If you’re subscribed to Adobe creative cloud for Lightroom/Photoshop, Adobe portfolio is included.
If you’re not subscribed or else you need more/different features for whatever reason, there are dozens of services to have a look at. Smugmug, Zenfolio, Squarespace, Photoshelter, Wix, Format, Wordpress…
There’s no best/worst, it’s just a question of what you like and what suits your needs.
No matter the genre, photography is all about the light.
When shooting fashion, you generally have 100% control over that. I assume you’re using stuff like reflectors, strobes, etc.
When you’re shooting landscapes, you have 0% control over that. You need to be there when the light is good. What matters is time of day, time of year, the weather, etc. That generally means going out before dawn or after dusk or in “bad” weather.
I’m not sure I even follow your process. But -
On an organizational level that’s pretty much it. In Lightroom I can then search and sort by date, metadata, keywords, etc as desired.
I export to JPG as needed and in my case share with dropbox, though google drive would work just as well.
It’s not like f/2.8 and f/4 telephoto lenses don’t exist; they’re just crazy expensive. Though even that said, they’re like used car expensive - not totally out of reach for someone who’s really into wildlife photography.
Though you also don’t even need those per se. Telephoto lenses from f/5.6 to f/6.3 are relatively affordable-ish, and daylight offers more than enough light to use a fast shutter even at those relatively smaller apertures. Modern cameras handle high ISO’s with very little noise if you do need to increase that a bit, which makes them a pretty good option for us mere mortals who don’t want to drop $10k+ on a lens.
If you really really care about these particular photos, reach out to them with the ones you have in mind and ask if it’s okay to use them for your portfolio. No harm no foul.
To obviate the need for that next time, offer a small discount if they’re okay with using some of the images from the shoot in your portfolio and for advertising and put it in your contract. Fair is fair since you’re essentially using them as a model in that situation.
The venn diagram of people who watermark their photos and people who make photos anyone would actually want to steal are two non-overlapping circles.
The short answer is I use manual focus in circumstances where autofocus doesn’t work.
This might include low-light scenes where the AF just fails (getting to be less and less of a problem as technology gets better though), super cluttered busy scenes where the camera keeps focusing on the wrong thing, macro work (especially if I plan on focus stacking), the occasional scene where I might pre-focus and wait for something fast-moving to cross the frame because the AF would be too slow to catch it. Probably other cases I’m not thinking of right now.
In most cases it’s skeevy as fuck too.
Like yeah yeah there’s no expectation of privacy in a public space. That doesn’t mean it’s moral to use non-consenting strangers for your photography project.
I have a lot more respect for portrait artists because they actually treat their subjects like human beings rather than objects, and can actually say something about their subject with their photo because they know who their subject actually is.
The way to not come off as a creep is to not be a creep. Overcommunicate. Ask for consent for every interaction. Respect boundaries. Be professional. Don’t touch the model. Don’t try to fuck the model. Respect your subjects. Don’t make lewd comments.
Many models are happy to work with inexperienced photographers. But as a general rule - the person asking for the shoot is the person who should be willing to pay for it. You’ll have to pay them. There’s generally a thriving market for that - many models do it full time or as a side hustle, many models travel around and book shoots in the locations they go to. You can find them on model mayhem.
There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s a valid genre to make art in. But you do have to be prepared to pay to make it.
There is very, very little market for a photographer who’s hoping to get paid for this sort of thing. Most women who do onlyfans are either doing self portraiture or relying on a partner to shoot the content. There are few if any of them seeking out or paying for photographers for it.
Boudoir photographers do exist and there’s somewhat of a market for that, but you’d still have to hire models to build your own portfolio as the clients for it are typically women who don’t want the photos published anywhere. The photographers who offer that typically have their own portrait studio and it’s just one kind of service they offer.
Beyond that, most photographers in the space (there really aren’t that many) are either working for or running their own porn site. But there’s really not much of a market for still images anymore, so even those are few and far between and difficult to make any sort of income doing.
You should be able to just use the natural lighting; the woods will offer plenty of soft/diffused lighting for portraiture. Just make sure to position your subject out of direct sunlight.
The only tricky part is that what can happen is the canopy can cast a green tint over everything, which can make white balance difficult to get right. Shouldn’t be an issue if you shoot RAW though.
Depends a lot on the genre.
For a landscape, it’s pretty close to one and done. There’s no real excuse to click the shutter before you have exactly what you want in the frame. Ditto for architecture, object study, etc.
Portraiture? Maybe one in four or so. You want to experiment and take a few and pick the best later.
Sports and action is mostly spray and pray. You shoot a hundred and hope one is the key moment.
It’s an accessible way to make beautiful art. I can express myself creatively with it.
It’s just the right level of challenge to hold my interest. There’s always something new to learn and skills I can improve without it ever feeling overwhelming.
It’s a way to preserve memories of people and places.
It’s a motivating factor to get me to go out and do stuff and see things that I might not otherwise experience. Getting out of bed before dawn to shoot a sunrise. Traveling to some of the most beautiful places on the planet. Exploring the nooks and crannies of my own neighborhood in search of visually interesting things. Learning about history and the natural world.
And in the end I always have some cool pictures to look at.