Commercial Photography - what is it? It is probably best defined as any photography to which money exchanges hands. In this light money could be paid for the subject of the photograph or the photograph itself. Wholesale, retail, and professional uses of photography would fall under this definition. Commercial Photography can be split into different categories:
Advertising Photography: Photographs are taken for the purpose to illustrate and/or sell a service or product. If you are an advertising agency, design firm or in-house corporate design team you do best if you have a good selection of professional photographers to choose from.
Fashion and Glamour Photography: This type of photography usually incorporates models. Fashion photography emphasizes the clothes or product, glamour emphasizes the model. Glamour photography is popular in advertising and in men's magazines. Models in glamour photography may be nude, but this is not always the case.
Food Photography: Used for editorial, packaging or advertising. Food photography is similar to still life photography, but requires special skills as high quality cameras and lenses, different filters, certain computer software and so on.
Photojournalism: Photographs made in this context are accepted as a documentation of a news story. We see them every day in the magazines and newspapers. Have you ever asked yourself what it needs to take apicture like you see them in a glossy fashion magazine?
Portrait and Wedding Photography: It is a major commercial endeavor that supports the bulk of the efforts for many photography studios or independent photographers. You definitely don't want that these photographs are not looking good! It's on of your most important day! Portraits are also a popular item and it takes a pretty good photographer to catch this certain smile, the glance, the typical look on the face. It's not the photographer in a mall who takes the best shots. Professional photographers take up to 150 different pictures in color, black and white or sepia and out of this amount they take the 20 best which will be presented to you.
Fine Art Photography: Artistic Photographs which are taken to fulfill a vision, and will be reproduced to be sold directly to the customer. Fine Art Photography can be found at exhibitions, at a museum or in our directory.
Landscape Photography: Photographs of different locations made to be sold as postcards, for calendars, as posters and for touristic purposes.
Wildlife Photography: It is capturing all kinds of interesting animals in action, such as in eating, fighting, or in flight. The techniques of wildlife photography differ greatly from those used in landscape photography. In wildlife photography wide apertures are used to achieve a fast shutter speed, freeze the subject's motion, and blur the backgrounds, while landscape photographers prefer small apertures. Wildlife is also usually shot with long telephoto lenses from a great distance; the use of such telephoto lenses frequently necessitates the use of a tripod (since the longer the lens, the harder it is to handhold). Many wildlife photographers use blinds or camouflage.
This was a small summary of some photography styles which are supposed to be the most important ones. The market for photographic services is very big and not everyone who owns an expensive camera can call himself a professional photographer. If you need photographs for self-fulfillment or for commercial purposes you deserve the best professional photographer. And it is possible.