Young photographer seeks wisdom

[TheFlyingCamera]

Welcome to the forum. I think the best piece of advice I could pass along would be to concentrate your work on taking the kinds of pictures that move you; you've already seen that the reactions you get to your landscape work are "meh" but you get a strong reaction to your documentary/journalism work. Keep on shooting that work, as much as you can. If you have to, invent some projects you can pursue (obviously you can't just casually shoot conflict photos, but there are tons of social justice issues in this country - well, anywhere - that you could lend your lens to). If you pursue making work just because you THINK it will sell, because it's popular, you'll end up making work that won't sell and won't resonate because it is inauthentic.

Don't ONLY do street/documentary work - as you progress through your college studies, try to get some portraiture classes and human figure classes too - understanding how to portray an emotion and a character in a formal setting will help you take better pictures in your documentary work, as will learning to see how bodies move and create positive and negative space. Take a class on abstract photography if you can so you can learn to see texture and form and figure out how to apply that - if you do enough of those things, you'll be able to apply them intuitively and subconsciously when shooting other types of photographs, like your documentary work.

Trying to make a living as a photographer is really tough - I think you're very wise to have a parallel career choice so you can do the unexciting thing to pull down a paycheck sufficient to fund your photographic activities (might I suggest software development/data science as a career track with a ton of career opportunity - I do software development by day, and that keeps me in film and camera toys, as well as housed, fed, and reasonably vacationed). I'm not saying don't pursue photography - do as much of it as you can, as often as you can, but don't feel frustrated if you can't make a full-time income from it.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Welcome to Photrio! You have arrived at a great place to learn.

 

[MattKing]

Another point - don't discount the possibility that your interest and education in photography will influence your becoming involved in a career that is at least partially related to visual arts. As an example, I was noticing a recent classifieds listing here posted by a friend who is an exceptionally talented, skillful and experienced photographer, whose experience in publishing books containing his own fine photography led him to become a publisher of a whole line of very high quality photography art books.

 

[beemermark]

Come to me an bring $2000 and I will teach you grasshopper.

 

[1957ExaktaVarexIIa]

OK, here is my advice for you, which falls a bit in line with what Daniela alluded to in the first reply. First, don’t try and put yourself in a box of I’m a landscape photographer, or I’m a documentary photographer. Photograph anything you find interesting and no doubt you will experiment with a multitude of films, processes, cameras and lenses. [...] you have plenty of time the hone your photographic skills and eventually hone your skills to simplify what you wish to achieve.

... and please don't make a mistake that I myself have made for many years, until recently : Don't be afraid to make mistakes when you take pictures.
I often did NOT take a picture because I was anxious to take a bad picture. But several times I would have done better to just take that picture - in order to look at it in the projector afterwards and learn from my mistakes.

I recently started to collect those slides (I only do slides) of mine which are failures. Just to look at them several times and ask myself: "Which kind of mistake did I make - and what can I do next time to do better?"

By the way, back in the 80s when I started out I used to note any technical detail about almost any picture I took. (Today I am too lazy to do so, I must admit .) Maybe it has helped me to learn.
I think it might be useful, for example, in order to learn how a special film reacts to certain measures - for example over or under exposure, filterings, the question of when I have taken a picture, morning, hight noon, afternoon (because of those different kinds of light) etc. Or in order to learn how to choose the suitable lens for a certain project, to work with slower shutter times etc.

Landscapes are harder than most people think.

Romanko is right I think.

Last year I did a wonderful two week journey across France. I saw a lot of those beautiful French landscapes and took tons of slide pictures. With most of them, I failed, sorry to say...

This is the advice I wish I had received had someone given me a camera at 19.

Thank you for this list, Alex. It's a great advice. I will think about it.