Hey all!
As a photographer I thought I would answer 10 questions that apparently should be asked to every photographer (according to a blog post I found on the ‘Digital Photography School’ website from 6 years ago!). I feel like the least I should do is analyse the questions and give my opinions on them!
Question 1: What kind of gear do you use?
This is a question that a lot of photographers and content creators are asked regularly, but if I am being honest it’s not about the type of gear you use, it’s how you utilise it to make the best content that you can. There are some creators who don’t have thousands of £££/$$$ and are unable to buy the most expensive equipment, but that shouldn’t discourage them from creating content. Initially, I began using my iPhone 5S (which is a good phone anyways) but comparing it to even the cheapest Canon or Nikon camera, it obviously doesn’t compare in quality. I still had to think about the type of content I wanted to create, and used my phone too experiment with different angles and shots, in order to create images that were unique.
I even studied a Photography A Level back at school, and for the first year of the course I was using my iPhone to take the images. There are some disadvantages such as not being able to print them in a bigger size and keep the quality, but at that time, it was the option option I had as I didn’t know anything about cameras and I used what was accessible to me back then. So in all honesty, if you have an Android, iPhone, a brick phone or even the most basic DSLR, don’t feel discouraged to not take up photography, just focus on the more creative aspects and potentially use editing software (which there are a lot of free ones online) that will help make those photos better. I currently own a Canon G7X Powershot II and I have also upgraded my phone to an iPhone 6S – but to get to where I am today, I had to push through with using the equipment I had available to me. I don’t have any extra lenses, filters, camera bags or flashes, but I was recently bought a tripod for my 22nd birthday so that I could not only take pictures of other people without the camera moving, but self shoot if models were unavailable.
Question 2: What is your favourite lens?
To answer this question I am going to be truthful and say my favourite lenses are my contact lenses as they help me see everyday. In terms of camera lenses, I haven’t got a clue! I have never been into the ‘technical aspect’ of photography, but have pretty much just used the automatic setting and hoped for the best, but like I said in the previous question, if you think about how you can be creative in terms of the angles, positioning of the model (or the camera) and if there are any other items or accessories that can be used in shot…that’s all that matters!
Question 3: When you go on one of your travels, what do you take with you? Why?
As a content creator I ensure that I have something electronic that I am able to produce content on, whether that be photography, simply blog posting about my journeys or something where I am able to share memories afterwards. Back in April of 2019, I was lucky enough to go to Karlsruhe, Germany with the University and decided to take my laptop, iPhone and Canon G7X so that I could get as much content as possible in a variety of different forms. I was able to vlog the whole experience, but also managed to have time to get some photos of my friends and work colleagues in action. So to answer this question, it depends where I’m going, for me to decide how many items I take with me!
Question 4: Among the gadgets that you own, is there something that you wish you hadn’t bought? Why?
I don’t regret buying any of the items that I currently own. I think that’s one of the amazing things about being a photographer. You can buy as much or as little as you want to help you in your creative journey. There are some items in the past that I wish I didn’t purchase, but I learnt from those experiences and will no longer use those items (or they have already been thrown away). This included a £9 tripod I bought from Amazon.co.uk which was unbranded and actually caused my Canon camera to get stuck to the screw of the tripod. This was obviously thrown away.
As of now, I only own two laptops (one which I plan to use for gaming…when it eventually turns itself on) and the other for creating content, checking my emails and updating my social media channels, a Canon G7X camera, iPhone 6S, a tripod and a microphone. I’m one of those creatives that doesn’t want to own 10,000 items, but instead will regularly use the items I currently have and potentially upgrade my kit once I get a full time job or if I decide to take up photography more professionally than I already do – as for me, photography and modelling is just a hobby for now, and *maybe* if I get discovered, it could turn into something more? But for me, there is nothing I regret, as I learn about each of the items I purchase and I make use of them as best as I can, before making a decision on whether I will be able to make the best use of it or not.
Question 5: In the field, what are your settings?
99% of the time I just use automatic settings. For me, I could play around with all the settings as much as I want, but if I’m on a professional shoot and need to take a lot of images, I would rather not be stressing and struggling about remembering what the ‘F’ number is, or what a ‘High aperture’ does compared to a ‘Low aperture’. For me, it’s easier to use automatic settings, especially in a busy environment, but if I was to go to the local park with a friend for example, I may ask them to bare with me whilst I experiment with the different settings.
Question 6: What kind of tools do you use for post processing? Explain your work flow.
Depending on the shoot that I do, I will process my images differently. Since I was in Year 12 (which was 6 years ago), I very rarely edited any of my images; apart from those that I took as part of my Photography A Level course. Over the last few years, I have become a lot more open to editing photos, whether that be brightening or darkening certain parts of images, experimenting with colour or using different crop tools to create interesting collages of images. I’m one of those people who likes to keep images genuine, including the natural colours rather than relying on filters to bring the image to life.
Since realising that ‘editing’ and ‘photo manipulation’ can also be subtle, as well as a very obvious change in an image, I have begun brightening some of my images or blurring parts of the background – without ruining the original image for it to be noticeable. One of the main applications that I used for editing my images was Adobe Photoshop (and I know a lot of people have used Lightroom, but I don’t even know what the programme looks like as I have never even opened it!). In addition to this, there are lots of free downloadable apps for phones or websites on laptops and computers which give you options to edit your photos (but still keep them looking genuine). There is actually an Adobe Photoshop *clone website* which sort of looks like the official programme and has almost all of the same tools!
Along with the above, other ‘tools’ that I use include the opacity level, which allows an image to be seen at a particular percentage (0% meaning that the image is invisible and 100% meaning that you can fully see it)- so experimenting with this on images can allow them to be very creative, especially if you plan on adding other layers or images on top creating a double or even triple exposure effect. I also like to vary my work with collaging; whether that be triptych, gridding or montage work, and I hope that in the future I can experiment a lot more with these processes as they are definitely beneficial and can help photographs look a lot more appealing (or at least unique).
Question 7: How do you educate yourself to take better pictures?
I’m one of those people that follows the quote ‘Be the best you can be’, something my parents and previous teachers continued to say to me over the years throughout my educational life. I like to think that how my brain works, is different from a lot of other people, and using personal experiences is vital when creating photographs. You are able to tell a story through your photographs, and this is why I chose ‘Storytelling’ as a theme for one of my sketchbooks when completing my Photography A Level. (The other themes were ‘I, Me, Mine’, ‘Evidence’ and ‘Patterns’) and can be found on the ‘Exhibitions’ page of my Photrography portfolio site.
I also like to get inspiration from people in all aspects of life and from all different parts of the Internet. I could see a message on Facebook or a meme on Instagram, and that could get my creative flows going, which would bring new ideas to the ‘drawing board’ for photographs that I could take, or aspects to include within my future photography. I’m not an avid reader and wouldn’t sit down and force myself to read studies or books about photography, as it’s ‘one’s own interpretation’ for how images can be taken and edited, rather than a set way to take photos. Saying this, I do have my email alerts on from different websites so that I can get inspiration from other people or discover other creatives in all different forms, who can allow me to develop my own ideas for photoshoots (whether that’s using models, or to experiment with myself!).
The final thing to add onto this question is that in terms of educating myself, I look at different ways to take images – such as the angles of the model and the camera for example, but also in the style of photography. I have experience in shooting people in the street, neon photography and also using black and white/neutral colours to enhance my images. In addition to this, one of the new skills that I have developed from other photographers, is that if you take your photos and purposefully use settings to make them darker, you can easily brighten them up in editing software (as opposed to taking images that have too much light, as often when you editing those, you tend to make the image look even worse) – so that’s a little tip that I personally have from looking at different resources online and speaking to my ‘in real life’ creative collaborators over the past few years!
Question 8: Among your works, which one is your favourite? Why?
I don’t like picking favourites, especially when speaking about my own work, but let’s just say that I wouldn’t showcase my photography unless I thought it was at least a 7/10. Sometimes there are photos that I absolutely hate, but when I edit them, I realise that they’re turned out ‘Ok’, and there are also times where I think I’ve taken some amazing images, when in fact they ended up blurry or the model was moving their hand in a weird way…Saying that as well, some blurry images aren’t necessarily bad, if you pretend the blur was purposeful (which I sometimes do)…
Question 9: Whose work has influenced you most?
For this question I can either answer ‘Nobody’ or ‘Everybody’ but there are no alternative answers for this question. In terms of my first answer, all of the photo shoots that I do, happened whilst I was present – without much direction from others, apart from where the photoshoots would happen and who would be turning up (whether that be at a meet-up or on a 1-1 shoot). I’ve realised that no photographer can take the exact same image as another photographer, no matter how hard they try. A model’s hair will move, the lighting could slightly change, a door could open and the camera could be a completely different brand!?! – and having somebody take the exact same image isn’t what you want to see, otherwise everyone’s content would be boring. So, my answer being ‘Nobody’ simply states that the photos I am taking are original, and no matter how much somebody wants to take the exact same picture…they can’t, and even if they did, the meaning behind the image would be little to none.
And for the alternative answer ‘Everyone’, photography is one of those hobbies that people do in order to remember different events or times in their lives, and therefore will focus on the good, bad and even the ugly! Photographers can therefore be inspired by everything and everyone, because they could see a stranger on the street and use their colour scheme for a future shoot, or they might see someone with puffy blue hair and order themselves a blue wig for a future model to wear? Nobody or Everybody, that’s what can inspire and influence particular people!
Question 10: What is the one thing you wish you knew when you started taking photos?
This is actually a very good question, and I think over the years there are quite a lot of thoughts that people can have relating to photography that could have been answered earlier. I think for me, something I wish I knew was the ability to control my camera from my phone. I know this seems like a very obvious thing, but for a lot of people it’s something that they don’t actually discover until they’re on a shoot, or several months after using their camera. In addition, I think it would have been nice to join photography communities a lot earlier (both in London and Nottingham) so that I could utilise my skills, whether it be creating content to help people for their portfolio, my own portfolio or just make other creative connections with those I wouldn’t have met on an ordinary day in my life.
Other than that, I knew that I could put a creative spin and twist on my images using some of the above features and tools, but also, I’m one of those people that is constantly learning and improving my photography. I still don’t use the aperture and F number functions on a camera, because for me if you want less light, you can darken the image and if you want to focus on a particular feature on a face, then you can just blur the parts around it! During lockdown I believe I have done a lot more self photography than I have ever done, but with a camera, phone and some basic editing software, you should be able to create some amazing photos by yourself!
I hope these tips and tricks helped! The link to the full blog post is below:
https://digital-photography-school.com/10-questions-you-should-be-asking-every-photographer/
…and I’ll be back soon with another blog post!
IsThatBrandon Photography 