12 Types Of Photography You Should Know If You’re A Photographer
Updated on September 23, 2022 in Photography by Alifiya Mustafa
There are different types of photography and every photography requires a unique and different skill set.
You may want to explore all types of photography to expand your knowledge and find your best interest. Or, you may just want to pick a niche and become the master of it.
But the best part is, no matter what you choose as your subject, you can never run out of options. Today, I’ll be telling you about the 12 major and most popular types of photography.
12 Types Of Photography You Should Know As A Photographer
1. Portrait photography
Portrait photography is among the most common types of photography. The subject of portraiture is a person and the aim is to capture the person’s expressions, emotions, and personality in the best way possible.
Generally, for a portrait, only the part above the chest is captured. Such images are usually used for personal portfolios, makeup photography, and hair photography.
2. Fashion photography
Fashion photography is dedicated to displaying fashion items such as clothing, footwear, and accessories. There are different types of fashion photography such as street fashion photography, high-fashion photography, catalog photography, and editorial fashion photography.
Such types of photography are commonly used for fashion lookbooks, catalogs, advertisements, and magazines such as Vogue and Elle.
3. Product photography
Product photography is another popular type of photography. This photography is captured with specific needs.
If the product is to be used on the website, you’ll want to go for a clean and white background to bring the focus completely on the product along with some lifestyle shots. For social media and advertisements, you can be as creative as possible with props, colors, and angles.
Product photography is most needed and popular in eCommerce, online stores, and marketplaces like eBay and Amazon.
4. Still life photography
You need an artistic eye for still life photography. Such types of photography are almost close to a still-life painting. The only difference here is that you use the camera to capture the beauty of still life instead of paintbrushes.
Still life photography is aimed at capturing inanimate subjects, often a group of small objects. Traditionally, objects were purposefully arranged vividly and then captured. Nowadays, anything from your morning cup of coffee to your lamp at the bedside table can be the subject for your still life photography.
5. Editorial photography
Editorial photography includes images with text alongside for publications to educate the viewers or tell them a story. The image can be of a product, a building, or a person with enough white space for margins and text to fit in seamlessly.
The photography used here must be of high quality since these images are featured in magazines, editorials, and professional fashion lookbooks.
6. Sports photography
Sports photography is among the most in-demand types of photography. It includes people as well as sports accessories.
The shots are of athletes, exercises, games, and other sports activities. The activities are often in-action, while running, and playing.
7. Candid photography
Candid photography is fun and creative. The photos are taken without the knowledge of the subject to capture the natural and unintended expressions and emotions.
If the subjects are lifeless, they are not intentionally arranged. They are left the way they are and the image is then captured. It includes the images of people in the streets, children playing in parks, markets, or anything that catches your eye and makes you want to photograph.
8. Abstract photography
Abstract photography involves the vivid and distinct images you see of splashed colors, shadows, bold elements, and more.
These types of photography are objective, conceptual, or experimental and are created with the use of photographic techniques, equipment, processes, or materials.
9. Architectural photography
The focus of architectural photography, as the name suggests, is architecture. It involves the capturing of buildings, skyscrapers, bridges, monuments, etc. that are both accurate in terms of their representation and aesthetically pleasing.
It involves many composition techniques to capture the perfect shots at every angle. These images are used for catalogs, hoardings, and magazines that talk about infrastructure, grand and exceptional places, or topics that relate to the buildings and places captured.
10. Business photography
Business photography is the capturing of the corporate culture. The images of office spaces, employees in formal dresses, board meetings, and presentations are a part of it. These images are used on the company’s website, brochures, and hoardings.
The photos must look very professional and clean to reflect the brand’s culture and vision. The expressions of the models must also be professional, welcoming, and bright to show how happy they are with their company.
11. Travel photography
Travel photography is one of the best types of photography. It includes capturing places, streets, cultures, food, landscapes, history, customs, and people into a frame. It consists of candid as well as planned shoots.
It’s about exploring and storing those explorations for memories and others to see. Travel photography allows the people of places to see and imagine the places they’ve never been to. Being a travel photographer is a wholesome experience.
12. Nature and wildlife photography
Nature and wildlife photography is mostly done outdoors. Here you capture everything that nature has to offer, from sunsets to plants, animals, birds, landscapes, waterfalls, oceans, to weather.
It may take hours and days to capture the best shots in nature and wildlife photography. Most photographers even leave the camera in a natural place to record the movements and then take out the best shots of the videos.
This is among the types of photography that need time, patience, and passion to keep hustling for the best shots and master the needs for it.
Bonus Read
Being a photographer is fun, creative, and full of new experiences. These 12 types of photography are major and most common in the industry.
Pick one or pick many, but I’d always advise you to work on your skills, keep learning, and know what’s best for your images – Like post-production.
If you’re a product or eCommerce photographer, outsource post-production with Pixelphant’s professional product photo editing service for photographers, eCommerce, and photo studios. Try our services now for free 👇.
Beautiful product images across your website.
Background Removal, Clipping Path, Color Correction, Cropping & Resize, Retouching, adding Shadows, and more.
Try PixelPhant for free
No Card Details Required