Jeff, Photography is a tough business to try and make a living at. If you try and specialize at something like archery photography, you are really shooting yourself in the foot as the market will be extremely limited. Even wildlife photography is tough, particularly as there are a million hacks with cameras taking the same pictures of the same buffalo in Yellowstone and trying to submit them all to the same publications. So even if your image is technically perfect, it is one in a sea of technically perfect images that all look alike. That isn't meant to discourage you from trying, but know what you are up against.
If you want to see if your are up to the grade, then do a photoessay project. First pick a subject that you know something about and enjoy thinking about (archery is an obvious choice here for you). Then sit down and plan out exactly what it is you want to convey in your photoessay. Write out a script of images that tells the story you want to tell. Go through every image idea and plan it down to the last detail: subject, lighting, shooting angle, effects, what conditions you will be shooting in (like rain, sun, shooting from waist deep in a river, whatever), etc. Spend a lot of time in the planning stage so you know every detail of every image before you ever load up your cameras.
Then when you are to the point of shooting, make sure you bracket the bejesus out of things. Dont skimp on film, because if you have to reshoot it is a lot more costly and a lot more effort than getting it right the first time. Even though you planned everything out to the smallest detail, stay open to ideas that occur during the shoot. Some of your best images will turn out to be the spontaneous ones.
Once you get your film shot and processed you come to the most critical, and the most difficult, part of the project: editing. You have to be ruthless. Look at every frame that you shoot and decide whether it is good or bad. No in between. Look for the things that are wrong in each image, not what is right about it. You can say something good about just about any image, but you edit by throwing things out. So be ruthless and get rid of anything that isn't technically perfect, isn't aesthetically perfect, anything that doesn't speak to exactly what you wanted that image to say in your initial planning stages. Once you have edited the individual images, edit them as a group within the context of the script that you prepared in your planning stages. Again, be ruthless. It is no shame to drop an image from an essay. A few powerful images will convey much more than a large muddled collection. Make it as tight and as concise as you possibly can. If you are even wondering a little bit as to whether to keep an image, throw it out.
Once you have finished editing, and you are sure that your photoessay approaches the initial idea you had to start with, it is time to let it loose into the world to live or die on it's own merits. Try to get a showing at a local gallery, or in the display case of an office building, or wherever. If there is a camera club close to Oakley (there may be one in Twin, I dont know), they often organize showings in offices, museums, etc. The point is to get it out and get some feed back.
Then when it is all done, set it aside and do it again. Making a living at photography is all about volume. You have to have a lot of images available to sell if you expect to make money. The successful stock photographers that I have known all shoot tens of thousands of images a year and have stock collections numbering in the hundreds of thousands. For every image that earns you a check, there will be numerous ones in your collection that are just as good, and just as valid, but just havent found a buyer yet. Also, be willing to do weddings, school pictures, children's portraits, or whatever. Those mundane and artistically boring jobs add up to a lot of money that keeps the rent paid and the electricity on while you work on the images you really want to be taking.
Good luck. It's a tough business, but a fun one. Just make sure you approach it as a business, even if that dilutes the fun out of it somewhat.
-Fritz
PS, for the record, photography is not my job. I twiddle with chromosomes and pathogenic microorganisms to pay the bills and play with film and smelly chemicals for fun. So take my advice for what it is, and remember that free advice is usually worth what you paid for it.
Topic: An Archer and a Photographer (Read 1892 times)
