Learning photography in Orange County California

I am frequently asked “If I want to learn photography as a profession, what steps should I take?” The first step should be the most obvious but you need a camera, preferably a full frame but really any camera that you can practice in Manual mode should be ok. I was fortunate enough to start on a Cannon Mark 3 and later converted to a Nikon D750. Once you have a Camera in hand, practice, practice, practice! This is all so important to this profession. You need to find anyone willing to be your subject and take pictures. Take your photos at different day parts and different backdrops. The best times are sunrise and sunset. I shoot exclusively 1-2 hours before sunset and try to avoid other day parts whenever possible. After each shoot you should be taking your images and importing them into a processing application like LIGHT ROOM form ADOBE (this is its own beast and a lot to learn here, look up Creative live course by Ben Wilmore).  You should be shooting in RAW and after you process the images convert them to Jpeg upon export. Keep the Jpegs and delete the RAW files or store them on an external hard drive. This “Workflow” is another step in the process of being a photographer. The final components are a way to deliver images (Smugmug, Shootproof) and a website (Showit) or means to gain referrals/clients(Google, yelp, bing). This is a highly simplified “how to become a photographer”, but as with any thing worth doing you must practice and never stop learning or you will have a short shelf life as a professional. Good luck and reach out with any comments or questions laurabradphoto@yahoo.com