Student: I’m fascinated by professional photography. Everyone sees the final image, but I’m curious about what happens before the shutter clicks. What does the creative process actually look like?
Photographer: It’s far less romantic than people imagine. It often begins not with a camera, but with an idea or a purpose. Is it a commercial assignment for a client? A personal artistic project? A documentary story? The “why” dictates the entire “how.” This conceptualization phase is about defining the intent and the message of the photograph.
Student: So once you have the idea, you just go out and shoot?
Photographer: Not quite. Next is planning and pre-visualization. For a landscape photographer, this might involve checking weather apps, sun position calculators, and scouting locations. For a studio photographer, it involves sketching lighting diagrams, selecting backdrops, and gathering props. You’re mentally constructing the image before any equipment is even set up.
Student: That makes sense. What about the technical side? What are the fundamental techniques you always have to get right?
Photographer: The exposure triangle is the absolute foundation: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Understanding how these three elements interact to control the amount of light hitting the sensor and the resulting aesthetic—like depth of field and motion blur—is non-negotiable. It’s the grammar of the visual language.
Student: And composition? I’ve heard of the rule of thirds.
Photographer: Composition is how you arrange elements within the frame to guide the viewer’s eye and support your concept. The rule of thirds is a good starting guideline, but it’s just one tool. Leading lines, framing, symmetry, negative space, and the use of color and contrast are all crucial compositional techniques. The choice depends on the story you want to tell.
Student: How important is lighting?
Photographer: Lighting is everything. Photography literally means “drawing with light.” We learn to see and understand light—its quality (hard or soft), its direction, its color temperature. A large part of technical skill is manipulating light, whether it’s using a reflector to fill shadows outdoors or setting up multiple strobes in a studio to create a specific mood.
Student: Do you shoot in RAW format?
Photographer: Consistently. Shooting in RAW captures all the data from the camera’s sensor without in-camera processing. This provides maximum flexibility in the next critical stage: post-processing.
Student: Ah, editing. Is that where you “fix” photos?
Photographer: It’s less about fixing mistakes and more about refining the vision. Using software like Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop, we make global adjustments to exposure, contrast, and color balance. We might also perform local adjustments to dodge, burn, or sharpen specific areas to emphasize the subject. The goal is to enhance the image to match the vision we pre-visualized at the start, not to create something artificial.
Student: So the process is a loop from idea to editing.
Photographer: Precisely. It’s a continuous cycle. Sometimes a happy accident during a shoot will inspire a new idea. Sometimes the limitations of a location will force a creative workaround. The technical skills are the tools that allow the creative idea to be realized effectively and consistently. Mastery of both is what separates a snapshot from a photograph.