Are there any professional photographers on Elite Trader? I want to become a professional photographer, any ideas on how I should get my start. I am a total novice, and the word aperture means nothing to me. Any resources that you would recommend. Feel free to post links, I will not ban you, Jk. Thanks for the help, Joe P.S. I'm in the Orlando area, if you know of any local resources.
Joe.....I'm into photography, here are some links I like and they all have good forums. http://photo.net http://www.pdngallery.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi http://www.railpictures.net If you can give a price range you are willing to spend I can recommend some cameras, or go to the PDN forums (2nd link) for recommendations. The Canon 5D would be good if you are willing to spend a few thousand.
I'm looking to go digital, since it is the future. I don't mind spending a few thousand, however I'm a complete novice and would like to practice first before I dive into the deep end. I was looking for a good practice camera no more than a few hundred dollars to start, and then progress from there. Is this possible? Or are D-SLR's much more than I had thought?
I'm not a film purist/zealot or anything, but you will gain so much more insight by purchasing a cheap manual SLR camera and a basic dark room kit as well as your digital camera. Developing and printing your own work is the surest way to grasp the fundamentals of light and composition, plus it's fun, satisfying work and just looks so much cooler. Start off with black and white. You'll need to be pretty committed, but it definitely pays. Heres a great book... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Photographe...=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197550827&sr=1-2
I have heard what your saying is true, and would not mind starting off with a film camera to learn the basics. Eventually I would like to move into the digital direction.
That is a good idea. I have Nikon Coolpix 8700, worth about $300 now, it's a Prosumer camera and something like that will get you well into the digital age. Canons seem to be skewed more to the action photography area, do your own research and choose a camera but don't waste time, get a camera, extra batteries, extra cards, get a backpack and have your camera with you all the time and take lots and lots of pictures and get really good with the camera. Newspaper editors will work with you, photography is more of a hustle than some jobs, if you see an event like a car wreck or whatever you local paper might publish, take a bunch of pictures and email them to the editors, if you do that enough they will start paying you and they will get you a press pass maybe too.... An axiom of photography is that it is about the picture not the technology. The technology is something you have to master not for itself but so you can best use it in telling stories with your camera... you might buy the New York Institute of Photography correspondence course, they will fill you in on how to make a picture tell a story, you can pick up the technical stuff on your own really... I saw an article recently on MSN about "47 ways to make $ with a camera" or something like that. You could narrow that to ones you want to do and really just do them a lot and bombard the editors along the way... I think the biggest bucks is wedding shoots but you want to be a well heeled photographer before you launch into that, pros have about $10k of stuff they take along with complete redundancy because they can't screw that up.... there is no doover for that one... and you have to be taking some good pictures too... I'm into the photos as well but not probably going to try to turn pro but it's in the back of my thinking all the time. I'm going to grab a Nikon D3 here pretty soon and get on with it... Get photoshop and learn to touch up prints and get a good enough photo printer to learn on, you'll be making stuff you can't believe you did in no time...