Hello everyone!!! My name is Blake Sanders, and I am the owner of Sanders Photography and Graphic Design, Inc. in Clinton, Mississippi. I have been in business for over a year now and am proud to say that business has been going great. I've been doing photography for five years now. I started off as a kid taking landscape portraits and some family portraits but grew into doing individual portraits and other types of professional photography. Photography is something that I am really passionate about. It gives me a sense of peace with the world and allows me to appreciate the beauty of God's creation. I was inspired to write this blog based on my colleagues of The Cool and people like you that are interested in understanding the art of photography, and I hope that it will help all of you become better photographers.
The purpose of this blog is to help you get better with your photography whether it is taking family portraits, landscape portraits, animal portraits, or any type of portrait that meets your needs. I have people ask me all the time, "Blake, how do I take a better picture?" or "Blake, what is the secret to taking a picture of a beautiful sunset?" In this blog, I will discuss ways of helping you become a better photographer by introducing you to different photography terms and then applying them to actual photographs. Now, if you're going to follow this blog, I expect you to at least have Adobe Photoshop whether it's Photoshop CS4 or if it is Photoshop Elements because I will be explaining how Adobe Photoshop works and how you can apply it to your photographs. Now, I will not be sharing any of my photoshop secrets. If you want to learn more about Adobe Photoshop, I suggest you buy either books or journals on photoshop or sign up for online training through lynda.com.
This is how this blog will work. Every month there will be an entry on a subject I will decide to introduce you to. We will start off with the simple things and then grow into the more advanced things. Along the way, I do expect some of you to showcase your work to be critiqued not only by me but by others that are following this blog. Letting others critique your work will allow you to get better while learning from each other. The main thing about showing off your work is to remember that everybody's work is different so don't sweat it if your work may not look the same as your fellow peers' work. Remember, the keys to photography are the following:
1. Photography is all about being creative, and no, you don't have to be an artist to be creative, but you must be able to appreciate art to understand photography. You must be able to visualize the image before you capture it. Photographs are one of the most sacred possessions we can own because it holds the memories that last us a lifetime. We can use photographs to remember our most cherished moments and the degree of how we cherish those photographs depends on our how creative we are. So remember, be creative when capturing an image and create your own style. It will help you capture an image that you will reminisce about for the rest of your life.
2. To be a great photographer, you must understand how photography works. You must understand how your camera and equipment works. To illustrate, lets say you are using a point and shoot 10 megapixel camera. Well most of you are probably wondering what is a point and shoot camera? Well we will discuss the different types of cameras in a later entry. Back to my illustration now. If you're using a point and shoot 10 megapixel camera and you want to capture an image of an iceberg in the Arctic Ocean. Will you know how to set your camera to the proper settings to capture that mood of that image? Will you know how to capture the proper mood of your child blowing out his or her birthday candles on their cake? Get my drift? You will need to know the different settings on your camera and which buttons control those settings. Now, I won't know what type of camera you'll be using, but I will define each term in photography and give advice on how to make the different settings in your camera. Understanding your equipment is the main key to photography and you must understand how everything works before attempting photography, unless you just like taking pictures and don't really care to understand how everything works.
Those are the two main keys to photography. We will be looking into other keys as we go along, but for now I hope you've enjoyed this introduction. Next entry we will be looking into the different types of photography and what type of photographer are you. Until next time, take care and God bless!!!!
"What's wrong with the world today is that we don't inspire each other enough to be great. That's why we sometimes fall short of our dreams. I refuse to fall short of my dreams, and that's why I inspire everyone to be great." -Blake Sanders.
