Making people feel like they're unique. That's what photographer Jesse
Winter Heading loves about his job.
"If I can manage to grab a shot of someone that makes them feel like, 'Yes!
This is the me I think of, and this is the me that I know everyone can see,
even though I don't necessarily see it in the mirror,' then I think I've done
my job," says Heading. Heading is a freelance photographer.
The path to becoming a photographer starts with getting a camera and shooting
the things you enjoy, says Heading.
"Look at other photos of the subjects you enjoy capturing and try replicating
them. Ttry creating an image that you've never seen before," he says. "It
doesn't have to be good at the start. One of the things that keeps photographers
going is their good taste. It's also one of the things that keeps us constantly
criticizing our own work and improving on what we're working on."
Variety and excitement are two more aspects Heading enjoys in his job.
He recalls the time he met a pro hockey player for a photo shoot during the
2010 Winter Olympics.
"The night before he had gotten into a big fight. So, he showed up for
the shoot with what looked like a broken nose, smashed-up eye and just, overall,
a pretty beat-up face. But he just trucked through the day like any other,
smiling and carrying on like a champ. I was really impressed with his overall
demeanor, particularly when I've heard horror stories about working with other
big-name hockey players spending their whole day with their heads down, staring
at their phones, texting."
Ellis Vener is a commercial photographer in Atlanta, Georgia. For Vener,
the job is full of stories. Some good, some bad, all memorable!
"Anecdotes, where to start?" he says. "Maybe it was spending time with
a pioneering heart surgeon? Having two Nobel Prize laureates letting me hold
their Nobel medallions? Spending time with human-rights activists? Suspending
a five-pound $40,000 camera system out past the edge of a 65-story building?"
Recently, Vener volunteered to take pictures at a bar mitzvah for a quadriplegic
and severely mentally handicapped boy.
"Seeing his parents' faces light up when they saw the photos, that is the
real highlight for me in what I've done so far," he says.
One of the biggest changes the photography field has faced in the past
two decades is the switch from film to digital. Nowadays, many people own
a digital camera, be it a cheap point-and-shoot, a fancier digital or just
the camera in their cell phone.
Heading began his career during the digital era. So, as a professional
photographer, the digital world is all he's known.
"I can't imagine the length to which people would have to go to achieve
what is now built into a slider or a Photoshop tool. With digital, though,
I think people have lost some of the appreciation for high-quality photography."
Other things have changed, too. "Now we are not only the photographers
and editors of our work, but also the processing lab," says Vener. "If you
shoot with a camera's raw format, which I think you should, in many ways you
also are taking on much of the role that Agfa, Fuji, Ilford and Kodak used
to: photographic medium manufacturer."
The move from film to digital has also changed how -- and when -- clients
expect work to be done.
"The biggest differences are the ways photographs are delivered and distributed,
along with a significant shortening in shoot-to-delivery-time expectation,"
says Vener. "This last change sometimes ends up with commercial and advertising
clients scheduling shoots at the very end of a project's timeline."
Unfortunately, professional photographers can find it tough to get ahead.
It's a competitive field, and many photographers work as self-employed business
owners, which can be tough.
"Of course, I was discouraged from doing it, too," says Vener. "If you
really feel a compelling need and passion for photographs, absolutely do it.
Just make sure you are also the self-starting entrepreneurial type with good
business sense and are willing to live through famines."