O.K, so I’m only 15, but I like photography and would like to peruse it as a career someday. I have a decent digital camera, It’s a 5mp camera with a 4x optical zoom and a pretty decent lens. It’s just a point a shoot, but I didn’t have $700 to spend on an slr. I’ve read a book that taught me about aperture and iso and stuff. Anyway, can photography be a potential career? What could I do, if it made decent money I would like shooting weddings and events and stuff (I like candid photography best) but am willing to explore other options. Know, since I’m only 15 I know I wont be making any money for awhile but what can I do now to prepare for later? I mean like practising my photography. Oh yeah, I am decent at editing my photos and have Paint Shop Pro. So, yeah, what can I do know and what should I do later?
P.S
You don’t have to tell me that your not going to be able to do photography full time starting out, I know that photography would have to be a side job.
I started my commercia photography Business over 40 years ago. I have managed to make a fairly good living out of it over the years and enjoyed all the nice benefits of being self employed. You can also do this and I have a few tips for you to get started.
It sounds to me like you are interested and have a not very flexible, but decent picture taking camera. If you don’t already have one, your next step should be a decent quality color ink jet printer (the HP series printers that use the 02 series ink cartridges will make nice color prints and can be had at a fairly resaonable cost).
Take a ton of pictures. Be very criticle of your work and start to print up a portfolio of only your best photos. Show your portfolio to anyone who seems interested in seeing it.
Enter every amateur photo contest you can find and don’t be disapointed if you don’t win them all, just keep trying.
At age 15, I assume you are probably in High School. Get on you yearbook photo staff and School Newspaper staff if you can, and work hard at it. Take any technical photography courses or classes you can find. Stay away from most artsy courses as those courses are nice but will never prepare you to make an actual living in photography. Do not take courses that are not primarily devoted to digital photography. Film photography is now basicly obsolite and all photography will soon be digital.
Don’t waste your time with college courses in photography. The few college educated photographers I have hired have to be totally retrained to be able to cope with customer needs and income producing time schedules.
Take any income producing opportunities that come yoiur way. Do weddings for your friends, models composits, portrates, babys, etc. if they are offered to you and do not work for free. Caution though… do not do anything you don’t feel you can do well. If you take photos for money and they do not represent your best efforts, your failures will come back to haunt you. If you are not confident in taking the needed picthres, don’t take the job. No one will fault you for saying that you can’t do this job, but if you try and fail at a job, people will remember.
Hope these tips will help you to get started. Good luck to you. If you can become a successful photographer, you cay make a nice living diong it and be happy in a profession you love.
d5canon
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