Sheila F. Burroughs |
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learning to become a professional photographer
I just invested in a Pentax istD camera kit with a standard Pentax smc P-DA 18-55mm F3.5.5.6 lens. I purchased it from a local photo shop who has been very supportive in answering my questions and giving me advise about how to get started. I love photography and have been taking pictures of my family all my life. I believe I have a good eye for photography and I have already gotten one photography job already but I am having to learn about what to charge my customer and what the termenology actually means such as the term F1 or F4 and so on. I have been doing tons of research on the net for about the past three years before I was able to purchase this expensive digital camera. But I had a Kodak DC215 Zoom camera before this on which I believe is 3 megapixals. And it takes pretty good pictues and even prints out very good quality 8x10's. Even though I like printing my own photo's I only have a lexmark Z710 printer which does ok on some photo's but prints some out very dark even though they look great on my computer. I have a number of photo software including Adobe Elements 3.0 but my research has told me that all the professional photographers use Adope Photoshop. I am disabled and don't have alot of money to invest but am checking into getting a better lens which will allow me to do high quality portrait. And I like doing alot of them outdoors and since I am also a gardening freak I take alot of photo's of flowers and landscape photo's. The guy I work with at my photo shop told me I would be better of to purchase a telephoto lens instead of the Pentax smc P-FR 77 mm F1-8 that my research has said it used mostly for portraits photo's. I also seen that the price listed on the site is $1,107.00. Steve told me he could get me a telephoto lens which would do about the same thing but for a far more reasonalbe price like about $350. In my research I found out about the New York Institute of Photography and am considering signing up but since the price is about $1000.00 I really would like to be sure that it would teach me what I need to know to become a professional photographer. I have been to at least 100 different web sites which deal with photography and even took a couple of free classes on the HP site. Since my income is very limited I would like to meet and chat with other photographers who don't mind sharing information with me to help me reach my goal. I already practice, practice and practice and have gotten very good revues about how good my photographers are. But I also know that some camera's and equipment can run as much a $10,000 and more. Steve has told me that I would me better off to use his business to print my photograph's because he has better printing equipment and he can also print them alot cheaper then I can on my printer. He can also do my proofs for .28 cents each. There is so much to learn about taking great photo's, learning how to use my camera and understand the termanology that I know I have a long ways to go. But I am going to upload two pictures for your viewing. One which I took of my kids in 1980 with a very old film camera and one which my daughter took recently of her dad and me at her grandmothers funeral with my Pentax and also a couple of my grandson that I took with my Pentax. I would love to recieve feed back about these photo's. I believe I have learned alot already about photography but if I could get some reply's from your photographers I believe it could help me alot. The one pic of my kids has been scanned but the others were took with the Pentax. I also joined the Northeast Alabama Photography Club which was started in 1993 by the owner of Scott's Photo Service which is where I bought my camera and also where Steve works who is the person who I talk to about any questions of information I need.
October 08, 2005
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