Finding my way

Hi all,

I'm fairly new to photography... my interest in it first started about 3 years ago after my daughter was born. In the time since then I've learned quite a bit and a deep love of photography has grown. I feel very strongly now that I want to immerse myself in a life of photography and turn it into a career.

I'm still in the process of figuring out exactly what I want to do. I like travel, landscape, cityscape, architecture and possibly photojournalism or portraiture. I could see myself doing any combination of those things really - but I don't know yet how to make enough money from it to support my family. We live simply, and don't need much really - but I can't just quit my current job outright to focus on photography without having some income from it. Luckily, my wife is very supportive in all of this.

So, any advice on how I can transition into life as a full time photographer would be very helpful.

I recently set up an online gallery/blog at pixpeep.com, so you can see some of what I've done so far - I'll be adding more in the next few days.

Anyways, I've enjoyed reading some of the threads here and seeing your work.

I'm glad that I can post now. Thanks for letting me share!

Career in photography

Welcome to OPF, you'll find lots of good advice from some really fine photographers and friendly folks here.

The biggest single challenge to making a living in photography is business. A professional photographer must be a business person, capable of dealing with finances, scheduling, marketing and promotion, public relations, and many other facets of running a business. And that doesn't count the photography part.

There are lots of ways to start to build a career in photography; you can look for opportunities to assist established photographers; you might sell prints of your current work at art fairs, or....

There is lots more to making a living in photography than taking pictures, in fact I've heard it said that photography is the least of it.

My $0.02 worth (why I don't quit my day job)

Jim,

You seem to have a natural talent for kids' pictures, so that's something I'd book for the weekends! Losts of kids being born! The rest go into your portfolio (with releases) for stock or otherwise.

Asher

Charles L Webster said:

The biggest single challenge to making a living in photography is business. A professional photographer must be a business person, capable of dealing with finances, scheduling, marketing and promotion, public relations, and many other facets of running a business. And that doesn't count the photography part.

There are lots of ways to start to build a career in photography; you can look for opportunities to assist established photographers; you might sell prints of your current work at art fairs, or....

There is lots more to making a living in photography than taking pictures, in fact I've heard it said that photography is the least of it.

My $0.02 worth (why I don't quit my day job)

Click to expand...

*nod* I understand that completely - and I certainly won't be quitting my day job anytime soon. I just know that someday I want to be my own boss, and I want to do something photography related. I definitely have a lot to learn - both in photography and in business.

Asher's suggestion of doing children photography on the weekends is interesting. I had thought of that before - but decided against it because I don't want my entire photographic career to be child/family photography. Now that I think of it again though - it could be a good start and an excuse to learn some new things while I figure out what else I want to do.

I'm looking around now at some lighting stuff and trying to figure out what I'd need (I may just go the Strobist route to start). I don't have room for a real studio - but I generally prefer outdoor shots anyways... or photos of people in their own environment (home/work). I have some friends and neighbors who I'm sure would be willing subjects while I'm getting started.

In fact, here's a friend's daughter from about a year ago... one of my favorite photos, despite the fact that she looks a bit bewildered:

This is a very interesting image.
IMHO it needs to be cropped to emphasis her violent glance…