Until lately, shooting weddings, family & senior portraits, and the odd product, paid the bills & supported my LF habit. It's gettin' tougher, but photography is my only marketable skill.....
Until lately, shooting weddings, family & senior portraits, and the odd product, paid the bills & supported my LF habit. It's gettin' tougher, but photography is my only marketable skill.....
Full time job.
Full time gig, though LF (or any analog shooting, for that matter) doesn't comprise much of the paying work. Here and there, clients want some B&W and every once in a while I sneak in a LF environmental portrait. I'm just getting into fine art sales, but am viewing that as chiefly a promotional tool at this point.
Commercial, product, and editorial portraits are paying the bills right now.
Brett Simison
http://www.brettsimison.com/
Rob--were you asking me about how well my position pays?
I don't think I'm typical. I work for a large volume oriented company based in New York with numerous clients across the country. The other photographer I work with joined the company at a time when the prior photographers were making a mockery of product photography. He negotiated a fairly high salary and a sweet work week for himself. When I came on, I didn't get quite so sweet a deal, but better than I might have if the company's experience was that talented photographers were a dime a dozen. The company can both keep two photographers humming and afford to pay us. To make what I make now as a freelancer, I'd have to bill double my current salary at a minimum plus make room in the budget for insurance, marketing and other expenses--not to mention a higher tax burden (no company to pay half my SS tax). At the end of the day, I'm still making about half what my fiancee makes as an I.A. at an information technology consulting company. My hours are better, though. And I get all the Jewish holidays off. You'll forgive me if I defer from giving my salary straight up.
If anyone is interested, I've heard that Plow and Hearth is looking for an in house catalogue photographer.
That's a good point. I'll have to shoot wide people, or have skinny people lay down.
-rob
For 28 years I've been a full time lawyer. Five years ago I got tired of the direction the profession was going and got out of litigation. I'm now what the Brits would call a solicitor, rather than (in my former life) a barrister.
About 10 years ago my wife and I started a part time business, doing weddings and events. That lasted until we realized we were getting older and wanted our weekend time together more than we wanted more income.
LF has been the saving of my soul. I shoot landscapes and some portraiture, and every time I go out I run across somebody who can't believe that "cameras are THAT big" and "they still make FILM???" and who wants to know "what kind of batteries does it use?"
And as the light of a winter's day fades, and I wait for the moment with my no-autofocus, no-batteries, no-rangefinder, no-digits big black box, I experience a little bit of the peace I've sought all my life.
Good shooting to us all.
David
Last edited by David Beal; 17-Nov-2010 at 11:18. Reason: Typo
David Beal
Memories Preserved Photography, LLC
"Making tomorrow's memories by
capturing today's happiness" (R)
I realize this thread is about making money as a professional using a large format. And I don't want to hijack the thread. It's tough to make money using a LF if you plan to do portraits or art.
But if you take out the pressure of making money with the big camera, I believe it's the most rewarding "shooting experience" in all of photography.
I make my living in other areas of photography and that means a DSLR.... and I'm thinking about photography constantly.... but it's the LF that really turns the crank.
-rob
PS. Michael.... I was unclear in my post regarding how much money the job paid..... I wanted to know how much having a "Monkey and Grinder" would pay. LOL
I've made my living from photography for 30 years, for better or worse. There were other suggestions and options, but I stayed with the path out of a belief in and fascination with the power of imagery. I, like most old pro's, can remember the first image I saw coming up in the fixer. Living away from an urban center, survival has required flexibility with periods of of studio work then location, portraiture then table tops (wine bottles, being in the wine country). Lots of preschool portraits lately, a far cry from contemplative work behind a view camera. I do have work in a local gallery that's LF produced and have been represented in some good galleries in other states.
Its less clear to me now, but I always felt that if I took another job and tried to keep up with the shooting, it would lose something. That most of the good work I saw came from people who were fully invested, and not part timers. While it may have been true for me, its also true that I've seen great work from some pretty casual shooters, so whatever.
Still, I would argue that its beneficial to have some pressure when it comes to producing work. Maybe its just a show at the local library, or one print in a group show somewhere. I've always found those experiences to be instructive in surprising levels. Finding out what people think, or whether it will sell, is part of the communication process, in a sense. Putting it out there, if you will, and not just in front of like-minded enthusiasts.
JY
John Youngblood
www.jyoungblood.com
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