2nd year of Photography

4/27/2019 

(Just a month late to post)

Today marks the end of the year 2 of me dabbling in photography. It was a great second year. I learned a lot of new techniques and gained more commercial experience.

Let’s start off with the goals set out for last year.

• Getting physical prints is a completely different ball game. You will require some knowledge of the color space, paper textures, printer, and ink. It was a big challenge, but I ultimately I got it done. Biggest lesson was understanding the difference between C- print versus inkjet. In the end, I settled for 340 gsm Canson Bartya Prestige paper (a gloss paper with extra smooth texture and deep color saturation when printed on) using Lucia EX pigments. In addition, learning about framing/mounting is even harder and it is shockingly expensive. Prints can be purchased here.
  

• Right before my birthday trip to Olympic National Park, the Sigma Art for Sony series were released. And I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it The image quality was spectacular. I was really blown away about how much zoom a 135mm really is. Here are test shots with the 135mm Sigma Art F1.8. 

• Lastly, Adobe can go straight to hell with that subscription model for that creative cloud suite. Unless you are going to use Lightroom, Illustrator  and Photoshop. I don’t feel it is necessary for Adobe Photoshop, and for the most of the post processing techniques can be achieved with Affinity Photo. For a perpetual license of 50 bucks; sign me up.

Overall, I accomplished most of my goals I set for myself last year. I think year 3’s goal will have to be bigger. 

Some of the year 2 key highlights were getting gigs with 500px Studios, attending Sony Alpha Be Alpha event, winning a photo contest and runner, approaching by others to do contracted works, getting physical prints and acrylic mounting works, meeting other creatives, and lastly opening a sole proprietorship for photography.   

Some goals for the end of Year 3:

• Get published in a physical magazine
• 50K in revenue for my business
• Master Affinity Photos
• Win an photography award
• Sell all of my second year prints.
• Get a sponsorship (highly unlikely, but a man can dream)

-Alex