5 Popular Photography Genres

Photography is an incredibly rewarding hobby, and depending on what your interests are, you can use your digital camera to take wonderful pictures of hundreds of subjects. Whether you want to work with landscapes, fashion, or delicious food, there’s no limit to what you can capture with a camera. If you’re interested in exploring new types of photography, here’s a helpful breakdown of several popular styles from our family-owned stores in Eugene, Salem, Beaverton, and Portland.

1. Food

Who doesn’t love a delicious, mouth-watering photo of an exquisite meal? Food photography is a great way to capture the true art of culinary preparation, and can even give people ideas for meals they can make on their own. Just make sure to turn off the flash on your digital camera—it will cheapen the look of your wonderful dish. Instead, use an off-body LED such as the Vidpro LED-180 to help brighten up your image with an eye-catching look.

2. Portraits

Capturing a person’s expression or stance in the right photo can say a lot about them, which is why portraits are so often used for professional as well as artistic purposes. Keeping the subject’s face in focus is often crucial to this form of photography. Many professionals prefer to shoot early in the morning or at dusk for optimal lighting. A great lens to get started with your portrait photography would be a 50mm 1.8 from either Nikon, Canon, or Sony.

3. Landscapes

There are few things as soothing and satisfying to look at as natural scenery, which is one of the reasons why landscape photography is so popular. Using a tripod will help keep your digital camera still, making your nature photos extra crisp and detailed. You can also experiment with long exposures to capture the natural movement of water and clouds. A Shutterbug favorite tripod would be the Promaster XC-M 525K .

4. Fashion

An accessory or piece of clothing is only as good as the picture that displays it, which is why photography is a crucial part of fashion advertising. It’s important to choose settings and colors that highlight the clothing and bring the subject to life. Something like the Vidpro RGB 152 Pocket Light would work great to help add different colors to your shot using the color-changing lights.

5. Sports

Getting up close and personal to capture the heat of the moment in a high-pressure sports match is one of the most exciting forms of photography. Using a high ISO will enable your camera to achieve a faster shutter speed, meaning you can capture brief, intense moments much more vividly.