You should understand the differences and similarities of all types of photography to develop your photographic knowledge. Check out my top 10 list of general photography types to distinguish them and choose your photography style.
10 Basic Types of Photography
It’s important to know the different types of photography that are followed today. It will help you broaden your photography horizons and inspire to try something new. Here is my overview of 10 photography types that exist nowadays.
1. Portrait Photography
Portrait photography shows a person or a group of people in a way that would better represent their personalities. Usually you concentrate on the face, highlighting interesting features, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore the background or the person’s pose.
Famous portrait photographers: Annie Leibovitz, Steve McCurry, Eric Lafforgue
Equipment: a DSLR or a mirrorless camera, a portrait lens with high aperture and 70-200mm focal length, a shutter release, a flash, a softbox and some reflectors.
- View creative portrait photography ideas for inspiration.
- Read about the most successful portrait photography poses.
2. Fashion Photography
The goal of this photography type is to capture beauty and fashion, often concentrating on clothing or accessories. Such photographs are used for magazines, ads, and commercial purposes. It basically consists of 3 elements: an interesting-looking model, a fashionable object, unusual pose, and the photographer’s imagination for combining everything in a dynamic shot.
Famous fashion photographers: Mario Testino, Steven Meisel, Horst Diekgerdes
Equipment: the best camera for fashion photography, 20-70mm zoom lenses, spotlights, tungsten-halogen and incandescent lamps, a strobe or flash, a fill light, and umbrella reflectors.
- Read more about the differences between fashion and editorial photography.
3. Landscape Photography
Nature photography involves going around the world and taking shots of vast areas or tiny corners of nature. Landscape photos usually capture the presence of nature but they can also focus on man-made objects or disturbances of landscapes.
Famous landscape photographers: Adam Gibbs, Ted Gore, Alex Nail
Equipment: the best waterproof camera or compact camera, a wide-angle lens, a stable but flexible tripod, a reliable remote trigger or shutter release, waterproof camera bag, filters and additional batteries.
- Read these nature photography tips for beginners.
- View more about the best cameras for landscape photography at affordable price.
4. Product Photography
Product photography is used in advertising to showcase the external characteristics of an advertised product — its design, construction, significant elements. In this photography genre, you need to represent the product as a whole and also make its unique features visible that sell.
Famous product photographers: Tim Tadder, Harold Ross, Peter Belanger
Equipment: the best camera for product photography, a macro lens, a mini tripod, a white backdrop, LED illumination, photo light box and metallic reflectors.
- Check out creative product photography ideas for your next photoshoots.
- View more about lifestyle product photography and its main features.
5. Wedding Photography
Wedding photography is one of the most common jobs in photography field where you shoot activities related to weddings. It can be the shots of the couple before marriage and the coverage of reception and wedding.
Famous wedding photographers: Christian Oth, Danielle Real, Fitz Carlile
Equipment: a mirrorless or DSLR camera for wedding photography, a 35mm prime or zoom lens, a diffuser or bounce card, empty memory cards, additional batteries, remote triggers or transceivers.
- Check out creative wedding photography ideas you can try.
- The list of wedding photography props you can use at any wedding.
6. Macro Photography
Macro type of photography involves capturing very close-up photography, tine subjects and living organisms as insects. Macro photography lets us look at such small elements which you could never see with the unaided eye.
Famous macro photographers: Thomas Shahan, Mike Moats, Patty Hankins
Equipment: a camera for macro photography, a close-up lens, macro extension tubes, reversing rings, a macro-friendly tripod, a macro shooting table, focusing rails.
7. Sports Photography
Being among different types of photojournalism, sports photography belongs to everyday life photography types. For sports photography it’s extremely important to capture the culmination point and a photographer should know everything about the kind of sports he documents.
Famous sports photographers: Petr Toman, Keeton Gale, Christian Bertrand
Equipment: a mirrorless or DSLR camera for sports, a zoom lens, high-speed SD cards, monopods, a charging station, a camera strap.
8. Street Photography
Street photography type is a kind of lifestyle photography. These are the pictures taken in public establishments with purposes of the fine arts or for the investigation. The object is the daily routine.
Famous street photographers: Eric Kim, Bruce Gilden, Alex Webb
Equipment: a semiprofessional mirrorless or DSLR camera, a fixed focus lens, additional SD cards and batteries.
- Read more about neon photography and how to capture it on the streets.
- Read my outdoor portrait photography tips if you want to photograph people.
9. Travel Photography
Travel photography genre involves capturing more than just people or landscapes. It’s a kind of photography documenting famous sights, sceneries, traditions and folkway of the nation.
Famous travel photographers: Chris Burkard, Kirsten Alana, Johan Lolos
Equipment: a travel camera, a wide-angle, zoom or fixed focus lens, a drone, lens filters, memory cards and batteries.
- If you’re going to use a drone, read my birds eye view photography tips.
10. Food Photography
Food photography is a special kind of commercial photography that provides realistic images for advertising campaigns, journals, packaging, illustrated cookbooks, etc.
Famous food photographers: Lou Manna, Teri Lyn Fisher, and Jenny Park
Equipment: a DSLR or mirrorless camera for food photography, a close-up lens, a tripod, reflecting screens, stroboscopic light source or monolights, a reflecting card or linen, diffusers.
- View more about food photography props you can use for creative product photographs.
- Read more about fruit photography and ice cream photography.
FREEBIES for Photo Editing
No matter what genres of photography you specialize in, photo editing is something that you will have to deal with. To make your color correction and image editing faster, I’ve collected a few useful plug-ins for Lightroom and Photoshop.
Nature
It is suitable for both wedding and street photography. Use it for bright daytime photos and it will make them more saturated and interesting.
Grains
A great choice for lifestyle images with film effect that adds slight grain. This preset corrects white balance, adds vibrant colors and saturation.
Smoke
This is my favorite overlay for a smoke effect in pictures. I recommend it to give photos some atmosphere. It looks especially awesome in night street pictures.
Fashion HDR
This action is created to add a light HDR effect, which gives more contrast and makes light parts of the image brighter and dark areas – more saturated.
Colorful
This preset will make your landscape images stunning by adding natural, saturated colors.
Tata Rossi
Hi there, I'm Tata Rossi - a professional blogger, read more
