With that said, I can tell you that a successful career cannot be achieved without perserverance and commitment. As anything, what you know as well as who you know is essential. With photography, knowledge,understanding,experience of the numerouse techniques can only help hone your craft.

I believe that a lot of photographers only concentrate on photography and have nothing to do with the business side of running a business. I think this is a mistake…a photographer needs to understand at least the basics of all aspects of the business (accounting, marketing, employees, taxes). You can’t run a profitable business without knowing where your money is coming from and where your money is going. Sure, you can hire on an accountant, studio manager, etc…however, you can’t just blindly hire anyone off the street and trust 100% that they know what they are doing. You must go over the numbers yourself every once in a while and take control of your assets.

Networking is like any other industries…there’s conferences, photo events, flickr, small community meetings, etc. If you just look around, there’s a lot out there. It doesn’t have to be just freelanced, you can still get fulltime gigs out there, but understand that it may be a little hard getting your foot in the door…usually, it’s done by networking and even then, you may have to wait until their resident photographer quits, gets fired, or dies before you can get an opportunity.

My advice is to keep shooting and keep learning and observing. Look through a whole bunch of magazines and tear out the images that you like. Try to copy the photo and techniques. Research past and present photographers. Critique their photos as well as your own. Have other critique your photos. Be selective. Shoot film, this is the best way to really understand photography.

I mean, success in any industry is possible…the question is, how bad do you want it? If you really want it, you will find a way. Understand it will take hard work and it will not be overnight. As long as you have that thirst for knowledge and determination for action, you’ll be fine.

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I’m not sure what it takes to deliver results everyone has been hoping for so long; without technology giving it to them in their laps. But would you mind giving us a example of how one would get into profitability with a career in photography? What routines would they need to carry out daliy? How would one network in this current market environment? Is photography something that can only be freelanced, etc.. ?

Thanks again and wonderful blog, Marvin!