On Photography.

If you are a complete stranger who just happened to stumble upon my blog and this is the first post you read, then you probably wouldn't know that I take pictures. Or if you're a complete stranger who's been stalking me for months through this blog, then you probably would know that I take pictures, but not know that I'm actually studying Visual Communication and majoring in photography (my about page is reeeeally outdated).




I only just started majoring in photography, so my past semester has been filled with numerous photography-related modules (duh). From fashion photography to product photography to developing your own film in the darkroom, all that photography-related kind of thing. More in-depth compared to your usual composition and exposure kind of workshops. More stressful as well haha.

Anyways, my reason for writing this is really just to remember it myself, so if you're a complete stranger feel free to skip this entirely and see the other picture-filled posts. I wouldn't know anyways. :)

With all the photography-related learning, I've been learning and thinking more about the industry, because you know, taking photos is probably going to be my job in the future.

But I started taking photos as a hobby, because it was fun, interesting, and I wanted to create art through the conjunction of colours and contrasts coming together to paint an amazing canvas of light. That kind of thing. What I'm not sure now is if I want to do this as a job.

With the proliferation(hah) of cameras in society today, there are more and more amateurs starting up their photography businesses, and unfortunately, more and more failures. Everyone can be a photographer nowadays, and people are charging $50 to do a photo shoot when in the past it would cost $500.

I think there's a lot of metaphors/analogies/allegories with Christianity or politics here. Haha. You see the old photographers (fundamentalists/conservatives/right-wing) fighting against the new photographers (liberals/charismatics/left-wing). There are photographers who will never touch photoshop, and there are photographers who will photoshop everything. You have photographers knowing nothing about photography, and you have photographers knowing everything about photography. Somewhere in between are photographers with talent and photographers without.

And then there's the whole issue about equipment. I think photographers as a whole, myself included, tend to rank each other based on the cameras and equipment we use. Having a DSLR makes you a 'professional', or at least, someone with enough money to afford a DSLR. There's the assumption that having a good camera makes you a good photographer. And it goes the other way too, when you think someone isn't very good at photography because he/she uses a compact camera.

 So at the end of the day, I'm not sure if this industry is exactly appealing after all. Haha. Taking photos as a hobby is great, you don't have to worry about anything, and all the photos you take are for yourself. But getting paid to take photos for other people is something else, you wonder if what you just shot was good enough, is it worth the amount you're getting paid for? Or worse, is the amount you're getting paid for so little that you're more or less working for free?

This is terrible. I haven't even started working as a photographer yet.