How to Build the Foundation to Your Dream Photography Business: Part 1
The photography industry has gone through many changes over the last five years. In fact, this industry changes faster than many people could ever imagine.
The photography industry has gone through many changes over the last five years. In fact, this industry changes faster than many people could ever imagine.
Empty your mind of everything you know about traditional NLEs and allow yourself, as Yoda says, to unlearn what you have learned. If you’re new to the field of video editing, this will be more like learning a new language at a young age as opposed to trying to learn Mandarin at age 35 on your first trip to Shanghai.
Although you can simply take any color image and convert it to grayscale, I get the best results if I walk into a shoot knowing the final outcome will be black & white. I allow this to dictate my lighting and color choices, which translate into shades of gray and tonality. It’s crucial to understand what would work better in black & white or color, and this is something that can be mastered with practice.
The bottom line is whether you’re photographing for black & white images or color, learn the difference between an f-stop and a bus stop, print and frame your work, and look at life in shades of gray, not hard and fast rules.
There are a number of ways you can create contrast in the studio. I love to use multiple lights, sometimes with hard modifiers, and then refine the look with negative and positive fill to create a full range of tones and make my images pop.
Backdrops usually aren’t cheap. Good ones definitely aren’t. The costs can really go uphill if you’re adding several colors and styles to your arsenal. You’re gonna need something dark, and something bright! Maybe something with a floral pattern, and of course one with an old masters pattern.
We often use black & white photography as a method for focusing on the emotion in an image. In fact, there are only two reasons that we will convert an image to black & white. Both have to do with eliminating distractions.
Looking back over my career for the last 20 years, there is a distinct line of when my work went from predominantly black & white to taking an immediate turn to color. It happened when I captured that first medium format digital image in 2004 and I never looked back.
Here are five commonly used video lighting scenarios that you should know if you’re making any sort of film. I’ll admit these are over-simplifications because there are many ways to do each of these setups.
Now is the time to decide. Are you going to fight for your business and livelihood or are you going to throw in the towel? I hope this has helped you in some way to understand you are not in this alone and there is a path forward. Don’t ever give up!