A Beginner's Guide to Photography

 

How To Get Started


The simplest way to put it: Shoot stuff. A modern day smartphone will be good, don't worry about it. Other options can be to take classes or watch some tutorials on Youtube. A good start to photography would be to learn about ISO, shutter, aperture, and other things of that nature.

When you get down to the nitty-gritty parts of photography, it becomes an easy subject to master with time. There are lots of subtleties that come with it but that is just the nature of it. The basics are fairly straightforward. You point and shoot a camera. Needless to say, to get good it will require a fair amount of practice and experimentation in order to solidify what you have learned.

When looking at the grand scale of photography—it is art. There is no shortcut to creating an image from your own vision, you will have to go through this process yourself. It is a personal task and journey in doing so.

Elements of a Good Photo


Just like mastering photography, making a good photo can be both difficult and easy depending on the circumstances. On some occasions, you can take a photo at just the right time, other times it's the result of months of planning and preparation, but the results will always have some of the basic features that make what is considered a "good photo".

To learn how to make a good photo you have to start with a bad one; most people do. You look at your work and critique it. Always improving with each photo until you have no idea what to improve anymore. If you are in a class or photography community you might be able to get someone to show you what could be improved beyond what you can see. At first, it will be hard to find what is wrong. Being able to learn what to look for is a matter of time.

Backing Up Photos


Photographers who has been shooting for a decent amount of time will have dozen, if not hundredd or thousands, of photos in their library. If you do not organize your library, esspecially early, you will not have a proper foundation for organizing your portfolios. A little organization never hurt anybody.

The whole process of organizing your images is commonly refferd to as Digital Asset Management (DAM). You will have to pay attention to it at some point in time in order to organize yourself, the easier and less time consuming it will be. A very easy way of doing this would be to create folders and organizing the photos by date and event. That way you should be able to search the event and find all of the photos you may need.

Backing up to the cloud is super affordable now. iCloud photos and Google One are very competitively priced and offer a way to store your photos without taking space on your computer, or whereever you currently store your photos. Not only that, bu you get more value from the automation when you select a folder to be monitored and backed up automatically once those photos are uploaded. Google Photos is free service that offers unlimited storage for photos and videos that pretty much does the same thing if you are just looking for photo storage. More free storage services options are: Flickr and Dropbox, stuff like that... but the best options are not usually free or via your own hardware.

Client list and locations:


Featured Photographer: Eric Kotara


Eric Kotara is a San Antonio based photographer serving the Austin and San Antonio areas. He focuses on wedding, event, and portrait photography. Within his photos, he offers what he describes as a "contemporary style" while also presenting the photos in a personable and charming fashion.

Eric lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, 2 dogs, and 2 cats. He enjoys outdoor activities like kayakin, hiking, jogging, and anything that involves nature. When he is not pursuing photography, Eric enjoys engaging in other interests such as being apart of a bluegrass band, car restoration, watercolor, or doing personal work showcasing the beautiful city of Austin.

Testimonials


"I don't know how can I describe to working with Eric for my wedding day . He is such a nice person to make you feel comfortable and try to get every single moment to create wonderful memory." ~Miray

"A+ Eric was amazing and definitely money well spent. His pictures were great, we received a lot of compliments on them, and he captured our special day so well." ~rochala2

"If you're searching for an amazing photographer your search ends here! I couldn't have been more excited about the photos he took of us! They were beautiful and so artistic." ~Alexis

What To Do If Picture Are Stolen


Sharing photos is now easier than ever because of the internet. The exact same can be said about stealing them. Professional photographers often find that people are sharing their photographs without their permission. Whether it is in other webpage to even advertisments. The moment a photographer takes a photograph, that image has copyright. The moment a photographer takes a photograph, that image has copyright.

Photographers typically take the following options when it comes to pictures being stolen:

1) Do nothing: images may be on a site hosted in a country where infringement is relatively common. Alternatively, the website might be too small and does not get much traffic.

2) Contact the site owners: with this, you have some options. You can send a cease-and-desist letter about the photo being used. Make it professional and with intent. Another option would be for them to credit you as the owner of said photo.

3) Hire a lawyer: if there is no resolve with the previous actions then hiring a lawyer to send a cease-and-desist letter about the photo. An advantage of doing this is that the lawyer will know the legal terminology in order to get the point accross. The downside of this is being more expensive than just doing it yourself.

4) File a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) Take-Down: this provides copyright holders with the ability to ask website hosts to remove content that infringes their copyright. It was enacted in 1998 to protect digital media and used mainly as a last resort.

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