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Photography
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in Work & Study
Anybody here take snaps for a living, or have any knowledge of it? Any clues how you might get started?
I'm trying to assess how viable it is as a career option at the moment. I'm not bothered about earning megabucks, just enough. The thing I want most is to wake up in the morning and not have the following emotion when I realise it's a work day: :crying:
I'm trying to assess how viable it is as a career option at the moment. I'm not bothered about earning megabucks, just enough. The thing I want most is to wake up in the morning and not have the following emotion when I realise it's a work day: :crying:
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Aye, that was my first thought, but the local college isn't running the course this term because of a lack of interest :grump: and the ones in Leeds etc all seem to be full for the forseeable. Most frustrating.
But dont' let that necessarily put you off - but i wouldnt' go into it thinking your going to end up doing glamourus things all the time
That's exactly the kind of thing I want to do! Glamour scares me
I wouldn't be 100% sure.
My brother did lots of photography and never did weddings and the like, he put his photos with an agency, who are then approached by people looking for a particular photograph and the agency took a cut and he got royalties. It wasn't a constant earner but if you have enough photos you can end up with relatively big paychecks, some months it would be 4 figures.
He waived his fee for some photos used on posters after 9/11 of the twin towers - said he regretted it in some ways afterwards because the posters were put literally everywhere and he would have got megabucks.
But yea, he didn't tend to have photos of an artistic garden pot, but the eiffel tower, pyramids, etc. - and it was just a kind of 'hardcore pastime' for him rather than his day job.
If you're interested in going pro, I'd suggest first off get yourself a domain and some hosting space and get a simple gallery up. Fill it with the sort of shots you want to take. That by itself won't do anything, but it's a place to direct people to if they want to see some of your existing work.
I'd also suggest getting involved in online photog forums and the like. www.dpchallenge.com have a fairly active one (US centric and mainly just talking about the challenges on the web site but also useful for snippets.)
http://www.thesite.org/chooseaction/virtualvolunteering/searches?searchType=locations&id=889289
/spammage
I havent uploaded any in a while actually, will have to get some more up soon for you.
Fundamentally this'll mean, and to be fair I'm now using your thread as a to do list Kaffrin (sorry...) -
* Encouraging volunteers to photograph friends in a variety of emotional states (staged of course, don't actually want you to depress your mates
* The collection of the url's of any portfolios/flickr accounts/facebook albums volunteers wanted their name linked to.
* The creation of a recognition page in the About Us section naming all the volunteers and providing links to their own work if wanted.
* The photo account being introduced to the whole Digitial Interactive Services Operational team (that's editorial, community and new projects) to show them how to search for images they can use.
* The introduction of authour fields for the large images used on sub-sub homepages (such as http://www.thesite.org.uk/healthandwellbeing/generalhealth ) - so that a 'Image provided by James Taylor' can be added for images of trains in the winter
* The long process of spending a few hours a week tagging images to make searching them easier.
* Reviewing recruitment to boost the numbers
* The creation of a monthly update to all the photographers to highlight where images have been used and encourage more to be taken - as well as asking for specific images to meet the needs of new sections or developments on the website.
But mostly waiting on the lawyers at the moment man
Done
Shocked by your use of my thread though!
You cheeky git
If you want anyone to help you out with tagging and stuff then give me a shout.
Sorry again
You better mean that as well you cunt!
(PS: Sorry Kaff for using your thread to verbally abuse Jim
There are loads of course advertised in the back of photography mags, but I'm not sure how worthwhile they'd be.
Weddings? photos for catalogues like Argos or something? I always fancied food photography, like for packaging. that looks like fun.
I also looking into Venture, but you need a degree in photography and then they send you to "venture school" to teach you how to do it their way. If you are interested in that kind of photography you could contact photography firms, off the top of my head there is that one called Dorchester Ledbetter in Leeds on North Street but I'm sure there are plenty more
I'd love to just go back to uni and study it full time, but not really feasible financially. I did a few modules on photography and visual comms for my degree, but even I can't creative write that into any real qualification!
Have you looked for adverts for places? I'd really like to do photography as a career but I think it's even less feasible for me than it is for you
I don't think it'll ever be a career, but certainly something I can do on my days off to earn some extra money.
I've just taken a few publicity shots for our local bobbies for use on the website as well, although I won't get paid for them and they're hardly pro status, it's all practice. I've got a couple of mates at work who are into it, one of them has started doing weddings so he's gonna let me apprentice for him to build up a portfolio.
You may book me whenever you wish!
And If I find a talent I will help you thesite!!