It’s estimated that there are 250,000 photographers of which approximately half of them work part-time. That’s a lot of photographers and obviously not all of them are great, many are, though many are just good and some are fair while others just need more practice.
So what makes a photographer great, which is a goal all photographers should strive for if they want to truly succeed in this business? For starters they have to love what they ultimately do, that’s photography of course. They have to feel the passion each time they pick up a camera and shoot. Even though we’re often hired for a photographic job, one must understand it’s ultimately a passionate art or craft, not employment.
After a photographer realizes how to separate the business concepts from the craft of production during the shoot, then he must focus on the three C’s of being a great photographer.
First, a photographer must have a creative eye. Some are born with knowing what appeals to the eye, others have to learn to think with their creative side of the brain and teach themselves creativity. Natural creativity is the ability to simply use your imagination to develop a new idea or to capitalize on an existing idea in an artistic environment. Learned creativity is practicing what you’ve been taught with artistic as well as graphic design methodology to define your, implied, original or new idea.
Second, comprehension, or the photographer’s knowledge and understanding of their equipment, simply owning the best photographic equipment doesn’t make one a great photographer. On the contrary, it often just means they can afford more than their counterparts. While some great photographers own tons of equipment, they also know what it does and they certainly don’t rely on their assistant(s) to show them how it works.
This applies to all equipment, not just a camera or lens. Using the right lighting or light modifier to achieve the desired results is equally important as choosing the right lens, aperture and shutter-speed combinations. Understanding the scene, the subject and the end result is also part of comprehension.
Third, communication is the third C of a great photographer and probably the one C most photographers earn a C and not an A on. Great photographers know how to communicate with their assistants, editors, clients and most important, their subject(s). Sometimes this communication is to an audience or just a subject, but it’s always to someone and based on the sender/receiver model of communication theory.
Sometimes communication is nonverbal, it’s physiological or implied. As an example, when photographing children, ever notice that studios place children on an elevated platform with their toys? One reason is to convey to the toddler that the photographer is at their level, not above or overpowering, after all, most children tend to play on the floor, the elevated platform in a children’s studio is simply a raised floor and the toddler will fill more at ease.
Obviously when photographing glamour or fashion models we don’t worry about elevated platforms, we instead focus on building rapport, which is based on effective communication as well as psychology, though rapport is just one element of communication with a subject. Directing a model during a shoot is communication and when done properly it then becomes effective communication that normally leads to great photographs. Fair photographers often have poor communication habits, such as talking to the back of the camera or not speaking to their models at all. Great photographers bring the camera away from their face and speak clearly and annunciate clearly and know when to speak subtly or inflect their voice.
In a nutshell, what separates great, good and fair photographers boils down to a creativity, comprehension and communication. If a photographer possess all three, then they can create great images without even thinking about their equipment and in the end, everyone in the involved in the process understood the photographer.
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