A few days ago my grand daughter, eleven years old and already a photographer of amazing skill, asked me a very interesting question: What is the difference between a professional photographer and a very good amateur photographer? I asked the same question of a very wise old professional photographer when I was only a few years older than my grand daughter. He told me that the only difference between an skilful amateur photographer and a professional photographer is that the professional photographer gets paid for doing what he/she loves to do while the amateur doesn’t get paid for doing what he/she loves to do. That was true back in the days when I was fifteen years old and it’s still true today. But how does one make the transition from amateur to professional?
One of the easiest ways to make the transition is to start selling your pictures to stock photo agencies online. Stock photo photography allows you a great deal of freedom to work when, where, and how you want to. Stock photography allows you to shoot the kind of subjects that you like to shoot-children, animals, architectural, scenic, etc. You will never get rich selling stock photos but it gives you a chance to get paid for doing what you enjoy doing and it can turn into a steady source of income.
In this part I will cover the minimum equipment and software that you will need to get started with stock photography. Since you are reading this factoid on a computer, I feel that it’s safe to assume that you have a desk top computer or a laptop computer, or at least you have access to one.
What equipment will you need?
- You will need a high quality DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera with at least a 6 megapixel resolution but a 8 megapixel resolution is recommended. Stock photo agencies are always looking to sign up new photographers as long as they can supply them with high quality images. Don’t even think about trying to impress them with a point and shoot camera. It won’t work.
- Lenses. The lenses you have in your gadget bag is probably the most important part of your photographer’s kit next to the camera body. The lenses that you will need depends on the type of pictures you want to take. For interior photographs, architectural photographs, scenic photographs, group photographs, etc you will need a good wide angle lens. Do you have a 16mm. 24Mm, 28mm, or a 35mm lens? You can even use a zoom lens, such as a 17mm to 40mm or a 24mm to 70mm lens but prime lens, fixed focus length lens, produce higher quality pictures. For photographing people, portraits, still life, and everyday pictures a 50mm, 85mm, 100mm, or 135mm prime lens will work fine. You could also work with a 24mm to 70mm or a 35mm to 165mm zoom lens will work. Good all purpose zoom lens are a 28mm to 85mm or a 35mm to 135mm lens. For sports, wildlife, and press photography you will need a telephoto lens. If you intend to be successful as a stock photographer don’t buy cheap telephoto lens. The purpose of a telephoto lens is to get you in close to your subject without being physically close to your subject, that means magnifying your subject many times. Any distortion caused by the glass will also be magnified many times as well. You’ll need Prime telephoto lenses in the range of 135mm, 200mm, 300mm, 400mm, and 500mm. Any telephoto lens over 500mm will be prohibitively expensive since good telephoto lenses aren’t cheap to start with. For zoom lenses, check out the 70mm to 200mm, 100mm to 400mm, and the excellent but relatively inexpensive Sigma 50mm to 500mm telephoto lenses. You may also want to carry high quality 1.4X and 2.0X Teleconverters in your gadget bag. A 2.0X teleconverter will turn a 50mm to 500mm Sigma telephoto lens into a 100mm to 1000mm telephoto lens in seconds.
The digital darkroom (editing software)
No matter how skilled a photographer you are there will always be digital darkroom work that will need to be done before your photos are ready to upload to any online stock photo site. If you are shooting on a breezy day, dust particles will inevitably end up on the neutral density filter that you are using to protect your expensive glass. If you’re shooting fast action sports, you won’t have time to clean the filter before shooting so you will need to remove dust spots in the digital darkroom. No matter how careful you when shooting action, some of your shots will be crooked and you will need to straighten them in the digital darkroom. There are a myriad of other adjust that can be made in the digital darkroom that will improve any picture. The one adjustment that you never want to make in the digital darkroom when shooting for a stock agency is sharpening because the buyers of the photos, the end users of your work, want to determine for themselves how sharpening to apply to any given photo. Actually, when shooting stock photos, it’s a good idea to turn the camera’s auto sharpening feature off. Adobe Photoshop CS is the industry standard when it comes to the digital darkroom but for those just starting out in the digital darkroom, Photoshop Elements 6 or 7 is a better choice. Photoshop CS has a very steep learning curve while Photoshop Elements is very intuitive and easy to master.
You will need one more piece of software to re-size photos and reduce electronic noise before uploading them but I’ll cover that software later in an upcoming part in this series.
