Perseverance: Advice for the Aspiring Photographer

This week, Advancing Your Photography featured the SF based photographer, Jim Goldstein. As a professional photographer he specializes in outdoor and nature photography. He is in particular, passionate about the environment and is well known for infusing elements of the natural world in his commercial and editorial work.

Interestingly, Jim’s past consists of genetic research and being a web-strategist for San Francisco based tech companies. However, his passion from childhood had remained intact and in the light of the birth of social media sites, Jim caught on and started to share his work with the world. Today he is a well established photographer who produces some of the highest quality photography for both commercial clients and fine art photography collectors.

Did he become a fantastic photographer over night? When asked what his biggest hurdle was as an up and coming photographer, Jim smiles and says, “To be quite honest, myself!”. He recalled the days when he took his mother’s camera and went to Yosemite to take pictures and then coming home only to find that none of the photos turned out as he had hoped. Did that stop him? Well, almost but it was only through the course of time that the photographer realized that while all the times he thought he had “failed,” he was actually developing other skills in the process.

So what about his views on mentally preparing for a shoot? Goldstein says that the number one problem that photographers face is that they don’t change gears quickly, which is totally normal. You can’t always instantly find inspiration at the venue where you are setting up. Yet the key according to Goldstein is that you must free your mind and focus on the task at hand. In fact it’s a good idea to even reacquaint yourself with your equipment, know what you have to work with, and make sure you don’t make basic mistakes during the process. A photographer must know that your image ISN’T just a click away. You must experiment, study subjects, study surroundings, and be completely familiar with the atmosphere that surrounds you.

As for advice for getting better photos, it’s a simple straightforward answer: Enjoy what you do and keep at it! To check out some of his work, Check out Jim Goldstein’s page here. Recently, Jim also published a book on photography and it’s available on InspiredExposure.