professional

It’s not every day you get to experiment with new forms of media. We have seen astonishing new ways to move the camera from drones to gimbals which can push the boundaries of photography and videography.

How many photos did you come home with from your last professional shoot? Whether that number is several hundred or several thousand, that's a lot of photos to cull through, and a new Artificial Intelligence software called Picturesqe thinks it can help.

Here's an 8-minute video in which photographer Alexi Lubomirski shares the story of how he became a professional photographer.

Becoming a professional photographer is pretty "easy" in one sense, yet incredibly "hard" in another. The lower and lower barriers of entry makes jumping in easy, but developing yourself and your business in the industry can be a challenge that takes a lot of time, effort, and dedication.

To help aspiring photographers take their first baby steps toward that goal, UK-based wedding photographer Robert Sail has created a giant infographic that serves as a roapmap.

Vogue magazine sparked controversy earlier this month by recommending that brides say "I don't" to "hiring a professional wedding photographer." Needless to say, the suggestion didn't go over well in the photography community.

Now one bride is hitting back at Vogue by posting an Instagram photo that shows why you should hire a pro wedding photographer.

I am often asked for advice by those starting out in the photography industry. And if there’s one thing I have no shortage of, it’s advice. So with that in mind, I present you with my 8 Tips for Starting a Photography Business.

What do you say as a photographer when you’re asked to shoot for free? What if the one asking is a good friend, an old friend... a friend who really ought to know better?

What if they promise great “exposure”?!?

Here at PetaPixel, we receive quite a number of review requests daily, and picking what we feel is unique and interesting can prove to be a difficult task. But when we recently got a slightly more unusual request to review custom-branded wooden boxes from a company called ‘Woody Woodclick’ we had to give it a try. Producing custom wooden boxes and engraved flash drives, the company aims at premium packaging for photographers.

In this post, I'll be sharing 5 business mistakes that photographers make all the time.

What if I told you that it's not the industry, the bad economy, where you live, what camera you shoot with, how many lights you have or how small your Facebook following is that is holding you back. None of those are truly capable of stopping you, they are only challenges for you to meet -- the same challenges everyone who creates art or starts a business has to meet and beat.

What is the current state of the professional photography industry in the United States? Back in April 2014, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released statistics about the photography profession from May 2013. The data offers an interesting look into where photographers are living and how much they're earning.

Famous professional athletes have all kinds of post-playing careers. Some stay involved as coaches, others become TV analysts for the sports they love, and a few strike it rich in business as entrepreneurs. For at least two former baseball stars, their interests have led them down a different path: professional photography.

Dear Mr. Kim,

I read a blog post of yours titled "Advice to Aspiring Full Time Photographers" reposted on PetaPixel.

It’s filled with lots of exciting tidbits like:

“I think being a full-time photographer is overrated.”

As more and more professional photographers make the jump to Sony (for one reason or another), it only makes sense that the electronics giant start offering professional services along the line of Canon’s CPS program and Nikon’s NPS program.

And that is exactly what the company has decided to do. As of this morning, Sony Imaging has officially launched what it's calling the Sony PRO Support service program.

In a bid to both inspire you and advertise themselves a bit, Nikon Europe gathered a group of 5 professional photographers who presented at this year’s Photokina and asked them to share their advice on what it takes to become a professional in the world of photography.

Their insights, as you might imaging, are well worth two minutes of your time.

The Panasonic CM1 smartphone with its 1-inch sensor and super-fast Leica lens might not be available outside of a few European countries any time soon, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can't have a supercharged smartphone camera.

Enter Relonch: an iPhone case that adds a much larger APS-C sensor and fast f/2.0 lens to any iPhone 5 or 6.

Let’s start with a little quiz. What one thing makes a pro camera a pro camera? Build quality? Weather sealing? Fast autofocus? Fast motor drive? Dual SD card slots?

Don’t think too long over the answer because it’s none of the above. A pro camera is a camera that a pro uses. Period.

The guys over at HouseholdHacker have come up with and shared a cheap product photography trick that's incredibly simple but yields awesome results. And all you need to take advantage of it is some sort of reflective surface (they used a glossy black trashcan...), a computer monitor, and a smartphone camera!

Forget classes and skill and gear and taking good photos, what you really want is to LOOK like a professional photographer, right? Good, because Kai Man Wong and the DigitalRev TV team are here to show you how to do just that.

Enthusiasts of bitcoin, the electronic cryptocurrency, have more ways than ever to spend their digital cash. But should professional photographers try to take advantage of the growing popularity of bitcoin and similar systems by accepting it as payment for their work?

A few photographers say so, but first, what is bitcoin and how does it work?

Okay, we know you've asked for less time-lapses and we're doing our best to kick the habit, but this one couldn't be helped, and we're pretty sure you'll forgive us. It's not your standard stunning landscape time-lapse, this one shows the remarkable attention to detail and skill that goes into taking a great photograph of a Rolex watch, and making it phenomenal.

Well, we started the photography tips train rolling earlier today with four incredibly informative short interviews with portrait master Gregory Heisler, and what better way to follow that up than with some great tips from the sillier side of the photo industry: the folks over at DigitalRev.

One commonly asked (and commonly mis-answered) question on the Internet these days is around the definition of what constitutes a ‘professional photographer.’ The usual definition is that it is somebody who is shooting for pay, and deriving the majority of his or her income entirely from photography or photography related activities. I suppose in the strictest sense of the definition, that is true. However, it says nothing about professional conduct or skill.

What I’m going to attempt to do in this article is express my own views on what I believe constitutes professional behavior in photography. It is important to note, however, that this is a very personal opinion, although it is shared by many of my colleagues in all areas of the industry -- both primary providers of photographic imaging, as well as supporting services and videography/cinematography.

What if I told that you could get wedding photos at a fraction of the cost that professionals will charge you, would you be interested in that? I bet you would because there are a heck of a lot of people out there that think wedding photographers are way too expensive, charging you thousands of dollars just for a few pictures.

I started getting into photography when I was in my mid-to-late teens. I bought a 35mm Minolta XG7 at a local yard sale during my freshman year, and around the same time I took a 3 week summer darkroom course at a local community college. I got really in to it, but when I finally finished high school I went straight into the workforce. I jumped around various manual labor and retail jobs until I was 21. This is when I got married, and shortly thereafter I began considering the distant possibility of making a career out of my hobby.

The transition from being a "hobbyist" to being a "professional" photographer was slow and seemed to creep up on me. I've been professional now for 6 years (as in, it's been my only job), and you can find my work on my website. Here's the story of my journey.

There has been a lot of talk recently about how best to succeed as a professional photographer, now that "everybody is a photographer." A recent post here by Alex Ignacio emphasized how important it is to “specialize and focus” -- Ignacio believes that if we don’t, we’ll “perish”.

As someone who trains aspiring commercial photographers, I agree that some doors may shut if you don’t specialize, but many more will open if you’re versatile.

Light meters are less common now than they used to be. Now that we can see our photos right after we've shot them and delete, adjust settings and re-shoot, some people just don't see the merit in spending $300+ on a professional meter.

Of course, a light meter can be an amazing tool, and so the folks at Lumu Labs have designed one they're calling "the light meter of the 21st century": a tiny, iPhone attachable light meter that claims to perform far outside its price range.

Battle hardened photographers will tell you that theirs used to be an elite profession, difficult to do, hard to enter, and accorded the proper respect. Now that everyone and their grandmother has a super computer/camera in their pocket or purse or on their face (read: Google Glass), it seems like everybody is sharing their filtered masterpieces with the entire world.

And like our very own Cheri Frost wrote, next is for the camera-ed masses to hang out their shingles and call themselves professional photographers.

Chicago Sun-Times photographers, who lost their jobs in a mass layoff last week, are not going quietly into oblivion.

We all know by now how Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer unleashed the collective fury of photographers and the creative community during her presentation of the new Flickr with a few poorly chosen words. She has since clarified her statement, but the real issue is that the distinction between photographer and professional photographer is fuzzy at best in the minds of most people, particularly those that know little about the world of photography.

This appears to be a big week for Yahoo! with their $1 billion Tumblr acquisition announcement followed by a number of changes to their Flickr service. Exciting stuff in the tech world. However, amid the Yahoo! hoopla, CEO Marissa Mayer managed to insult the entire professional photography community with her comments, being widely interpreted as “there’s no such thing as professional photographers” anymore.

...there's no such thing as Flickr Pro, because today, with cameras as pervasive as they are, there is no such thing really as professional photographers, when there's everything is professional photographers. Certainly there is varying levels of skills, but we didn't want to have a Flickr Pro anymore, we wanted everyone to have professional quality photos, space, and sharing." -- Marissa Mayer, Yahoo Event, May 2013

Woah, there, Yahoo cowgirl...let's hold on just a second!

Photographers often grumble about the rise of hobbyist photographers who charge little to no money across all kinds of photographic niches, robbing hard working professionals of clients and flooding the market with subpar results.

Instead of simply being discontent about how the industry has been changing, photographers Geoff Johnson and Kameron Bayne decided to do something about it. They've created Fotoseeds, a business that aims to make professional photography a sustainable profession by educating photographers, helping them grow their businesses, and doing away with insecurity and ignorance.

The Onion has published a humorous tongue-in-cheek piece that many non-professional photography enthusiasts …

In late 2012, Photoshelter surveyed around 5,000 photographers to find out the industries outlook on 2013. Some of the findings were pretty interesting.

The chart above shows the top challenges the photographers think they'll face in 2013. Only 10% of those who responded were worried about gear-related issues. People don't seem to be having a hard time finding the right equipment to use for their shoots -- it's the business-side of the photography business that's weighing photogs down.

Zack Arias is a professional photographer based in Atlanta who runs a popular personal blog with a sizable following. He's also runs the photography equivalent of Dear Abby.

Professional photographers are often hired to capture moments in life that are memorable and emotional -- two words that aptly describe military homecomings. The number of photographers hired to shoot homecomings is reportedly growing, as more and more families are hiring professionals to document the reunions that occur when soldiers return from war.