How to Think Like a Photographer?

The journey from ‘a person with a camera’ to a real photographer.

Keith Chen
4 min readSep 1, 2020
Image by author. Shot in Pittsburgh.

One of the reasons I like photography is because it requires both your left and right brain. There is the technical side that you need to learn and practice, but there is also the art side that you have to continuously absorb and refine. I think there are enough articles that talk about the technical aspect of photography, so why don’t I focus on the “right-brain thinking” in this article and talk about the thought process behind my street photography works.

Image by author. Shot in Pittsburgh.
Image by author. Shot in Pittsburgh.

#1 — Photographer aims to achieve a nice consistency across their photos. I’ve met many people who asked me to give feedback on their works. Usually, their pictures look very nice individually, but they are lacking consistency when viewed together. This is because they only think about each picture one at a time. On the other hand, photographers keep consistency in mind when they shoot and edit. They usually achieve this through color tone, contrast, location…

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Keith Chen

Product manager @ Google.com, ex-Amazon; Adjunct professor @ MICA.edu and Chatham.edu; MBA from CMU.edu; Professional photographer. Language : 中文 / EN