If you are involved in portrait or fashion photography, there will come a time when you realize you need to either: 1) employ a make up artist (very expensive) or 2) do it yourself (you need a make up course). Consider this a required supplement to online photography courses.

Doesn’t matter if you are photographing guys you say. Not true, a good application of make up will assist your photography with both male and female clients. If you photography a lot of females, this is essential. If you are photographing models or shooting composites or folios for prospective models or actors, you simply can’t ignore make-up. Your photographs will suffer and it will be recognized by your clients immediately. You won’t be getting any return work, that much is sure. Some models can apply their own make up, but you can’t rely on this. You simply have to get involved.

For guys, this can be a somewhat daunting area, but this is a skill that can be learned and anyone can do it. If you want to be great with professional portraiture (studio or environmental) you absolutely need this skill!

Interested in becoming a great fashion/advertising photographer and earn a good income as well? This specialist area of photography is huge, but also very competitive and challenging. You really need to learn what is required to make great photos and how to pose models expertly. The good news is that this is a skill anyone can acquire and there will always be mountains of work available. Some online photography courses can offer you the skills required to get you started in this genre of photography.

One of most difficult areas of portrait photography is posing. What do I get my client to do? I found this one of the most difficult skills to grasp and so do many novice photographers. But, as I have mentioned in other posts, this is a skill like many others and can be easily learned.

With posing, you need to be able to relate to your client, their features, flattering lighting, clothing and poses. A great way to start is to get some posing ideas together, as many as you can, and practice on friends. Discover what works and what doesn’t. Identify what different features demand in terms of poses, file these away for future reference. keep a folder of poses that you like and know work. Bring this out when you have a paying client; put in somewhere so you can constantly refer to it, change poses to suit or modify ones that show promise. When you have done this hundreds of times you will probably end up not requiring the use of your pose file. But still maintain it, you will always find it useful as there is an infinite variety of poses.

To get you started on posing techniques, have a look at the following course on posing secrets. Sure, they’re not really secrets but you need resources from somewhere to get started.

This is the hardest question that most people face answering. Photography is such as massive area. You can spend the rest of your life learning photography and never finish. It is such a diverse and engaging arena

However, most people have an area of interest and this is the best place to start along side your choice of camera. So there it is: what do you like photographing the most? People, architecture, flowers, nature in general, racing cars, sports, scientific photography (infra red, high speed, ultra violet, high magnification, telescopic, etc.) macro, landscape, abstract, fine art, figure, fashion, wildlife, studio, environmental; it goes on and on.

Ok, you have your area of interest, now you need to focus on your camera in relation to this area. Now it’s time to get to know your camera inside out. Doesn’t matter what the camera is. You may upgrade at some later time. But you need to know the camera you have now, and know how to use it manually. No, you can’t leave it on automatic! On this setting the camera controls you; you have no say in the matter of taking photographs! The camera decides. Set it on manual and take back control. Sounds easy doesn’t it? Not so easy or difficult really, but you need to learn about your camera functions to have control. So this is about learning such stuff as aperture, shutter speed, ISO, depth-of-field, focus and other camera functions.

Again these are skills that anyone can acquire and there are many beginner courses out there to get you going. There are also free online photography courses on the internet and I’ve listed them here on this site if wish to check out this option. But when it comes down to quality courses you will find the fee paying courses offer more. Having said that, they are very cheap these days.

For a good beginners introduction to photography, have a look at the following introductory resource. It is the number 1 selling product in the market of Photography for Beginners . It’s selling well for a reason, it’ got the information a beginner requires. Just so you’re not confused, this product page offers you a 60 odd page ebook for just looking.