I used to do photography several years ago as a serious hobby. I had a website up and running for a while and actually managed to make quite a bit of money for well over 2 years. At a certain point in my life I lost all motivation to continue.
In April of '09, on my 19th birthday, I broke myself free of an abusive 3 and a half year relationship, which ended up giving me the strength and positivity to do anything and everything I wanted to. One of those things was to re-build my portfolio.
I began by getting into the same type of photography I was used to doing - band shots (performances and promotional), and modeling portraits. The other week I had the sudden urge to do some artistic self portraits with the snakes... I shot for about 15 minutes and wasn't too enthusiastic about the shots, so I turned off the camera, forgot about the pictures on the memory card and left for work.
The other day, I was uploading shots from my friend's birthday and stumbled upon the self portraits... they had turned out a lot better than I had expected. I fooled around in photoshop with a few of them and uploaded them to face book for some feedback.
Earlier today, I received a message from a local modeling/photography agency that wants to give me a job to privately contract for them as a photographer...
They mentioned the snake shots were the ones in particular that caught their attention. I'm pretty excited to be honest. The amount of money I would be making its beyond ideal and I obviously can't complain about that... I would be getting paid to do something that I enjoy and don't consider "working" by the definition. I just thought I would share this tidbit of information with you guys... who ever would have thought being part of a social networking site would gain you a job...

fyi: i will not post any of the pictures on the site for 2 reasons: the images are currently not watermarked, and the shots are of my bare back, which I'm sure some people would find a way to get offended by. if you wish, those of you with facebook accounts can send me a message for my information and catch a view on my profile