Getting Serious

This semester I am taking a class called, "Photo Operations." Essentially, it is a business class geared toward those who would like to eventually be self-employed. The nice thing about this particular class is that it talks specifically about starting your own photography business. I'm sure it's good advice for anyone wanting to strike out on their own, but I like that it deals with exactly what I am up against.

Since the class is just starting I can't tell you all the invaluable things I have learned just yet. But I can say that one of the things addressed at the very first class was, as I'm going to call it, "getting out there."

The teacher asked, assuming that we are all taking the class with hopes of starting our own phototography businesses, what we have done so far that would put us on that track. Do we have a website? Business cards? Where have we shown our work? Who have we told and how did we do it? What is our focus? What was discovered is that a lot of us love photography - no doubt about it. But we tend to take pictures of whatever interests us at the time, develop/proof them, and then put them away, never to be seen again. Prints get put into archival boxes and stored. Digital negatives get archived onto a cd and stored. How is this helping us at all?

So, my goal has been to ramp up what I have been doing. If I like a print I've done, I'm going to have it printed and put it up at home. I am going to friend's parties and lugging my camera along, posting the images on flickr and getting the word out about what I do and how I do it. I'm soliciting friends to "sit" for me, helping me build my portfolio and my confidence in exchange for some family portraits. I finally got a website up. Next up is business cards.

The focus in the class is that in 1-3 years, we should be making money at this. I'm shooting for a year. I'm already ahead of a lot of the people in my class, as far as getting this off the ground. I have a focus. I'm doing some self-promotion. And I have people interested in my service. It's a good start, if you ask me.

A few requests/solicitations have resulted in small photoshoots. As they start to trickle in, I'll showcase them on the blog. If you're interested in checking out what I do, how I do it, and what the end result may be, stay tuned.