How You Can Become a Better Photographer by Working in Other Genres

We're all always looking for ways to become better photographers. This great video talks about a method for improving your photography that you might not have thought about trying before.

Coming to you from First Man Photography, this helpful video talks about the benefits of shooting in other genres to improve your work in your main one. While it's geared toward landscape photographers, the lessons apply to almost any genre. For example, wedding photographers looking to improve their reaction time and ability to read a scene and quickly find a composition could benefit from practicing street photography, as the rapidly evolving scenes will help them improve the aforementioned skills. Even seemingly distantly related genres can inform each other by helping you to improve your sense of storytelling or even just giving you something with which to practice lighting and hone your fundamentals when you're unable to shoot in your primary genre for one reason or another. If you don't have any landscape trips coming up, instead of leaving your camera in the bag for weeks at a time, find a friend and go shoot some portraits or grab your macro lens and have some fun in your yard. Doing so can only improve your skills. Check out the video above for more on the subject.

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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That is a great way to improve and learn. I recently started to shift towards food photography and while I really enjoy it, I know it is very difficult to shoot everyday. In order to remedy that, I do some street photography or portraits of somebody I find interesting so that I do not stop taking pictures and seeing mistakes to correct and newer details to worry about when taking a photo. Plus you get to take knowledge from one genre to the other which I somehow find funny.