[Winder]

15 Statements Poor Photographers Say that Rich Photographers Do Not - DIY Photography

[Rondec]

I think the truth is somewhere between these things. Photography is about selling yourself and your skills, more than it is about gear, but you definitely need to have skills as well. Feels like the author is pretty egotistical: "If you aren't rich like me, it's because you don't have mad photography/sales skills like me."

[normhead]

Actually, I quite agree with him. Almost 100 %. I've known enough successful photographers to understand the mindset. I also realized 50 years ago while studying Photography at Ryerson Ploytechnical, I didn't aspire to having it. My cousin always made a lot of money from his wedding photography, I had some great role models, I saw them work, I just didn't want to be them. I wanted to be me. I feel I was born to take pictures, but not to be a really "successful" photographer. I'm missing a few pieces, most of us are. And there's nothing wrong with that.

[panoguy]

Actually, I quite agree with him. Almost 100 %. I've known enough successful photographers to understand the mindset. I also realized 50 years ago while studying Photography at Ryerson Ploytechnical, I didn't aspire to having it. My cousin always made a lot of money from his wedding photography, I had some great role models, I saw them work, I just didn't want to be them. I wanted to be me. I feel I was born to take pictures, but not to be really "successful" photographer. I'm missing a few pieces, most of us are. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Careful there, Norm. You almost sound like a man who knows who he is!

Don't you know that you're supposed to have people like Bradford Rowley tell you who you *should be* and what you *should do* to be like them?

[vonBaloney]

The comments underneath that article are nearly 100% hostile.

[DeadJohn]

The article makes sense. Photography is one of those careers with a huge income range. Once someone is "good enough" as a photographer their salary is determined more by marketing (and luck if you find a wealthy patron) than by photography skills. Music is a similar career.

Me, I'm happy keeping photography as a hobby, using a different career path to fund my hobby. I'm happier manipulating data than doing marketing.

---------- Post added 06-22-15 at 12:55 PM ----------

The comments underneath that article are nearly 100% hostile.

I didn't read the comments until after I replied above. Yeah, lots of hostile comments, but they sort of prove the point of the article. Paraphrasing the comments "I'd rather be dead than sell a bad photo for a million dollars". Someone writing that clearly hasn't made marketing a priority

[ChristianRock]

I think it makes sense as well - not only that, but it applies to any area in life (for those of us who don't have photography as our money-bringing job, or as our main job).

I actually bookmarked it because it reminded me of how positive I used to be, and how negative I've become of late. Time for a change. Thanks for the link

Also: I'd rather sell a bad photo for a million dollars than be dead. I mean is that even a question (by the way I'm sure this guy's pictures are great in their intended format - large prints).

[clockworkrat]

(by the way I'm sure this guy's pictures are great in their intended format - large prints).

It's expensive kitsch for people with more money than taste. Sure, it'd be nice to sell one crap photo for a million bucks, but to get to that point you need to put a whole lot of time and effort into making crap and convincing people that your crap is gold.

Also, you can be positive about your photography even if you're poor and not making money from it. I've had a ton of fun since I started shooting regularly. This blog has just paraphrased a few miserable quotes and attributed them to every photographer who isn't making millions.

[DeadJohn]

I defended the author of the article earlier because his facts are correct, but the guy does sound like a d-bag who judges "success" only by how much money someone makes. If he wants to learn marketing because he enjoys it or wants the money, fine, but if someone else chooses a different path that does not mean a lack of success. In my ideal world no one would be quoting Tony Robbins or paying for his questionable advice.

[Winder]

The writer is talking about photographers who are trying to make a living at photography, so their goal is money. He is not referring to the enthusiast who is often more talented than the working pro, but doesn't have the desire to grind it out or turn their passion into a career.

There are thousands of zero talent professionals out there who come and go every year. They can't make any money because they suck and they end up bitter. They come up with all of the excuses the writer lists. To Aspiring Professional Photographers: What If The Problem Is That You Suck?

I was at a large venue meeting with a client and another wedding was finishing up. I watched the photographer spray and pray with his Canon Rebel and his flash pointing strait up except we are outside. There is nothing to bounce off of. His wife was running video with another rebel. Handheld while walking and no external micro-phone. A friend of mine owns the venue and the photographers sent him some of the pictures to put on his website. They were hideous. The whites were all blown... I mean every shot of the dress was blown to the point of glowing. All the faces had magenta cast. This husband & wife photography team are "professionals". They have a licenses. This is their business. They have about $800 of equipment between to two of them. They thought the pictures were good enough that the venue might want to use them. Maybe their client was happy with the quality for what they paid. I don't know.

There are thousands of photographers who will never make it because they suck and they don't care enough or know enough to change that. They will be bitter. They will say all of the things on that list..... except #10. They will never learn to use Photoshop.

[osv]

It's expensive kitsch for people with more money than taste. Sure, it'd be nice to sell one crap photo for a million bucks, but to get to that point you need to put a whole lot of time and effort into making crap and convincing people that your crap is gold.

amen to that, got to agree with the article comments, i seen nothing impressive about any of his pics... it's a controlled studio environment, shoot the same thing over and over, where is the challenge? chimp your shot, don't like it, do it again.

event shooters don't have that luxury, the wedding ceremony won't be re-enacted just because the photographer failed to get the shot.

[magkelly]

I have never liked people like Tony Robbins and that. I view them as elite level scam artists selling BS and I want nothing to do with attitudes like this. 99.99 of the people he teaches won't end up rich and the only reason he is rich is because he's scamming people into thinking they can be too. That's a real nice way to be successful, NOT.

There is more to life than making six figures. If I wanted to be making that I'd be making it. I can sell rings around most people when I'm motivated, and I used to when I worked for other people. Fact is I'm not that person anymore and I don't want to be. I don't want to be more focused on how many zeros I have in the bank than on what I am doing in my studio. Yes, a photography studio is a business and you do have to market your product, IE your photography, but IMHO if you're doing more marketing than you are shooting? You're not the kind of photographer I want to be.

I would honestly rather have 2 or 3 sessions a week and make $400-500 that week than have a business where 3/4 of my time is spent pushing my business and where I make 500K a year. Money is nice. I do like being able to pay my rent and I like going away now and again, but I don't need the big house, the fancy car, the million dollar retirement accounts. What I do like is actually having a personal relationship with the people I do shoot, taking my time on those shoots, and having a life outside my work.

Hard selling is not a zen thing for me. I can do it, and how, but hard selling hypes me up, makes me crazy, and sucks the enjoyment right out of working for me. I like the very soft sell. So do my clients usually. Most of my business is not coming from the ads I run. It's coming from people I've shot telling other people about me, about how relaxed shooting with me was and how much fun they or their kids had, about how good I made them feel about themselves. I love that.

I love being able to go into the shoot feeling relaxed and knowing it's going to be fun for us, not stressful. I don't want to come out of that lovely experience intent upon suckering my clients into buying more than they intended to. Before I even go into the studio all that is worked out, and I mean that in a very low key manner. My clients they know my focus is on THEM, not on how many different posed they want or how many prints/CD's I want to sell them.

This guy, he wants to run his studio more like a 100 million dollar real estate company, more power to him. But that's not why I got into doing photography. He can look down on little photographers like me all he wants. No doubt he'd consider me "unmotivated" given the relatively small bank account I usually have, but he would be wrong. I am motivated. I'm motivated by joy of my work, not the ultimate size of my wallet. For some people everything they do comes down to making money. I am not one of those people.

There was a time in my life when I could have "married up" as they say and probably ended up with more money than this guy will likely see in his lifetime. But when I looked at the strings attached to that money, the life I would be leading, how different I'd end up from the person I considered myself to be, I said "NOPE, SORRY." and I ran like a bat out of hell. It was the smartest thing I ever did. I still say that knowing now that unfortunately the way it would have ended up I'd been left a VERY rich widow...

"Money makes the world go round..."

For some people, yeah, but not for me. People like this guy they will never understand people like me. They believe making money is the main reason to do anything, and usually they don't care who they step on to get there. Anyone who doesn't want to "make it" like they do is their social inferior. They are not worth knowing because they can't contribute to their bottom line. If they can be used to make money, that's one thing, but they're definitely not to be invited into the potential billionaire's club. I believe making some money and paying my bills is just something that comes along with getting to work in a profession I love. They believe that making money is the most important reason they are doing what they do. Photographers like that they like making great photos, but it's more about ego and money than it is the work. Yeah, they are fussy about making sure it's 100% perfect, but that's because anything imperfect would hurt their bottom line. They have to be seen as extraordinary in everything they do if they want to keep the big bucks coming. They have to be seen as master photographers or no one will want to read their books or pay mega bucks to go to their seminars...

Years ago I actually turned down a job making 3X what I was making because I just loved doing the job I had at the time. I was beading, something I love doing, for pay. My money oriented roomie at the time she was horrified. I was making enough to pay my bills, eat well, and put some away, enough that I could work and still take off sometimes do some theater now and again. My boss was cool with that, and that was enough for me. But she was just flabbergasted that I wanted to keep that job over the one offered. Unfortunately I let her bully me into doing it eventually. After a while the constant arguing just wore me down and I left the job I liked and that worked for me to go into that other company and make more money. HUGE mistake. I was bored and miserable and they knew it. I was a hard worker regardless. They liked me and they wanted to keep me but in the end I left there and went to work somewhere else where I was a bit happier and yes, making less money. What I really wanted was to go back to my original job but that unfortunately wasn't possible because at that company once you left they wouldn't rehire you...

What I learned from that experience and from dating that guy was that no amount of money is worth spending your whole life chasing it or trying to keep up with it in other ways. For people like me it's just not healthy trying. It took a long time for that lesson to stick. Despite my resolve to do otherwise I ended up chasing the almighty dollar for years even though I knew I'd never be happy doing it. I ran that race for the gold for a long, long time. In the end I paid for it too. If I had kept to that resolve I'd have likely ended up a lot healthier than I am now. I'm finally happy, but I will likely never get back my health and in my mind that way way too heavy a price to pay for the money I made back then. I honestly wish I'd quit, scaled back, done this 20 years ago. If I had? I really doubt I'd be in the situation am health-wise that I am now. being intent upon making that kind of money, living head up and always trying to make more? It means making a lot of stress too. It ultimately changes you in ways I just don't like.

My ultimate goals right now are very simple. I want to get through this tough time of living here and taking care of Dad. I want to end up doing as much photographic work as I need to to be able to pay bills and put some $$$ by if at all possible. When Dad is gone I want to travel to the UK and maybe Europe a bit, then move out to the West Coast, find a simple place of my own to live that affords me a space to work in, write and do my crafts in. I may expand my crafts business a bit and I'll likely focus more on the niche markets for my photography out there as well, but I don't plan on changing things all that much really. I will likely never make more than 75K a year and you know what?

That's OKAY...

This guy, he'd probably scratch his head at that, at my thinking, but whatever...

[ZombieArmy]

Music is a similar career.

Not even close, the more skilled and multi-talented you are in music the more likely you'll find work. That's just how it is.

[gmans]

This success mindset reminds of the guy on youtube ads, with his Lamborghini and Ferrari in his garage. He boasts of his fortune and it come from his superior knowledge. But it looks like he made the ad with a selfie stick and green screen behind him.

[magkelly]

Up till about a year ago I had an acquaintance who was like this. She was all about the money. She couldn't relax for five seconds and she was always picking my brain for info, trying to maneuver me into doing something that would help her bottom line. She was selling toys, mostly dolls, something I know a lot about. I don't think I once even had a conversation with her where she didn't end up talking business. I knew her for about 4 years I guess. Towards the end I stopped calling her as much to chat. I didn't go out of my way to help her find things to sell, save things I didn't want for her as much. I swiftly went from being one of her so called favorite people to someone she thought she could still hussle when convenient and then to total non-person when she thought I was of no more use to her.

Last time I talked to her I actually called her up because I knew from a mutual friend that she was really struggling. Our area was getting really depressed economically at that point and there had not been lot of sales for while even with used stuff. I had a woman in my park who wanted 150 of the little dolls that she always had the most of. Her usual price was like $5 a doll but even at $3 a doll which is something she'd do for people willing to spend a lot it 150 dolls would have been a nice chunk of change for her. I called her up, started to talk to her about something else first. She totally blew me off, very rudely, said she had no time for talking with me, and then basically hung up the phone on me. I was like "Oooookay." For a second my nice side kicked in and I actually thought about calling her back, making a joke of her being rude, and letting her have the woman's number anyway, but then I just went "Nah..." and put the phone down. That was it. I'd just had it at that point with her. Enough was enough and I'm just not a doormat type. Instead I got in touch with the woman in my park, helped her find what she needed for her party myself and made myself a few bucks doing it.

Later that month I saw the mutual friend and she said pretty much the same thing that this woman was acting like a total b- to anyone who wasn't focused on making her money. It was backfiring on her big time too. She picked a fight with someone where she sold who also sold toys, told all kinds of lies apparently about her trying to get her into trouble so she'd get kicked out of there. She was trying to eliminate her competition. Turns out she was the problem, the management found out, and she got kicked out of where she'd been selling for several years. Knowing how much she relied on that situation for income I actually felt sorry for her but I wasn't about to try to make it up with her. Eventually what I had originally called her for got back to her and about a week later she left a sickly sweet message on my machine asking me what was up and why I hadn't called lately.

I called the mutual friend and I was like "You just told her about the lady who wanted dolls for her party didn't you?" She told me that yes she'd done so because some very snarky remarks about me were being made and that one outright lie was being told about me. I was like "What lie?" I found out that that my so called "friend" had been telling everyone in the place that I'd ripped her off. That I'd not been honest with her about pricing certain dolls and that as a result she'd lost hundreds of dollars. That I'd stolen "her" client and that party from her. It was the exact opposite of what was true and the mutual friend knew it. Truth, the doll seller, she had no clue as to who the lady in my park was and in the several years I knew her she'd probably made a lot of money picking my brain for info on dolls.

I was furious but I let it go. It just wasn't worth it to me even dealing with her. The mutual friend, who by then was no longer a friend of hers, had set everyone straight and I gather she'd set the management straight on what this woman was actually like too. Others piped up and that and her lying about the other vendor I'm told is why she permanently lost her spot there. But I could not believe that she was so obsessed with making money that the mere fact that I'd declined to help her make any more of it was enough for her to turn on me like that. She had been absolutely viscous to me and over what? Not getting to pick my brain at will anymore? Not getting that party and the opportunity to sell some dolls? As far as I am concerned she bit herself right in the butt when she hung up on me and I'm no saint. I'm not going to keep trying to help her out when it's clear she's intent upon doing nothing but using me and dissing me when she can't. I doubt she will ever have six zero's in the bank, but if she does, good for her, but I won't be around to see it happen, that's for sure...

She's not the first person I've met who is like that. Probably won't be the last, but now I see someone like that coming I do my best to dodge. People like that they just drain and depress me with their avarice and the way they try to use everybody they meet. I feel sorry for that woman. She's so busy trying to make money off people, busy stabbing them in the back when she can't anymore that she totally misses the fact that she has no real friends left. All she has left is scratching in the dirt, trying to make it, working all the time. That's no life if you ask me. It's just sad...