Hello Readers:
I hope you weren’t on the butt end of too many jokes for April Fool’s Day, but you know what, life goes on so just chuckle and plan for paybacks next year!
Each month I seek to write an inspiring post to encourage you to broaden your photography horizons and this month is no different. Photography is like any other skill you must practice it to be proficient at it. In my own personal photography I take a multi-disciplined approach, while my concentric genre is “People and Places” I make sure that I have more than average proficiency in other aspects of photography also, I encourage you to do the same.
Some may argue that this takes you away from your core but I beg to differ, what if I have to shoot people in a circumstance that I’m totally unfamiliar with then the people will look great and the surroundings look crappy and that doesn’t cut it! In my approach I take care to think of all the places I could shoot people in all the lighting situations and the surrounding elements. Even when I am not shooting people but I’m in an unfamiliar location I imagine that I have persons in my frame and just how I would light them to achieve maximum effect. Additionally, in some situations when I’m in the city waiting, as we often do in the islands, I’ll imagine a photographic set and analyze the play of light on persons in it.
This might sound like a novel approach but it puts you far ahead of the game when you are actually faced with a shooting situation akin to what you’ve practiced virtually if not practically. The same goes of course of buildings and just about anything else you shoot. You should always get practical knowledge and if it is not possible get theoretical knowledge through your analysis of lighting and angles.
Of course we at FYP aim to help you with this by tapping the vast experience of our writing team and I’ve got to admit even I’ve learned a thing or two and I’ve been shooting more years than I care to mention. Our team covers photography from many aspects we have writers that are pros, amateurs and also beginners and they are all willing to share their knowledge with you. Even advanced users need to revisit the basics sometimes so even if you are advanced visit our articles that cover subjects you already know, each year I teach at least one foundation course in photography and it always reinforces my own skill. I encourage you to not only read the articles but also get out with your camera and practice the techniques shown/described and THEN share your results by posting in the comments section on the article that piqued your interest I’m sure our writers will give you some feed back on your post if you ask them to, not to mention other readers. Remember we photographers love to share we don’t just take photographs so they live on our hard drives only and more over we also seek to improve the quality of images we capture each time we shoot.
I’m sure you’ve been following along with some of our excellent how-to articles and you’ve also been learning more about our team with the Viewfinder series where you can read about the unique skills and talent that your favorite photography writers bring to the table. Many of our photographers also have other careers just like you do and they blend a unique mix of their careers into their photography. I speak from experience as being in aviation and IT for many years and having a great knowledge of these industries I combine them with my photographic skills to do what I call an “Annual Spring Shoot” where I travel for two or three weeks, up to 20K miles, and shoot models in many cities across the world, planning is so carefully done that I may be shooting within 90 minutes of landing time and sometimes have 3 or 4 different shoots per day, see one of my early FYP articles written about one of the Annual Spring Shoots. Think of what skills you have that you can bring to your photography that make you distinct from the average photographer.
In the line-up this month we have our Indie Spotlight series in which we bring you a new photographer from around the world each Monday and our Indie Team has been knocking it out of the park recently. A quick way to be featured in the Indie Spotlight is to enter and win our monthly photography contest. This month our contest winner is a DJ who has recently taken up photography, feel free to view his rapid photographic rise on his site, the FYP contest, it was was the first one he ever entered and he came out at the top of the pack! We also have a number of inspirational, motivational and practical articles; For instance the Lightroom series by Hugh, the well received article on composition by Jaycee and when Alice isn’t literally saving lives in the ER she writes about travel phography.
Over the past year our coverage at FYP has expanded tremendously not only in terms of what we cover but also where we cover it from. Our team of writers is very diverse as are their occupations and photographic interest but thankfully they like to share their experiences with us and by extension you!
I’ve you’d like to see us cover something drop me a note at editor@FuelYourPhotography.com or if you’d like to join our team let me know, we are always looking for guest and monthly writers and also editors, at the current time we have a position open for an Assistant Editor. We love having you as a reader and if you are the type that can handle deadlines and can surmount them with a flying leap, step up and talk to me.
As always, take care and happy shooting!
– Jeremy
Editor-in-Chief
