Could Someone Tell Me......

[wisely_foolish]

eric s wrote:

tigerwings1st wrote:

Yes and it was intentional. What type of photography you do radically changes the answer. And starting out is hard. I didn't include my normal comment at the bottom which goes something like this:

Now, I said all of that to scare you. Doing photography for a living is not easy. But it is doable. So if you still want to do it, answer my questions and I can give more (directly) useful information.

NikonD50,
If you are really interested in wedding photography then you might approach companies that do it and see if you can't trade them your body for experience. They might be looking for interns (for little or no money) that can help them out in trade for learning how to do wedding photography. That is not an easy market, the pressure is hard... but the pay can be quite good if you do it well. Don't get me started on wedding photography (unless you really want to do it.) I have strong feelings about it.

Since you listed nature photography, I seriously suggest you look at http://www.naturephotographers.net and http://www.naturescapes.net. There are just amazing people over there that can be very helpful (at different times I've been active on both those forums.) I'd also suggest you find a copy of this book:

John Shaw's Business of Nature Photography: A Professional's Guide to Marketing and Managing a Successful Nature Photography Business
by John Shaw
[/b]http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081744050X/qid=1143654714/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-7012352-6549401?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
It is a bit old now, so some aspects are out dated (like dealing with digital submissions) but there is a wealth of information in it.

Have you thought about what type of nature photos you want to do? Landscape? Animals? Macro? You don't have to decide, but think about it.

How you plan on marketing it will effect what you shoot. If you want to sell posters one way to do it is to keep your shots local and sell to companies and in local fairs. People are more likely to buy something they connect to... and the best connection is if they have been there. If you lived in Vermont, there is a reason why covered bridges are so photographed. People love them. Selling a grand canyon image in Vermont is a bit harder because people have less of a connection to it. Will a great grand canyon image still sell? Yes. But I bet its easier to sell a "covered bridge in fall" shot.

If you want to sell images to magazines, get good at writing. They are more likely to buy it if you have an article to go with the pictures. Same with books. The writing is just as important.

Does that help?

Eric

Thank you for sharing your tips Eric, very insightful =) I am curious about your opinion of wedding photography however hehe:G

[eric s]

Glad you found the info helpful.

My opinion on wedding photography is (in a nutshell) don't do it.
It is much harder than it looks. And its hard in many ways.

- What you photograph (black tux + white dress in one photo is hard to get detail in both)
- Who you deal with (expectations are very high, even if they say otherwise.)
- It's a once-in-a-life-time event (in theory.) You get 1 shot at most of the images, and that is it.

And other ways that I'm not thinking of at the moment.

I gotta write up a web page about it on my site. People ask about doing wedding photography here on occasion and they really don't know what they are getting in to. You can loose friends forever if you mess it up.

Just search for "eric wedding" in the search engine and you'll probably find a good number of hits.

Eric