Let us not kid ourselves, the art of photography can be an extremely time consuming and expensive endeavour! It can also be a bit daunting if not scary to consider the very real possibility that you might spend thousands of dollars and potentially hundreds of hours of your time just to be frustrated and feel like you make the wrong choice! Is there a way that an individual might try photography to see if they enjoy certain aspects of it enough to then seriously consider what kind of investment they are willing to make to pursue it! Let me propose a suggestion, a test pilot project for anyone who is thinking about whether or not photography is for them! All that is required on your part is a smart phone that can take pictures in raw format, a half decent laptop and access to the internet. The pilot project is simple. Take your smartphone and during a weekend take twenty-five pictures indoors or anything! Furniture, a plant, a stuffed animal.. anything! Then go outdoors and take at least twenty-five pictures of landscape scenery. Then take twenty-five pictures of people, preferably people who are static or barely moving, and finally take twenty-five pictures of anything that is in motion, like a car a person running, a bird in flight! Once you have done this, offload all of these raw images into a folder. The download a free raw photo editor like darktable or Rawtherapee and import your photos into the software program! The rest is actually a bit time consuming but I think it will give you a better experience and understanding of what photographers go through! Choose one photo that you like and is sharp and clear and go to YouTube and search for a video that provides tips on editing a photo! Follow the instructions in the video and then take a look at the end result! Here is a tip. In order to not overwhelm yourself and get overly frustrated, do the editing in time chunks! No more than a half hour time chunk and no more than six chunks in one day! Review your progress and results and also look at the time and effort as well as what you learned!

Let’s list a few key things out, and in no particular order! 1. Photography can be very expensive 2. All of the information out there about cameras and which one is the best can be confusing and overwhelming 3. It can save you a lot of time and money if you know why and what kind of photography you want to learn and for what purpose 4. You can do a mini test project without spending a dime to see if photography really is something you are willing to invest your time, money and energy into. 5. It can be incredibly rewarding when you have created an image and retouched it so it is polished and ready for print or posting it on social media or sending it to a client! In the next posts.. let’s delve deeper into each of these points!

There is a special allure to being able to capture moments yourself with a camera and share them with others or keep them for yourself ! There is so much versatility! You can post them on numerous social media platforms, or print them on different types of paper like glossy or matte! You can turn some of your photos into a calendar for family and friends as a holiday annual gift. Photography also offers you an additional opportunity to get out and meet people! Other photographers, or people on the street or in shops! More importantly, photography can offer a lot of great opportunities for self-employment. You can specialize in a particular niche such as a wedding photographer or concert photographer, sports photographer, headshots and portraits photography! Literally anything that you can think of can be adapted and turned into an employment opportunity with a camera and some software editing skills! Anything! Product photography, models, exotic cars, real estate, vintage clothing, cosplay, the list is endless! But, yes there is always a but! Becoming a proficient photographer takes time and effort and learning editing skills to be able to produce quality images for clients also takes time and effort! The good news is that almost all of the information that you need to learn photography basics and software editing basics.. is all freely available online through numerous sources, the most popular being YouTube!