How I went from Fauxtographer to Photographer

I remember when I first started taking up photography seven years ago. It seems like a life time ago. I started out with a Sony point-and-shoot camera and Photoshop CS3. I look at some of my work from when I first began and I can’t help but laugh. It was horrible! At the time, though, I thought it was amazing. I had selective color, heavy vignettes and quotes plastered all over my pictures. I was, what’s referred to as, a “fauxtographer”.

According to www.urbandictionary.com, a fauxtographer is “a person who tries to jump on the photography band-wagon by ‘pointing-and-shooting’ hundreds of terrible pictures, which they will upload to Myspace in an album titled ‘My Photography’.”

Yes. I’m guilty.

After sometime of playing around with it, I bought my first DSLR camera back in 2009. I bought a Canon T1i and, at the time, it was the best entry-level DSLR you could find. But, I still drooled over the Canon 5D MKII. Though, I had no clue why besides that it took awesome pictures.

Shot with Canon 5d mkIII. yeah, I still drool.

The minute I got that camera, I started shooting right away-- in automatic mode, of course. My one year old son soon became a victim of my fauxtography. Poor child, he had no clue what was coming. He never stood a chance.

I was pretty impressed with my camera and started to get comfortable with it-- Comfortable enough to take it off of automatic mode and into…no flash. You thought I was going to say manual, didn’t you? Wrong. Manual is for photographers.  I hated flash. It made my photographs look ‘yucky’. Natural light was just so much better (Well, in my opinion it still is in some cases.)

Soon, my photographs were starting to become a little more coherent. I still wanted to expand my hobby, so I purchased a Canon 50mm 1.8. When I put that baby on my camera, it was magic! I mean, Holy-Cow-My-Background-Is-So-Blurry magic.

 

I shot this in Feb. 2014 with 50mm 1.8 Canon 5d mkIII. MAGIC.

I thought I was the greatest photographer. So I started doing photography professionally. Yes, people paid me to take their pictures. Not only that, but I developed an attitude. I was insulted when anyone else tried to do photography. They copied me! At one point in time, I knew at least 5 other people who claimed to be a photographer. It frustrated me beyond what it should have. I was in denial. I thought I was better than them. I wasn’t. I was just another fauxtagrapher.

After a certain amount of time, I hit a wall. I was bored with the same pose and generic image on every single photograph. That’s when I started to do research on ways that I could improve my photography. By improving my photography, though, I mean, searching on the internet for poses.

Want to know what I learned about posing?  I was absolutely horrible at it. But, was I? I thought so. I kept comparing myself to these great photographers. I couldn’t understand how my images looked so bad and theirs didn’t, when all I did was copy their pose exactly. I am a curious person by nature. I love to learn and discover things. I wanted to know what, exactly, made their work so much better than mine.

Boy, did I learn a lot? You betcha.

First, I learned that the root word, photo, is Latin for light. Did you know that? If you did, congratulations. You’re very smart! If you didn’t, let me explain: that little piece of knowledge taught me everything I needed to know about photography. 

To be honest, I wasted many years being a fauxtographer. I was more worried about trends in post-processing than taking my camera and learning how to properly use it. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did. I want you to succeed in creating beautiful images that you can be proud of. In later blog posts, I intend to teach you everything I know. From, lighting tips all the way to post-processing.

 So lets get this journey from Fauxtog to Photog started!

Don't look back, guys. Look forward to the start of an awesome journey!