Who's Day Job is Photography?

[Colin Corneau]

FT job shooting for a small/midsize daily - digital helps pay for my LF work!

[Robbie Shymanski]

Lately, day job, yes. Income, totally in the red. But, I am a still a grad student. I will make the most of these last six months.

[C. D. Keth]

Kind of. My day job is motion picture photography. Lately it's been more as a camera assistant than anything, but I'm working on pushing my career toward being a cinematographer more.

[Daniel_Buck]

mine isn't photography per say, (my title is "Digital 3d/2d Artist" I believe) but I do alot of photography along with my job on the computer. Capturing lighting data (HDR domes/pantiles/flats) while on location or on set, 360 environments, textures, and images used for background plates in CG and photogrammetry.

[Ron McElroy]

With the exception of getting to do some archive printing for the local library early in my career, I've never figured out how to make money with photography.
My career path took twists and turns starting out in graphic design and moving into printing prepress. When the company I work for started a digital studio in the mid 90s I wanted to transfer to the studio, however I could not work with the prick that sold the idea to the company owners.
I keep my work personal.

[Ben Chase]

I don't do it full time, but sometimes find myself wishing that I could. I wonder though - would I enjoy it less if I was relying on it as a source of income rather than a personal passion?

That said, I do sell prints from time to time throughout the year, but no magazine work yet, stock, or whatnot.

[Gene McCluney]

I am a full-time commercial photographer. I have had a studio for over 30 years.

[Duane Polcou]

Full time producing anything media oriented with fitness/glamour/swimsuit models.
Advertising, magazines, zed cards, headshots, DVD box art, posters, calendars, book covers, web content, etc.
If I could fit on my license plate "Take off your top. Cut me a check" I would.

[Martin Miksch]

countryside commercial here, from cow to bride and passport, beside this 3D CG, webdesign etc.
Regards
Martin

[Gary J. McCutcheon]

I've been a full time photographer for nearly forty years now. I am having my 30th anniversary year at my studio this year and am in the same situation as many of you. How do I market my work? I have a masters degree (fine art) and sell a few of my(fine art) prints occasionally at the studio, but other than that, I have no representation.

My studio produces portraits, wedding, and commercial photography with copy and restoration work and occassional fine artists reqesting photos of there work. I find that many of my fine art clients (buying my personal work) are other photographers and artists
and once in a while portrait clients. The studio has been good to me over the years and I have been fortunate enough not to have to market too much, an occassional mailing.

Now I am finding the competion is skyrocketing. My little town used to have 3 or 4 yellow page ads for photographers. Now it seems to be 3 or 4 pages of photographers and probably double that many not advertising and shooting just on weekends for fun and profit.

My older steady clients are literally dying off ( I'm going to one funeral tomorrow), and much of the word of mouth seems to be dwindling too. So, marketing here I come. It's like a whole new career. Market 50% of the time, photograph 40%. I guess the rest is taking out the garbage and paying bills. The scary part of all this is that my suppliers are going out of business, two recently, and in the last five years 2/3rds of the labs have closed in this area.

I have to look at it this way. I'm going to learn a lot about marketing now for my business and apply that into marketing for over 40 years of fine art work also. Most of the professional seminars I've attended in the last bit of time are emphasizing marketing. The problem I see with that is that there are a lot of untrained photographers (marketing themselves as professionals) that are marketing like crazy putting out some really horrible work and are able to do it because they can pick up a digital camera, set it on autopilot and shoot like crazy and come up with a few shots that are "good enough". You can buy a a very nice fountain pen, that doesn't make you a writer. A good dictionary doesn't a poet make. The good photographers that market well I have no problem with, but there are so many moonlighters now. The good clients see the difference, but many of the younger crowd just go cheap and quick.

So the world of the professional studio is changing in large part due to the digital world, like it or not. But where is the artistry, the lighting, technique, composition, the ability to see photographically, perception (which only comes with experience)?
When I attend professional photography conventions the emphasis is so much scewed to marketing whereas it used to be to technique and artistry. We need both, but I think the things have swung too far the other way. The photographers must be trained in their craft first and then apply the marketing tools. It's sad to see poor work being marketed for business sake without the initial training in photography.

Well, that is much more than I had expected to relate to you fellow photographers. This is a great forum and I feel like you are kindred spirits here. I don't want to start a whole new thing, but maybe those of you with similar experience would like to chime in.
Kirk?