Does it ever get in the way, ours has been very busy and crazy lately. I’ve been so busy with the real estate photography that I haven’t had much time to breathe. It has taught me a lot about photography and slowing down. So much has happened in the past few months it’ll be hard to wrap it all up. About a month back I had two companies contact me about doing some work for them. Both conversations went deep until almost a conclusion but they didn’t. One just never got back to me and they were ready for me to do the work. It’s sad that a large company would just stop responding to you when we were at the table and about to sign the contract. The other had me sign a Non-Disclosure before we could speak about the project. Talks went well and it seemed if I hit the budget right on the mark and then POOF! Over. I asked what would have helped me win the contract and the response was crap. “We got someone from the Bay Area” Thanks for not helping me. It’s very frustrating to put as much time and work into your freelance career and love and then just be shoved out the door. I know that there are a lot of photographers out there and there are only a few that do really great work. But we get treated like trash just to get in the door to work with large companies. Large companies that have large budgets and they elect to go with the cheap because of their bottom line. But we continue on and keep working at what we do.
After all this, I decided to step away from pushing the business and trying to get more clients. Focus on life, family and the future. Our goal is to one day move to Washington. It’s getting too hot here in Texas and we want to live more amongst nature than concrete. Therefore we’ve got to start thinking about transplanting us up there. How do we go about that and how do we gather the money to do so. Photography is a skill, although a very saturated market skill, it’s one you can take anywhere and find a job. With it being a very easy skill to learn and how advanced it has become, nearly anyone can do it. So finding a job that will pay you for your skill and talent, that you can live off of, is tough. How do you prove your skill or knowledge better than another photographer? I used to be in IT, except for the past two years, which is another trade that you can take anywhere. Since I’ve been out of that for a while, it would be difficult to get back into. Relying on the photography skill to take me to our dream location is what I’m hoping will get us to a life that we’re going to enjoy for a long time. We are always looking and planning for getting up there. My wife has been at her job for almost 10 years and hopefully, that will help us move North and then I can find a photography job up there. But to leave this Car Meca of Dallas and into the land of nature, it’ll be very difficult. Move to an area that is saturated with Nature/Landscape photographers and try and nibble on my piece of that, is almost crazy. I don’t shoot just cars but it’s where my passion is and what got me started in photography.
So, for now, I’m going to keep going to the shows, finding cars to photograph for fun and hope it doesn’t get much hotter. Because 7 am shoots are starting to get steamy already. I have a few cars lined up in the coming up weeks. So you’ll be seeing some fresh work coming out soon!
Leave a reply