for flash photography unless your ambient always stays the same (if that is so, then does that mean you have a magic combination when you don't use a flash?).

You should start to realise that blurring a background to provide separation from your subject is not too unlike underexposing it using flash. Maybe you might have started to catch on that by using multiple flashes you can provide selective exposing (can you do selective focusing with just depth of field?).

Hopefully, you've started to think about the quality of light on your subject and how to modify it. Maybe you've started wondering if you could use a second flash to provide a balanced or underexposed background. In any case, I hope you've ended up with far more curiosity for flash photography than you started out with and a drive to try something new.

Now get out that camera and get snapping!