Photography as a career

[Badger711]

Hello all,


I'm a sophomore in high school, so I'm looking at career options. Herping has always been a passion for me, so I've been looking at biology programs at colleges, but about a year ago I started getting into photography. I love it, especially nature and landscape photography. I figured this was a good place to ask any professional photographers (herp or otherwise), what should I be doing now to better my chances of succeeding as a photographer as an adult? Should I look into college photography programs? When should I start building a portfolio/What should be in it? Any and all advice is appreciated, thanks in advance!

[carlson]

If your serious about photo buy yourself a nice Dslr camera with lens and some books well lots of books talking about the different things that make a photo good and books of what other people do. You can take pics of anything making it look good and inspire an emotion in the viewer is the hard part. Talk to your college about programs not every college will offer more that a general photo class so make sure they offer it as a degree. I love black and white I used to have an old SLR and took pics everywhere until my apartment was robbed.

[Valentine Pirate]

Get involved and get your work out there (practice practice practice!). In my high school they had photography and digital photography courses as part of the art department and that teacher was a huge resource for me as far as improving my photography went. If your HS doesn't have anything like that I'd talk to any sort of resource you can find (HS art teacher, any professional photographers in the area, college arts department, etc). Read lots of books, take lots of pictures, enter contests, and don't be discouraged. I decided to move away from the arts as my education went on (it's another fun hobby for me ) but that should give you an idea of how you want to move forward with it. Digital photography was one of my favorite classes (and all I used was a dinky point n shoot digital camera)

[Badger711]

@Carlson I've got a DSLR, couple lens', flash, etc etc. I was asking more along the lines of education and employment opportunities.

@Valentine Thanks for the advice, much appreciated

[kitedemon]

I have been making a living as a pro for 20+ years. It is not easy especially now. Many seem to think that buying a pro camera makes them a pro and the next thing they are bidding on jobs at rates so low nobody can make a living. It is rough these days. Stock agencies also are not helping I bid a job for hotel room photos (landscapes of the region) It involved 3000 mils of driving and three weeks of work hotels and such. I bid in the range of 10000 all expenses in (about 3000$) and they ended up buying stock pictures at under 200$ Impossible to compete with. Shooting stock is fine (I don't want to compete with myself) but a average serious stock person makes 10000 a year it is hardly enough to live on that is producing lots of images.

It can be done it is just difficult.

Education I feel that a strictly technical education like a community college or trade school is useless. Lynda.com can teach you these things no need to spend serious bucks learning how to use photoshop or camera. I would look at an art school that has a photo program they will teach you how to 'see' far more valuable. taking business classes and trade classes on the side to 'fill out' the experience.

It comes down to do you have the eye and business sense to make it work?

[reptileexperts]

Found a local photographer and BEG for an internship. Get to learn the ins and outs of it carrer wise. Not talking about a walmart photo studio, I'm talking wedding photographers, field photographers (if you can find out - example Seth Patterson out of the Rio Grande here in Texas is an absolute amazing photograher and guy in general), or people who do on location portrait work.

Photography boils down to customers, you have to have a need for what you plan on shooting. If you dislike photographing people, it's going to be extremely difficult to make a career out of it, but not impossible. Camera equipment means nothing. It's all about having an eye for what makes a captivating image. Examples of what this means would be something like "Pro photog cheapo camera" challenge done by DigitalRevTV. They have a channel on youtube. Highly suggest watching and learning. Ignore the reviews they are just hype for products they sell, but they offer good advice from a chinese guy with a british accent, makes watching it enjoyable.

I was fortunate to get a lot of my work in a particular magazine put out mainly for the state of Texas, Fish and Game Magazine. But it was a case of having an image that they needed, and it went from there.

Sumup

1) Intern
2) Develop an eye based on customer need
3) Decide on a type of customer
4) profit?

[kitedemon]

All the above is very true. The only comment comes from my experiences with interns. Don't jump the gun! Being an intern can open a lot of doors and build a lot of valuable info and contacts. It can also close doors and make for a bad rep as well. Interns must be valuable and a useful addition that requires knowledge. If you don't have the necessary abilities to be useful to the photographer you are working with and slow him/ her down it may backfire.


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[MrLang]

Go to college for Bio and push the photography in the off time.


My girlfriend's parents are videographers/photographers and it is ROUGH in today's world. Keep your doors open and do the Bio thing. Plus, you can leverage the two together and land the dream job (wildlife photography).

GL and stay in school