How To Get Into The Photo Business (Part 1)
After my previous writeup on “Knowing Your Value”… http://novophotography.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/know-your-value-pricing/ I received a number of emails and questions about getting into the business. The questions I heard were a mixture of “What does it take to get started?” and “What can I expect to be different?” So I’ll cover those two questions. I know for my readers who just like to come here and look at photos this is now my second post in a row with no images, but no worries, my next post will return back to the images 
So what does it take to get started in the photography business? Sometimes I’m not sure of the answer myself. In reality I’m still in the process of getting started myself with constant changes from month to month. There are a lot more season photographers out there who have made it and reading their stories is sort of like a dream come true. My story is presented as a work in progress.
So let’s look at education. Of course you, me, and everyone else needs some sort of education to get going. There is no “eye” for photography, let me clear that up first. You can read more on that topic here: http://novophotography.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/know-your-value-pricing/ No matter your thoughts or devotion to the hobby of photography, it doesn’t automatically give you the ability to capture good photos. Speaking of good photos, that’s a subjective topic that I’ll be covering later on to explain why it’s not as subjective as many think.
For education you have two basic choices. Classical training or self-taught. The classical approach is what photographers did most often back in the days of film. You would take courses, graduate, study further under an established photographer and take some of the tips and techniques they would pass down to you while adding your own flavor and then hopefully opening your own studio or heading off on your career path in the business. Going through all those years of classical training would allow you to “make your bones” and the assumption would be that you were a photographer who had a pretty good understanding of what they were doing. Granted there were a number of photographers who took the self-taught approach in the film days, it was still not like today where you can go on the web, learn a few settings and then set off to doing photos. Because film had to be processed in some sort of darkroom, the commitment, workload, and cost were much higher factors than they are today in the digital world where you pay pennies for each megabyte of space and then have the ability to reuse it.
Now that we are in a digital era, you don’t have to go off to school to get started and self-taught photographers like myself are a lot more common. Now the term “self-taught” can have much greater variables in the meaning. You can have someone who simply points a camera and starts clicking away and then adjusts and learns from there. Or you can go through a number of online tutorials and get online critiques of your images. Or go even further and do a number workshops which begins approaching the classical style. The self-taught photogs are more common today on the lower end of the business scale. Don’t get me wrong, you have a number of amazing photographers who have taught themselves on both film and digital, but the big difference is that the results that you as the client might get are more varied. What I mean by this is that even if you see an online portfolio from a photographer, that could be the best of the best that they’ve done and your results may not be up to the level that you saw online. There have actually been a few clients who have come to me after hiring other local photographers and getting less than desired results where I end up re-shooting them. The term “you get what you pay for” is often a good initial indicator and I’ve heard of quite a few folks saving up front, who ended up spending more in the long term.
So let’s talk more about the options you have for being self-taught.
Books: There are almost too many to list. One of my favorites for learning the basics is called “Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson, but there are plenty of great authors out there. David Ziser, Joe McNally, and lot’s of others out there to learn from. The one disadvantage to the books is that if they incorporate talk about the technology of cameras, they can become outdated on that topic. Your lighting equations, composition, and other techniques don’t go out of style or change very often.
Online Tutorials: While I have never really relied on these, the one thing I personally use them for is when I specifically know what I want to see such as “How to lighten eyes in Photoshop” or something specific like that. There are too many tutorials for me to usually skim around and watch in search of a good one. Most are low quality and not something I would recommend.
Professional Videos: These are for sure a step up from most online tutorials. You can often find a photographer that you look up to and get their DVD. The studio setting and video quality along with the information is usually better than the free tutorials however you most often have to pay for them.
Magazines: This is one of my favorites because I can read a magazine just about anywhere. I can see images from a photographer and read an interview with them to see what their inspiration is behind a shoot or a photo. You do need to take a trip to the book store or read online reviews to decipher which publications are worth reading because there are a lot of them out there which have more ads than relevant information.
Workshops: The most expensive option usually but often the best hands-on education. There are workshops that cover everything from doing portraits, to commercial photography, and others that even cover how to run a photo business. Sky is the limit. Your best bet is to ask the pro photographers that you look up to. Many teach their own workshops and some are willing to work with you or mentor even if they don’t formally teach. On average a workshop can cost between $200-$300 per day and they range from being just one day (or less) to being destination workshops that can go for several days or even a couple weeks!
Online Forums: Many new photographers turn here only to be disappointed. This is not the best place for information because when you’re new it’s hard to tell the good info from the bad. That’s assuming you get a response at all. The online forums can also be a pretty negative place offering little constructive criticism and simply giving bad feedback. I use online forums in very limited quantities and try to cipher out the good info from the bad.
So now that we’ve gone over the ways to get your education, now how do you break into the business? We’ll cover that in Part 2 which I’ll have posted tomorrow!!
