CalebF

So you're a new photographer.  Wedding Photographer. Engagement Photographer. Event Photographer.  What-have-you.  So what's next?  Do you do one of the following?

1.  Call Visa, buy every piece of equipment that you could possibly ever need, and pay it off "later"
2.  Just use your point and shoot-camera, it takes great pictures!
3.  Buy a camera with a kit lens, good starter package right?
4.  Book a wedding right away, you've gotta get experience sometime right?

Ahem.  If you liked the any of these to start out a photography business you're out of your mind!  But don't worry - there are a couple of good ways to get things off of the ground.

First off, don't go into debt.  It's just not worth it (Dave Ramsey is a great reasource to learn how to live off of cash, even for your new photograpy business). 

Second, your camera affects your pictures for sure, but i promise you that you can buy all the equipment in the world and still take crappy terrible uninteresting pictures.  Learn how to compose a shot.  Where do the people stand in relation to your camera, how far away should you be?  Should you zoom in or just get awkwardly close to them?  How much of the background should be in the picture? All good questions, and you should be able to answer all of these.  Can you? (not a contest kiddos! :0)

Third, kit camera look like a good deal.  They can be a good deal too, but beware of extreme zoom lenses.  A lot of the cheaper ones can really distor your pictures, and most won't cut the cake for an indoor event.  They don't let much light in the camera, and that means that your pictures will come out dark.  Here is my suggestion, and how I started.  Buy a used camera body.  Today (as in TODAY, April 1, 2009) I would either buy a D70 for about $200 on craigslist, or a used D200 for $500).  These are both decent camera bodies, and while buying a quality one is important you are going to want to spend your hard saved $$ on a lens.  These get pricy, but you can start off with a Sigma lens that is a 2.8 for pretty cheap.  Make sure your aperture is at least a 2.8, maybe smaller (f/1.8 can really make for a great picture).  This will allow more light to enter your camera, and will blur out the background, helping you to tell a story about a couple people, instead of all the other people standing behind them. 

No idea what any of this means?  Then don't book a wedding or an event quite yet!  It's a very important day for a couple, and how terrible would it be to mess up pictures on somebodys important day?  I'd know, my photographer at my wedding did!

Look around for some photography workshops, even a Photo 101 class at a community college.  That's just a good investment. 

So think it out before you dive headlong in.  It is FUN, but at the same time it's a career too.  :0) Happy Shooting!