Career Connundrums

For some time now, I've felt like I'm at a crossroads or an impasse or some turning point in my photography career. With more and more intensity, I feel the need to venture forth and boldly go, photographically, where I haven't gone before. I'm not referring to the artistic or stylistic aspects of my work, whatever they might be, it's more about the career itself. Make that, it's more about money. I suppose I'm getting materialistic in my old age. And to get more of what I want, I think I'm going to have to move into a whole different area of photography.

It's true I make my living photographing pretty girls in varying stages of dress and undress. Sometimes I feel like I make a fairly decent living doing this. Other times I feel like my career is in the toilet. It's been real up and down that way. And lately, it's been more down than up. It probably has more than a little to do with me: I simply don't go out of my way to hustle the work like I once did. Lazy? Maybe. Bored? Certainly to some degree.

I know there's a lot of shooters who would love to be making their livings doing what I'm doing. After all, when I get up to go to work it means heading off to some location where someone's going to pay me to photograph a sexy young lady in her birthday suit. I'm not complaining about that. I love having sexy young ladies strutting their stuff for me in their birthday suits. I just feel I've gone about as far as I'm likely to go in the business of shooting sexy, naked, pretty girls.

So what to do? Where should I focus? What genre of photography should I pursue?

I've thought a lot about this and, recently, I've tried my hand at a few different things. For instance, I've shot some family and event photography. But I'm not really sold on the financial future of doing so. These days, it seems like everyone has a friend or a relative with a digital SLR who is willing to shoot their wedding or children for little or no pay. I've written before about the bar being lowered--the quality bar--and nothing, in my mind, has changed regarding my opinion that fewer and fewer consumers these days seem able to recognize the difference between good photography and mediocre snapshots, albeit properly exposed and focused mediocre snapshots. (Mostly due to advances in camera technologies, thank you very much.) Or maybe they can see the difference and they just don't care as long as the price is right? (Right being cheap or free.)

Fashion is one area I'd love to pursue but breaking into that industry seems almost insurmountable for a guy my age. (Anyone who doesn't believe ageism is alive and well, especially in a youth-driven market like fashion, is probably someone who would vote for George Bush--assuming George could run for President again--because they believe he and his cronies are doing a first class job leading this country into the 21st Century.)

I'm fairly sure I'm also too old to become a photo-journalist. The entry-level positions in that industry are hotly pursued by a new batch of recent college grads every year. Besides, I have very little personal interest in photo-journalism as a career for myself.

Two areas of photography I'd like to pursue are editorial and commercial. (Both of which I have some experience with and a fair amount of interest in doing.)

Commercial photography seems the easier of the two to break into. The kind of commercial photography I think I'm going to go after is corporate work. I've done a fair amount of corporate media work over the years and I know something about how that game is played. And it still seems to be an area of photography where excellence is valued. A fair amount of corporate work is portrait photography (both environmental and traditional) and I think I have a good eye for that kind of stuff. My lighting skills will be a great asset there as well.

Editorial is another matter and it presents far greater challenges in terms of scoring gigs. But frankly, if I can get a few photo editors to look at my work--and they like it--I think I could realistically take a shot at it.

Anyway, that's what I've been thinking a lot about these days. It doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to quit what I'm doing. I ain't stupid and I still got some mouths that count on me for feed, my own included. I think it's going to be a transitory process where I continue shooting pretty girls while, at the same time, I actively pursue both my editorial and corporate photography goals. Hopefully, the latter two will slowly become the mainstay of my income and the former will continue to fill in the gaps, if that makes sense. In a nutshell, I'm looking at options and searching for opportunities and I'll go wherever the yellow brick road takes me and the almighty buck beckons me.

The pretty girl at the top is Lorena from a shoot last fall. She had some clothes on when we started shooting but all of sudden... BAM! She was nekkid! Go figure. (If I was paying more attention, I would have had her take that thing off her wrist. 20/20 hindsight and all that.)