Why combining two types of photography makes sense!

When I started my professional photography career, everybody told me to niche down.

Sure it makes sense to do that. To become a real expert in one field is mainly achieved by practising like crazy.
Then, there is the gear issue.
Every type of photography uses different kind of gear. As a portrait photographer you would need a telephoto lens or a prime with great bokeh.

I was totally into product photography and thought I would need a great studio with lots of gear.

I guess every photographer is more or less a tech nerd and like new toys.
Once I shot the first images for my portfolio, my hunger to learn more was not fed enough by just doing product photography.
Don’t get me wrong, there is still more than enough room to improve and experiment but I couldn’t imagine just doing that.
Probably it’s a character thing, but I soon decided to follow my gut and get into other fields as well.

My greatest passion are cars!

So, I started taking images of any car I could get my hands on.
I learned all the necessary techniques.
Unfortunately, I still don’t have a nice telephoto lens to practice pano-shots, but actually I’m not very often at any motor sport events, so I never really needed one.

A friend of mine told an architect about my photography skills.

Basically, I slipped more or less into architectural photography.
Even though I was not really into architecture beforehand, I watched every tutorial how to take decent images, to get the job done.
The more I spend my time in this field, the more I got a crush in architectural photography and I still like it very much.

Landscape and Cityscape photography are not that different to the architecture field either.

I started looking for nice spots, where it was worth to carry the heavy camera gear.
Even though, I’m not doing that professionally, personally I love being outside and take nice images, while the sun sets.
Next stop will be Rome.
Can’t wait for it, btw.

Now, back to the actual topic!

The downside first, I still got no proper studio for my product pictures, which is not very convenient but I hope to change that in the near future.
The upside on the other hand, lead me to a much more creative approach which is combining my different skills.
Why not doing a product picture in a nice landscape scenery or why not combining an architectural shot with an automotive image, like in this one.

In the end everybody has to decide on their own, if they will stay in one niche and become a real expert in this field or to look into different fields as well.
I know great product photographers who are way better than I am or guys who just doing retouching and are the absolute experts in that field.
For me though, I just like learning new stuff and experimenting with different skills.
Maybe I could be a way better product photographer by sticking to this niche, but this approach wouldn’t fit my personality.

– Dominik Berg –