Shutterbug Sunday – Ben Drucker Photo

Before we get started on Shutterbug Sunday for this week, a quick announcement for Taipei folks. We’ll be having an initial ideas meeting today, Sunday 20th, at Yuma around 1:30 or 2pm to discuss Help Portrait. Feel free to come along if you’re in town.

Okay, Shutterbug Sunday time. This week we look at Ben Drucker, a professional event and portrait photographer from New Jersey. Ben is a little unusual as a photographer. He’s shooting events and portraiture professionally since 2007. Nothing unusual in that.

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What is unusual is that Ben is only 16 years old. He says

My love for photography started when I was very young, but really started to blossom when I got my first digital camera in 2003. I read tons of books, poured over blogs, and spent hours on Flickr in an effort to really advance my technical ability and improve my photographic eye. When I was beginning in photography, I shot a lot of landscapes and macros, but rarely ever people. It wasn’t until I bought my first Nikon speedlight that I truly switched my focus from nature to people. The Nikon CLS system opened my eyes to the incredible things that were possible with Nikon’s small, inexpensive strobes. I was inspired by photographers like Joe McNally, David Hobby, and Neil van Niekerk who could produce a magazine quality location portrait with a few speedlights and some light modifiers. And if they could do it, so could I.

He continues

My first professional job was a Bat Mitzvah party, and my professional career has grown from there. I still do a lot of Bar and Bat Mitzvah portraits, since there is a huge Jewish community in my area. I specialize in events and portraiture, and couldn’t love what I do more. There’s no better feeling for me than getting “the shot” and hearing how happy my client is when they see it. I’ve also learned how important the business and client relations side is to a professional photographer. I pride myself on my customer service and spend every day trying to disprove the stereotype that photographers are pretentious and arrogant people. I find myself nearly every day helping a new photographer in their struggle with the same issue I had a number of years ago: starting as a professional photographer but having no idea how to run a business. I try to share all my knowledge, keeping in mind that I was a beginner not so long ago. In general, I’ve found the photography business to be incredibly rewarding. I’ve had lots of fun, met tons of new people, and of course funded the purchase of plenty of new gear over the last several years.

Ben’s advice to all the photographers out there is this: follow your greatest ambitions when it comes to photography. Don’t think you can’t do something, whether because you’re too young, don’t have the greatest gear, don’t have the experience, or don’t think you have an interesting subject. You’ll never get anywhere if you don’t try. So go out today and do that thing that you’ve always wanted to do, but never thought you could. Who knows, it just might be your job one day…

If you want more from Ben, why don’t you follow him on Twitter (@bendruckerphoto) or become a fan at Facebook.

Your comments, suggestions and so forth are always welcome. Know a photographer who should be featured? Get in touch and I’ll check him/her out. Thank you.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 06:00. It is filed under Shutterbugs and tagged with Shutterbugs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.