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tl;dr - hobbyist spends $50 on a flickr pro account, makes $100, and has spent $8000 on camera gear. He's had a great time. The camera gear is a sunk cost - he
by wisty 15y ago
tl;dr - hobbyist spends $50 on a flickr pro account, makes $100, and has spent $8000 on camera gear. He's had a great time.
The camera gear is a sunk cost - he's not buying it to make money. He's buying it because he loves taking photos, and wants good gear.
He's a good photographer. But photographers don't make money, unless they are being paid to be there (i.e. for a wedding, or by a news outlet). OK, you can try to sell photos after you took them, but the world is saturated in good photographs.
To make money, you need to create value then find a way to extract some of it. Or you need to con someone. There's few ways for a photographer to make money after creating the value, because there's likely to be so many alternatives to their photo.
- masklinn 15y ago> but the world is saturated in good photographs. I'm guessing it also depends on the kind of pictures you take, TFAA takes pictures of "human events", which you can expect many to save. Others (e.g. Myrmecos's Alex Wild) perform their craft in much more constrained and specialized environment, likely yielding much rarer pictures. Although even then, I'm not sure Myrmecos makes enough of his post-takes to live (I don't think I've ever seen a breakdown from him)
- Newgy 15y agoAlso scroll down to check out the photos on the bottom of the page, awesome!
- danso 15y agoThanks for the adroit summary...Since I've only done photography in the digital age, the idea that a photo alone is worth something seems strange to me. However, a photo produced during an assignment in which a photographer has to schlep a half-day to get is most definitely worth hundreds or thousands. Someone who cares about preserving the memory of their wedding will recognize the value of paying someone $3,000-$10,000 to capture it, over some uncle who just bought a massive DSLR system to toy with. Same with publications and important news events. In the latter case, the problem is that there are just far fewer wealthy publications that still exist.
- wisty 15y agoadroit - I like it. I usually get told "terse". Also, I should have told people that they really should click on the link, and scroll down to the sample pictures - they really are good.