If you have watched the popular Hindi language movie3 Idiots you will remember that the character Farhan Qureshi was interested in being a professional photographer as a youngster, but his father wanted him to be anEngineer by profession and thus got him into an Engineering College. Well, this is the situation most of the times when someone is looking out for career in a field of art. Trying to make art into a full-time profession always has been looked at as a dicey proposition for making a livelihood.
For now, let us set aside all the other forms of art that can be converted into a full-timecareer, and let’s see how photography has taken a big leap in being a full-time vocation. Photography has been a form of art almost dating back to 1826, about two hundred years ago when a man calledJoseph Nicephore clicked the first photograph ever. He is known to have invented the technique of photography. Back then it was clearly a form of elitist art and an expensive one at that. But as time passed and the relevance of memories and nostalgiabegan to set foot in common man’s life, the photography industry expanded its horizon into daily living.
But wait, you may begin to wonder that I have no idea about how many varieties of fields has photography ventured into other than just being tagged as a memory collector’s thing. So, here I am to discuss with you more about the wide angle of photography and how it can very well be chosen as a great career option.
The dimensions and magnitude of professional photography are intensifying with every passing day. Right from Wildlife photography where the focus is entirely on nature in the most unadulterated and untamed form to Industrial photography where the subject of focus is a variety of technical equipment depending upon the industry that they belong. Industrial photography itself is so wide in nature that it taps into scientific equipment, factories, instrumentation and wherever you can imagine the use of technical detailing of a machinery. Here are some of the varieties of industries that employ Industrial photography: Automobile Manufacturing companies, Scientific Laboratories, Heavy machinery Manufacturers.
Then there is wedding photography, which captures the candid and classic pictures of the wedding celebration and close up shoots of the bride and groom. Presently, the wedding photography marketplace has been sizzling with more and more people willing to get a great album in place, it appears that people have special budgets held in reserve for wedding photography. Given the right knowledge and equipment this specific branch of photography is definitely rewarding.
Scenic photography where one focuses on shooting natural landscapes like mountains, rivers, vast stretches of roads and deserts, oceans, beaches. Scenic photography has evolved itself into aerial photography where pictures are clicked from a very high altitude, mostly while being seated in a helicopter, it is an expensive art form and needs great amount of steadiness to provide desired results. These days in order to make aerial photography cost effective drones are being vastly used and the output is fairly neat.
Photography for marketing and advertising products and services is one more wing of vastly used photography service. This is used by almost every store around you big or small to get noticed by potential customers. The pictures that you and I see on hoardings, billboards, magazines and newspaper advertisements belong to this section.
Fashion photography which is a huge subject in itself has the camerawork starting from shooting portfolios of prospective models and moves to capturing the ramp walk with professional models, the in-depth shooting of the clothing line and jewellery with and without the models, stills and videos for Fashion Channels, Magazines and also specifically for Magazine Covers.Then we have Event Photography, in which events like exhibitions, inaugurations, parties, concerts and similar activities are covered.
Travel photography, one can say is the most sought-after form of camerawork by common man. With travel becoming more economical and stay options in different parts of the world becoming more and more feasible, a recent surge has been observed in travelling and tourism industry is truly benefitting with every traveller taking scores and scores of pictures and sharing them on social media. Travel photography as much as it sounds like a casual form of photography, there are public service authorities of many a tourist destinationwithin our country and outside, that would like to employ photographers with a neat skill of shooting monuments and landscapes and tourist attractions in a professional manner, so that they can be advertised more attractively. There are people who write travel blogs with their own experiences, to aid other travellers with good information also take the help of travel photographers to enhance their writing and add weight to the information on their blogs.
Amongst other specialties of photography are Food photography, Fine Art photography, Cinematography, Documentary and film making, Portrait photography, Architectural photography, Lifestyle photography, Pet photography, Photojournalism, Sports photography and stock photography. The avenues in this field of art are opening up at a very rapid pace. It is just a matter of time and a generation of acceptance to understand that this is a fulltime career option and pays decently well too.
With the advent of camera phones in every living human hand today learning the basic skill of photography is not a far-fetched dream anymore. But to be a professional photographer one needs to have the knack to see things in a different light. One needs to cultivate an eye for art and perfect lighting to take pictures and make the camera work wonders. Although every part of camera works on the principles of Physics, but to pursue this as a profession one has to feel the art behind it all.
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