Different Photography Styles

If you want to take great photos, it’s important to choose your genre of photography. Find out what you’re interested in shooting. Is it better to become a landscape painter or a portrait painter? Sports or wedding photographer? What about fashion or reportage photography? We have compiled a list of popular genres with good examples and simple instructions to help you choose.

What are the genres of photography

We have collected popular genres of photography and named the names of famous photographers who work in each of them.

Take a closer look at the works of great portrait painters, which depict famous actors or musicians. You will notice that in these pictures the idols of millions do not just look like themselves. A good portrait can show the inner world and character of a person.

To make a good portrait, you need not only great experience in photography and the ability to work with light, it is also important to be a psychologist and understand people. Therefore, the portrait is considered one of the most difficult areas, so for a start it is better to choose other genres of photography.

Here are references to help you find your style in portrait photography:

If you haven’t decided what types of photography you are interested in yet, study completely different portraits.
Black and white portraits of celebrities: from Audrey Hepburn and John Malkovich to Angelina Jolie and Claudia Schiffer.
Here is a popular Instagram where they post the best portraits of different photographers. Under each photo there is a link to the author’s Instagram, so you can easily find accounts that will inspire you.

Finding references is an exploratory and creative work in which you not only study pictures of talented photographers, but also analyze what you like and what you don’t. References are needed not for copying, but for support, for a sense of the general direction.

Scenery

The advantage of this genre of photography is that you don’t have to invent anything. Landscapes and natural phenomena are beautiful in their own right. This is also the difficulty – you can not move the mountain, which interferes with the composition, or move the lake a little to the left. When working on a composition, you can only change the shooting point and choose a lens with the desired focal length.

References to help you find your style in landscape photography:

Photos of natural landscapes on Pinterest.
Cityscapes at Pexels.com.
Instagram of the German landscape photographer Kilian Schoenberger, in whose pictures there is always fog.
American photographer Michael Sheinbloom, who gained fame for his dramatic and atmospheric landscapes.

Place meaningful points on the front of the picture, and you can convey the depth of the image.

Reportage photography

The reportage is interesting because the photographer does not need to direct the shot, there is no place for staging in this genre, and there are no second takes here either. Capturing an interesting moment in real life is the main task of reporting.

References to help you find your style in reportage photography:

Steve McCurry has been in the photography business for over 30 years and his work tells a story and touches the heart. This is one of the greatest photographers of our time. Works by Steve McCurry on Pinterest and personal Instagram.
Seamus Murphy’s photographs are an incredibly emotional and heartfelt story about the life of different peoples. A selection of photos on Pinterest.
Polish photographer Tomasz Gudzovati is a talented sports reporter. His dynamic photographs of kung fu training, street parkour and Mongolian horse racing can be found in publications such as Forbes, Newsweek, Time and The Guardian. A selection of his photos on Pinterest.

Reportage in the classical sense is photography of the premiere, competition, concerts, holidays and other events. However, there is also an everyday report that reflects the events of ordinary life in its everyday moments.

Fashion photography

Fashion photography began as a tool for advertising and branding, but with the rise of social media, the genre has become incredibly popular. Regardless of whether such a photo is created for a magazine or for publications on Instagram, its main goal is to profitably present clothes, jewelry, cosmetics and other accessories so that they are attractive to the audience.

A fashion photographer should be a psychologist, understand people well and feel their mood. He must see the winning features of the model in order to catch a good angle. It must create a unique image, convey emotions and mood. Fashion photography should take the viewer into the world of fashion and cinema.