 Today's episode of The Photographic Eye is brought to you by Squarespace. Click on the link below for your two-week free trial. In certain circles, you will be told to make your photographs look professional. What you need is, bam, bam, bam, professional gear. For almost 30 years, I've been creating professional photographs and I'm going to give you like a little bit of a behind the scenes look as it were to the real secret about how professionals create these wonderful images that we so much enjoy time and time again. How's it? How's it? In professional photography, there are a few shadowy figures who claim that to become a professional photographer, you need to learn some, you know, arcane arts and things like that. And of course, that's not true at all, that there are a couple of things that professional photographers do day in, day out that I'm going to share with you so that you can implement these into your own photographic experiences and create the same level of photographs that these professionals are doing on command. Think back to when you looked last at a photograph that really intrigued you. You kind of went, hmm, that's pretty cool and stuff. And you maybe pondered it for a few seconds and moved on to the next one. Well, professionals are like magpies. We are drawn to things that inspire us and we look at them and hold them and collect them by looking and jumping into the photograph and really sucking the marrow out of it. A great example of this is Nadev Kander. I first saw his photographs and I was immediately intrigued by these interestingly unique portraits that he was creating. And I went, oh, what is he doing here? This looks like it's a bit of practical, it looks like it's a bit of digital work going on. And I could never really sort of figure out what it was, but I put them into one side. This is what I want you to do as well. Every time that you find a picture that inspires you, that intrigues you, make a Pinterest board or save it to a computer, somehow keep a record of it so that you can revisit it and see what secrets it can give you. It could be basic things. It could just be like a simple lighting setup or a particular composition that you like, but continue to be curious, find inspiration wherever, not just in photography. Anywhere you look, TV, record sleeves, anything. If it intrigues you and interests you, save it and keep it as a resource to draw on later on. Great chefs don't just walk into their restaurant one night and go, I am going to do this recipe and just plonk up a dish that they invented on the spot. No, they experiment and they test with things. And professional photographers who are worth their salt will be doing this as well, that they will take their personal photography, their own time to work on ideas, to experiment with things that have intrigued them. I mentioned about the net of candor and there is another photographer called Joyce Tennyson who is a similar sort of feel to her photographs and I have spent some time trying to replicate both of these looks to see how they achieve them. What are their secrets that they are using to create these hauntingly interesting photographs and by doing this, by testing and experimenting, not only do you refine your own skills because you are actually questioning how they did things technically, so that is a good exercise to make your skills better because you are trying to figure out a problem. But also you are learning to go in directions in your photography that you may not necessarily have thought of by yourself and that is a great thing to remember is that that pro photographers don't just sit still and create the same kind of image day in, day out. They have a certain style and within that style they are always evolving. Every photographer improves because they are constantly working on their photographs not just doing the same thing day in and day out. We are going to talk about that point a little bit later on about the problem of doing something day in and day out. I think it is appropriate at this stage to talk a little bit about processing because along with gear, it seems to be one of those things that people tell you that you need to do to be professional. It is like buying my pack of presets because it will make your photographs look professional because I am a professional or what have you. And that is a snake oil kind of stuff that people are just buying presets and what have you. And processing is not the be all and end all of having a photograph look professional. Sure, there is a certain amount of basic level of ability that one should have. And you can always refine that over time but don't think that to have a professional looking photograph you absolutely must have great processing. If you look at these photographs of say Richard Aberdon and Andy Gott, the processing on them is fairly straightforward. There is nothing too amazing about it. It is just a well exposed and printed image. And then you look at these photographs of Bob Carlos Clark and Bob Carlos Clark is or was rather a master printer. He printed everything himself and he was a big fan of toning and doing lots of darkroom gymnastics to create his prints. Both of these sets of prints, the Aberdon and the Gott and Bob Carlos Clark are both by or they are all by professional photographers but the level of processing is very different. So don't worry about processing too much. It's not a prerequisite to having pro photographs. The content, the content of the image is far more important than the processing. Professional photographers are creative on demand. And that can be very tricky, especially for somebody who just photographs for the love of it. Being creative on demand can be quite tricky. And it's one of those sort of things that you really need to kind of get out of your system. The idea that if you're going to photograph you can just have casual days. If you want your pictures to look professional then you need to approach the process of taking photographs with a professional point of view. And every time a professional is asked to take a photograph they have to be creative. They have to look at the thing that they're photographing and think how can I do this picture? How can I create something that is intriguing and worth looking at? Even if I'm not interested in the thing at all you need to get over that somehow. You need to be able to tap into this. And you can do this by thinking about things in a way that is completely new. So don't just think that something represents one thing like a tripod would represent a tripod. It could be a number of things. So try and think outside the box. Every time that you are confronted with something to photograph and be as unique as you can, be open to all the possibilities that that object in front of you can offer you. Ezra Stoller is well known for his architectural photographs but he also does lots of work with machinery and scientific apparatus and things like that. And you can see that even though these objects that he photographs are not wildly exciting in and of themselves, he has managed to make great photographs from what has kind of fairly mundane simple objects. You've discovered a lot about things that you can do that pro photographers have but there is one thing that you have that a lot of pros don't. We touched very briefly on this earlier and that is the passion and the title if you will of amateur photographer. Hello, I am an amateur. Because amateur by its strictest definition is somebody who does the action for the love of it. There are many professionals who I've met over the course of my career who don't take photographs for the love of it. They don't do it because it's something that they have a passion about. They do it because it's their job. And that seems like for a lot of people like a weird thing to say. How could you not like taking photographs? Now, there are many reasons but there are many professionals who simply just do the same thing day in and day out. Somebody who photographs school, for example, and I'm not decrying school photographers, but if they do the same thing day in and day out, they are a professional but they may not enjoy doing what it is that they do. But you, as an amateur, there is nobody paying you to take a photograph. There's nobody forcing you to pick up a camera. You picking up a camera because you want to. Because you are driven by something that is making you want to document the world. And I would like to stress to you to never forget that passion. That is what is going to help you to create when you combine it with all the things we talked about now into these fantastic looking photographs because you have an element, you have already within you something, an ability that people cannot buy. And that is that passion. You cannot buy the passion to create photographs. Never forget that. You can strive to make your photography as good as you possibly can and they can look professional and I don't know how would you actually define professional, but through all of this, you need to be enjoying the process. If you're not enjoying the process, put down the camera, go and pick up something else, go and do another hobby or completely change the way that you photograph and the way that you approach photography. I really want you to be the best photographer that you possibly can be. It is, this is the reason why I started this channel is because there is a passion, there is a love for this amongst all of us and it's our chance to become the very best photographers that we are capable of being. At the end of the video, I'm going to put up a episode about three simple ways that you can help tap into more of this way of seeing the world as a professional sees it. But before we do that, I'm just going to have a quick chat about today's sponsor, Squarespace. 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