5 Reasons Why Not to Become a Professional Photographer



A lof of people consider becoming a professional photographer. So, there are are no shortage of tips and suggestions for making such a leap. However, here is a list of 5 reasons you shouldn't use as impetus for going pro.

1. You hate your job. 
Being in a job that is not fulfilling and challenging is its own unique level of misery. If Dante had ever worked in a cubicle, he would have likely added another circle of Hell to his epic poem. But being in a state of misery and loathing it is not often the best state of mind for making a life change. Making a living from something you love involves making thoughtful and informed choices that will change the rest of your life. Making an impulsive choice based on such strong feelings might not result in the best decision-making, particularly when all that thinking is negative. Though your unhappiness can serve as the inspiration to make a change, it's your well-considered plan which will eventually lead you to successfully improve your professional situation.

2. You Think You'll Have More Time to Shoot 
If you are struggling finding time to shoot with your current 9 to 5, you're going to find it even more difficult when you are working 24/7 to build and sustain your fledgeling photo business. With your current role, you are responsible only for one job (regardless of how frustrating or onerous you feel about it), but there are other people at the business that handle the rest of it including accounting, sales, inventory, receptionist. All those hats end up piled on your head, meaning that you have less time to do more work. If you find time  with the job you currently have to go out and shoot, especially personal projects, you'll likely not only be able to continue this practice when you go pro, but it will likely make your free time that much more enjoyable and gratifying.

3. You Think You're Going to Become Rich
There are easier ways to become wealthy than becoming a professional photographer. Some of these even involve choices where you don't break any laws and don't risk sharing a jail cell with a guy named, "Meat". Though making a living from doing something you love can be vey gratifying, the work involved from procuring the job, creating the images, delivering the work and getting the client to pay you makes you feel like you earned every penny. The only way to achieve long-lasting success is to think of yourself as a business. And though it seems antithetical to a creative life, it's the kind of thinking that allows you rise above the tens of thousands of camera slingers who hang a sign outside of their home office and call themselves a "pro" but who only succeed in working twice as hard, but making half as much.

4. You Want to be Your Own Boss
There are definite advantages to this including someone not calling you on extending your 15 minute bathroom break. But the reality of being your own boss is that you are likely going to be the worst boss you have ever had. Now, you can't hide your oversights or omissions or your mistakes. You are ultimately accountable for everything that happens or doesn't happen. Though doing the laundry might make your signficiant other happy, it could simply be used as a distraction from the work that you really need to be doing to grow your business. Yes, your clothes may be clean and well ironed, but that will mean very little if you don't have any clients to get dressed for. If you need the fire underneath your butt to makes things happen, remember you are going to be responsible for gathering the kindling and lighting the match.

5. You're More in Love with the Idea of Being a Pro than Actually Being One
Sometimes, an unfulfilled fantasy is more gratifying than a fantasy made real. A dream manifested can be a wonderful thing, especially when it is the fulfillment of a lot of hard work. But it's the hard work that will take up the bulk of your waking hours and unless you can find that work satisfying and gratifying, you are going to have a hard time sustaining yourself between the time when you get to do what you love, making images. It's easy to get fooled by the glamour especially today in the era of the celebrity photographer, but photography is still a job, which will demand the best of you most days. That's both good and bad news.

Making the choice to go pro is giant leap of faith but the best things of life happen when you take a risk. The greater the risk of failure, the more satisfying the feeling when you succeed.

Just know where you are starting from. It really helps to figure out where you're going.

Look for Pictures That Other People Don't Make

I was talking to a friend yesterday who mentioned something that he heard the photographer, Vincent Laforet said.

"Look for pictures that other people don't make."

It's a simple statement, but one that is full of insight.

I was thinking just along these lines when during this past weekend I had some students in my Digital SLR Bootcamp make pictures of a bandshell in the park where I teach the workshop. I encouraged them to not only make photographs from eye level, but to really play around and try different perspectives, focal lengths and compositions. I asked them not to settle for just one or two photographs, but to fully exhaust all the possibilities.

Some of the resulting photographs really surprised me. I saw in their  pictures perspectives and points of view that I had never seen myself, even though it's a location that I have visited countless numbers of times. In their photographs, these students were really revealing to me the limits of my own vision.

I know what makes a good photograph or at least I think I know most of the time. So, when I photograph a scene or a subject, it's easy to compose a shot thinking that this is the definitive interpretation of it. But is that really the only possibility?

I saw photographers taking risks, making choices that they were not sure would work or not, but still committing to making the photograph. Yes, there was a risk that the image might not work, but that didn't deter them from trying it out and seeing what could happen. They weren't editing themselves and judging the picture before they made it. Instead, they practiced photography and played and discovered what worked and what didn't and in several cases, revealed exciting and beautiful surprises.

Ask 10 photographers to photograph a car and likely 9 out of 10 of them will deliver just that. They will make a picture of a car. It results in a photograph that is nothing more than  a document. Then there is the one photographer who makes a photograph not of the car, but the qualities of the car that resonate with him or her. It could be the color, the shapes, the play off light off its surface. These photographers use the camera to create from not only what they see, but what they feel.

It's so easy to compose a photograph by following all the rules. Yes, it can produce a well-composed, well-exposed photograph, but it may not surprise me or anyone else. It may not make me feel anything. It won't reveal the world to me in a different way that's both exciting and liberating.

The best photographers do that and it begins when they make photographs that other people aren't making.

It's about photographing the world that expresses not only how I uniquely see it, but also which reveals my exploration of that world when I make non-traditional choices with the camera. When I am willing to take the risk and do something different, even though there is a possibility that it may not work, is whenI am really living in the spirit of what it means to be a photographer.

5 Reasons You Should Stop Buying More Camera Equipment



Undoubtedly, there is a bit of satisfaction on investing in a new bit of kit. The arrival of the FedEx van and the delivery of the anticipated box on the doorstep feels just like Christmas, except of course for the decorations, the excessive amount of food and a home invasion by a bearded fat man, who might find himself facing serious labor issues revolving around his use of elves and reindeer.  

It's a wonderful feeling though, taking out the exacto knife, cutting the tape and releasing a flow of Styrofoam packaging that seems to linger around the house months after their initial arrival. Are we sure those things aren't reproducing on contact with air, like some silent, furless tribble?

Such moments create the excitement over the potential of new creative opportunities. It creates a wonderful swell of emotion, which we can experience repeatedly. At least until, your bank account is overdrawn or the credit card has melted from overuse. But before you get there, there might be other signs that may offer fair warning before you end up at a freeway off-ramp with a sign reading, "Will retouch images for food". 

1. You have run out of space for all the original packaging material. 
The justification of course is to retain the resale value, when something newer and shinier is calling you like the Greek sirens. But now they've displaced the clothes in the closet, which lay piled in a heap on the lounge chair. Now, the only way to discern which clothes are clean or not is the sniff test, which your significant other keeps insisting is not that reliable. 

2. Your spine has gone out of alignment because of the weight of the camera bag. 
That exhalation of air that you release each time you pick up the bag may be an indication of weight being an issue. The additional thirty pounds that I carry around my waistline is at least well distributed, but the same might not be said for the bag or backpack that carries equipment that you never end up using. What might have looked like a cool walk in your twenties now looks like the initial signs of hip displacement. 

3. Your most passionate creative effort is measuring MTF curves photographing brick walls.
Knowing that we got what we paid for is important, especially when it comes to the sharpness and the resolution quality of lenses. However, things may have been gone too far, when you are making critical assessments such as whether the style of the brick wall is American or English Bond and if the gaps between bricks each measure 3/8 inches. The fact you are using GPS data and Google maps to locate the "perfect" wall is verging on the obsessive and is certainly making your neighbors very nervous. 

4. You become depressed and angry when the manufacturer releases a new version.
It feels like a betrayal like in grade school when little Debra Martinez gave Phillip Taylor the biggest cut of chocolate cake and which you were sure Debra was going to give you because you let her cheat off your test after she promised you were going to be her new best friend and you believed her because she was so pretty and you already liked her and... Well, it was wrong then and it's wrong now. Damn her. 

5.  You own camera bags that never carry camera equipment. 
They are there in the closet, in the garage, piled in a heap beneath the desk, camera bags that held the promise of perfection: the ideal shape, support strap, compartment size. They seemed ideal, the best and final solution, a bag to rule them all. Now, they are empty as their promise. It doesn't work now, because...there's this new lens


This is Why Your Pictures Suck.



Dear Charlie,

You've asked me in evaluating your work to be brutally honest. Admittedly, it's something that other photographers have asked for, but I've always been reticent about honestly fulfilling such a request. I have often perceived it as the equivalent of a wife or girlfriend asking, "Do I look fat in this?" A frank, honest answer to that question is likely not going to end well.

However, you have been insistent about receiving such concise, unrestrained and to-the-point-feedback. So, I feel inspired to share with you why your pictures suck.

1. You're Lazy
Admittedly, you talk a good game. You talk much and well about your passion for photography, deftly demonstrating both your technical knowledge and proudly showing off your latest bit of kit. You  know a good amount of photographic history and you are very insightful with your comments about the craft.

But Charlie, when was the last time you actually went out and made a significant body of work for yourself? I'm not talking about that  job you did for pay, or the workshop you attended or that photo walk where you spotted that cute brunette with the Leica M9. No,  when did you last go out and commit to producing  images that truly challenged you; images that the mere thought of creating them got you excited about getting up in the morning?

I  can tell it's been a long time, because you seem to have put more effort into uploading images to Instagram, Facebook and Google Plus, obsessively returning to those posts to check to see how many people provided you a virtual pat on the head. "Great capture". Really?

2. You're Preoccupied with Gear
I get it. There's obviously something primal in both us when it comes to new kit. I have shared that same rush of endorphins on taking a deep whiff of styrofoam peanuts when opening a freshly delivered FedEx package.

But honestly, how often have you used it since you got it? Yes, the unpacking video you posted on YouTube was wonderful. (My wife, by the way, likes the new haircut). But besides that first weekend burst of temporary inspiration, what you have done with it? What have you created that you truly are proud of? And no, fondling it and firing dry frames doesn't count. It seems like you've spent more hours  reading blog posts, forums  and watching videos about the gear than actually shooting with it. And what's this thing with you reading reviews after you already made the purchase? Aren't your images enough to discern whether you made the right choice or not?

3. You're Sloppy
It seems like you think that "good technique" is a filter in Photoshop. And if you defined a good photographer by how fast they can fill a 32GB CF card, you might be in the running to be one of the greats, but it's hard to see anything in your final result that warrants even the battery being charged.

You seem to be completely absent when you press that shutter release, taking no ownership of what you include in the frame. Yes, the bokeh is scrumptious and creamy, but this is supposed to be a photograph not bloody creme brulee.

Whatever happened to good composition? Good light? Good taste?

And no, I don't care that there is virtually no noise at ISO 128,000, the images are still devoid of anything that would even qualify it as a snapshot.

4. Photoshopping is not Photographing
Yes, Photoshop is an important and invaluable tool. We couldn't do much of what we do without it, or its equivalent. But how long do you actually have to sit at the computer, weaving that Wacom stylus like an orchestra leader, before you admit that most of that energy is being expended on putting lipstick on a pig?

Yes, those plug-ins and actions are awesome and that compositing technique you learned from Matt Koslowski is pure genius, but I'm sorry to tell you that there is no there, there. I could wash, wax and detail that AMC Hornet I drove in college as dutifully and passionately as humanly possible, but in the end, it would still be an AMC Hornet. Those are the facts.

What ever happened to your passion for making a single good, exemplary photograph in the camera? When did everything become fodder for over-saturation, over-sharpening, over-everything?

5. You Refuse to Edit Your Own Work
Though you are asking for my feedback, you must not think much of me. If you did, why else would you inundate me a batch of good, bad and near-misses? When did it become my job to figure out what you are trying to do as a photographer?

What am I supposed t make of this mish-mash of portraits, landscapes, close-ups, abstracts and those picture of your cat (which, okay I'll admit is just adorable)? I have a hard enough time trying to edit and assess my own work, much less yours. I just needed to see 10-12 images I wasn't expecting the entire photographic catalog of the International Center of Photography. If I wanted this kind of punishment, I could just put on a pair of headphones and listen to Debbie Boone singing 'You Light Up My Life" on a continuous loop for 24 hours.

If you can't sit down and decide which of your photographs captures who you are and aspire to be as a photographer, how do you expect me to? I am challenged in just finding a pair of matching socks in the morning.

I could say more, but I think I should show a little restraint.

I know you love photography as much as I do. You couldn't spend as much time and effort, subject yourself to the occasional ego-bruising, if you weren't as in love as you obviously are with making photographs. But the reality is that becoming a good photographer, hell becoming a good anything, involves commitment, diligence and the willingness to regularly fall on one's face. You obviously have some of that in you, because you are still around making images, when everyone else has taken up golf or knitting.

I hope that what I shared is helpful to you, but if it wasn't,  I completely understand.

There's always Flickr.