HOW TO START
It only seemed appropriate to start this off with a post on starting.
"How do I get started?" Is probably the most commonly asked question outside of "what equipment do you use?" and in defense of every photographer or artist who answers the question flippantly I will say that there is no good answer to that question, I'm sure that many photographers don't even know. Here's how I would answer that question: "you just do it," whatever it is just start doing it.
-You don't need an arts education (says the guy who spend $100,000 on a BFA at art school).
-You don't need your space to be set up and perfect.
-You don't need the best or even all equipment for your field of work.
-The stars don't have to align, it doesn't have to be the best time of day or week or year or season.
-You just start doing it.
You get whatever equipment you can and you go for it, whatever it is that you do. With photography specifically you just get a camera, whatever you can afford and that works best for you and you go out and start taking pictures. Take pictures of landscapes, or buildings, or people, or just things around your house. When you start you'll probably be pretty bad and that's good. Be bad, take lots of bad pictures and before you know it those bad pictures will start to become good and then they'll become really good, then one day you'll be taking excellent pictures. In conjunction with taking lots of bad photos go to Youtube and check out some videos, there's plenty of free lessons to be had with different techniques to try out and rules to follow to help you. I'd also suggest picking up some books: a couple of excellent toilet reads that I love are: Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon, like I said this is a great easy to read book that you can set next to the toilet and pick up every time you sit down. You can easily get through a chapter or reread a chapter before you flush. When you've finished that move onto the sequel Show Your Work, it's the logical next step. Another series of books that is a great toilet read is: Read This Book If You Want to Take Great Photographs by Henry Carroll. What I love about this book is that Carroll breaks it down into photography concepts and then uses some of the greatest photographs of the last one hundred fifteen years to further explain that concept. You can read and learn a ton in just one page. Follow this up with its two sequels Read This Book If You Want to Take Great Photographs of People, and .... Places.
Sometimes when people ask the "How do I get started?" question they'll actually referring to a photography business, and that has a complex and varied answer that is best left for another time... preferably when I've figured it out for myself. Before you can even think about starting a business you have to get out there and take pictures for a good long while.
So here's the part where I tell you that I had to learn the "you just do it" answer by not doing it for a long time. In my past life I was a playwright or at least I wanted to be a playwright, the only work I ever had produced was in college. I committed all the sins I listed above, I waited and waited and waited, when what I should have been doing was writing and finding a way to produce my work. I should have been connecting with actors and directors and building relationships with artistic spaces, but instead I kept waiting for everything to be perfect, I thought that when the time is right someone will come to me. No one ever did. Why I stopped playwriting and my involvement in the theater is a different story for another time but when I started my music website and started taking pictures I was determined not to make the same mistake. I did a 180 on every single one of my sins and though it hasn't made me famous or brought me a million readers and thousands upon thousands of Instagram followers, it has made me better, more accomplished, and I've learned. Ultimately I just feel better about the work because I've taken it out of my head and put it to practice in the world.
When you put fear aside, when you forget about perfection and take the tools you have and go out and do it I cannot guaranty success, success is built around relationships, opportunities, talent, and a little bit of luck. What I can guaranty is that every picture you don't take, every day that you wait to for the stars to align is a totally wasted day and once you get out there and start doing it you're going to feel good and you're going to build confidence in yourself. At the bottom of this article is the first picture I took for my website Secretly-Important back in 2012, it's not very good. I didn't know how to use the camera and had only a high school photography class understanding of how to take good pictures, but still I put the pictures up on the site and continued to take more. The picture at the top of this article was taken this year of the same band.
