What I Learned This Weekend Working With Nick

Nick is Nick Zungoli from Exposures Gallery in Sugar Loaf, New York.

Working with Nick has been very interesting. First of all, he is an actual photographer who gets paid a lot of money for his photos. He also travels the world to take photos that he sells. Not  a bad gig for someone who is in love with her camera and wishes she was making money using it. He has been able to make a living doing what he loves for over 30 years. So there is still hope for all of us who love photography.

While Nick's photos are on a whole other level than mine, there is so much to learn from him and I will share whatever I learn with you, my dear readers.

Here is my current list and if I can remember anything else, I will add it

• It really is all about the light!
• Use a tripod
• Learn your camera
• You cannot teach someone composition. You either have it or you don't
• If you are shooting in JPG only, you are doing your camera a disservice unless you will only use the photos digitally. If you can set your camera up to save RAW and JPG, go for it. 
• Think about the photo before you shoot to reduce the need for cropping (when I told him I am the cropping Queen).
• Download MyPantone and make sure your monitor is showing you the colors you will get on your prints plus assists with color matching and other coloring issues. Still waiting for my confirmation email but really excited to set up my monitor for color specification.

While I am not taking photos with Nick, I am a studio associate there to sell his photos, he has been kind enough to look at some of my flower photos. Here are some of his favorites.

So worth the 5 days away from my kids to hear him say; "Maria, you have the ability to be a really great photographer. You have great composition and a great eye for detail. You cannot teach someone composition. I am really impressed with your work!"

He told me to bring the camera in next time and he will give me a quick course on setting it up after hearing I know nothing about how to really get a great photo and that mostly I just consider myself lucky when I get a good shot. He doesn't believe any of these shots to be luck and thinks I am selling myself short. Excited to see what I can learn and applying it for some amazing shots.

More to come.