So, you bought a camera and start shooting flowers, street, portraits of your friends and relatives, your pet and all the famous buildings in your city. You learned some cool photography tricks from the internet and clicked that too. You got hundreds of likes and comments on these photos and your friends start suggesting you that your photography is awesome and you should pursue it as a career.
That’s great, a new door has opened for you but, you need to stop and think. When you were doing photography as a hobby, it was okay to do a different kind of photography together but now you are thinking of taking it as a profession, so it’s good for you to select one genre and become an expert in that.
Now the question is, “what are the options we have and how to choose one? Well, let’s find out.
1. Wedding Photography: Wedding is the most important event of someone’s life and everyone want to capture this moment and keep it forever. Everyone needs a professional photographer for their wedding and it’s the most demanding genre of photography.
As a wedding photographer, your job is to capture lots of things like decoration, special moments and rituals, portraits of bride and groom and group shots. You need to be very quick as if a moment is gone, you won’t get a second chance to capture it. Also, the light is unpredictable so you need to be very quick to change camera settings according to the light.
2. Portraits Photography: It’s again a very high demand niche. In fact, it comes to existence even before photography was born. Previously painters used to make portraits of famous people and now photographers do this job using a camera.
Portrait photography is all about faces and capturing someone’s personality. When a beautiful girl aspires to be a model, she needs a good photographer to make her portfolio. A corporate executive needs a good headshot for her resume. Your job is to show your client’s true essence in the picture by using creative lights, background and props.
3. Fashion Photography: Fashion photography is a part of portrait photography too but in this genre, we mainly highlight the clothes and fashion accessories worn by our model. This photography is mostly done for advertising and magazines so you need to show your subject glamorous and attractive.
It’s a very lucrative field and many young photographers want to pursue it because it gives them a chance to always be with beautiful models. Many new photographers believe that having a girl in your photograph means its fashion photography but it’s not true, fashion photography is way beyond that.
4. Landscape Photography: God has made this beautiful earth and as a photographer, it’s our duty to capture the beauty of it and for that, we have landscape photography. It allows you to travel to new places and experience the vivid colors of nature and also meet new people. You can sale these photos on stock sites or sell prints. Magazines also required good landscape pictures.
5. Architecture Photography: Photography the buildings and other man-made structures come in architecture photography. In this genre of photography, we usually capture both the exterior and interior of the building. For architecture, you need a wide tilt/shift lens and a steady tripod. Every new hotel, restaurant, mall or residential building needs architecture photographer for marketing.
6. Wildlife Photography: Wildlife photography required lots of patience, both in capturing good pictures and making money out of it. You need to invest in super telephoto lenses which are quite expensive and also you have to travel a lot and still there is no guarantee that you’ll come back with some good pictures.
But once you become an expert wildlife photographer, you’ll get lots of opportunities. You can sell photos to magazines and on stock sites. You can also take workshops or even take people to wildlife photography tours.
7. Still Life Photography: Still life photography is an interesting niche of photography. You don’t need special equipment for this and it can be done in your room. So if you don’t like to go out much, this genre is for you.
You can use your creativity to arrange objects and props. You always have full control over the lighting and you don’t need to hurry as the subjects are still. Once you become an expert, you can enter in the world of product photography, which is a very hot niche.
8. Kids Photography: Kids photography is a very challenging job as kids are moody and you can’t direct them but on the other hand, it has a big potential in professional photography. You need lots of energy and patience, and you have to always be ready to click as kids are unpredictable and you don’t know at which moment you get a perfect shot. You may also include maternity, family and lifestyle shoot with kids photography.
9. Food Photography: Food photography is a subdivision of still life photography and very demanding too. Every hotel, restaurant and café required a food photographer. Unlike still life photography, you need to be hurry as hot and steaming food looks good in the photo and also you need to go out to take the shots.
But the good thing is that you can also become a food blogger along with this and start a different income stream.
10. High-Speed Photography: This is the toughest photography genre but thanks to the high-speed triggers like MIOPS Smart, now speed photography has become relatively easy. Nowadays high-speed photography is being used widely for high-end product shoots.
You can inject some ink in water and use that as a backdrop of some product, or you can click a product with a paint or water splash in the background.
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There are more niches you can pursue like photojournalism, aerial, sports photography and many others. The best way to find out what is good for you to select a few which you believe you can do and try each for a few days. In the end, you’ll know which one is right for you to pursue as a career.
About the Author
Ramakant Sharda is an author, iOS App publisher, passionate photographer and a MIOPS Ambassador based in the beautiful “Pink City” of India, known as Jaipur. His work has been published in various magazines, newspapers, and blogs. He has published three Coffee Table Books, he writes about photography and also teaches photography in his workshops. Check out his website http://ClickManic.com to see the masterpieces created by him or download his free app for iPhone and iPad “30 Days to an Ace Photographer“.
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