What aspiring professional photographers should know

It’s been forty years now since I first held a cam­era in my hands and about thirty five years since I first con­sid­ered a career as a pho­tog­ra­pher. I wont bore you with the years since then just read my bio. Ear­lier this year I attended my first exposition/conference for Pro­fes­sional Pho­tog­ra­phers of Cal­i­for­nia. It was really the begin­ning of my under­stand­ing about being in the busi­ness of photography. 

I ran across an arti­cle by Nevada Wier through the blog Con­sci­en­tious that I think is very impor­tant. What most don’t know when they sign up for col­lege is they don’t teach you about the busi­ness aspect of being a pho­tog­ra­pher. When you get a BA in fine arts or what ever one chooses to pur­sue to become a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher there is no men­tion of mar­ket­ing, etc.  I don’t even think it is part of a MFA stud­ies. Thus the rel­e­vancy of the arti­cle. I am not try­ing to per­suade those who aspire to become a pro­fes­sional, the intent is that you acquire the skills in addi­tion to photography.

Last month I taught two work­shops, Cre­ativ­ity and Travel Pho­tog­ra­phy, for the Santa Fe Work­shops. I love teach­ing (and work­ing as a Men­tor also), although I don’t have time to teach more than two or three a year. I had two remark­able groups and they inspired me as much as, I hope, I inspired them. You can see their final shows here and here (week 2).

At the end of the first week one of the mem­bers of the class handed me a piece of paper with two ques­tions and asked if I would answer them. They were bril­liant, although I remem­ber fum­bling through the answers. How­ever yes­ter­day, just hours before I was leav­ing for a flight to Sri Lanka, I found the paper on my desk. Since the lug­gage was loaded in my car; I decided to think about my answers a bit more coher­ently. I got most of the way through them, then it was off to the air­port. Now I’m on the 15 hour flight from LA to Bangkok, (then to Colombo) and am fin­ish­ing the post.

What are 10 Things you wish you had known when you decided to become a pro­fes­sional travel pho­tog­ra­pher? Again, in no par­tic­u­lar order, but notice that most have to do with busi­ness: 

1. That pho­tog­ra­phy is 80% about busi­ness, not pho­tog­ra­phy. I really should have hung out with MBA stu­dents and not river guides and rock climbers (for poten­tial boyfriends).
2. Just about every­thing that had to do with pho­tog­ra­phy since I am self-taught—which means that the teacher knew very little.
3. It took me awhile to fig­ure out that it was use­less to try and pho­to­graph what I saw, since slide film can only ren­der about four stops of con­trast range, while my eyes could see about 16 stops. Really, I was just using real­ity to express my per­cep­tion of it.
4. That there is a dif­fer­ence between mar­ket­ing and busi­ness and you have to be great at both.
5. That many clients do not under­stand that pho­tog­ra­phers need to make a decent liv­ing also (espe­cially non-profit orga­ni­za­tions) and are always ask­ing for free images. And, that it was never a good idea to give into these requests with­out some kind of compensation.
6. That one should buy a house young to build up credit and equity. Invest in your­self but also in other ways.
7. Those credit cards are essen­tial, but evil.
8. That I should never have car­ried such heavy cam­eras bags or pack packs.
9. That com­put­ers would even­tu­ally rule my life (well, maybe it good that I didn’t know that actually)
10. That no mat­ter how rec­og­nized I would become in pho­tog­ra­phy, the phone would never ring on its own. I would have to hus­tle and rein­vent myself all the time.

Please read the arti­cle in it’s entirety via Nevada Wier

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