What I did For Love
Photography is my curse. I won a photography competition in high school. In college I walked around and taking pictures for the yearbook. Since I was one of those stupid people who graduated from college with an English major, I got a job working at Foodmax, a grocery store that used to be on Greensprings highway. I started taking photography classes at UAB. I went through the certificate program and got a certificate in Black and White photography.
I decided to get into something more fulfilling than groceries so I went to graduate school to study journalism. I worked at the Murray State student newspaper, and I got a short term job at a nearby small town newspaper in Tennessee called the Paris Post Intelligencer. I thought I had it made. I even got a job shortly after graduating. I’d hardly been back in Birmingham for two months before I packed up and moved to Greeneville, Mississippi.
Then everything went wrong. Almost from day one my boss would call me in the office and complain about something. No matter what I did, something was wrong with it. The phrase, “Got a minute” is the most terrifying in the English language. The upshot is, I got fired.
So I moved back to Birmingham and licked my wounds. I looked around for work at local small papers. The editor at the North Jefferson News in Gardendale was impressed with me, and gave me work. Then this guy was fired, and the people at the paper told me they didn’t need me anymore.
At least I’d already started working at Over The Mountain Journal, for free. Soon it became clear though that this didn’t offer much challenge, and it was costing me a lot to work for free.
I told him I needed to be paid and he said, “Bye.”I went around and started showing my pictures to advertising agencies. I made some friends that way. Some people let me come back again and again to show work even though they never bought any of my pictures. A few did, now and then, but not enough to get my business off the ground. One of these guys told me about Portfolio Center.
I moved to Atlanta and started school. I was excited of course. But like a bad relationship I didn’t realize that something was wrong until I was already well into it. They had rules upon rules and hard fast rules that changed constantly. The teachers would be nice and helpful then give me a scathing revue at the end of the term. I failed my fifth quarter there anyway. There was no looking over my work, no diagnosing problems, no help figuring out what I needed to do to improve, just more negative feedback. He actually suggested going back to first quarter and starting Over! I took the next quarter off. This became never coming back. I got a few jobs assisting photographers, and a few shoots, but eventually the reality of rent payments, and food caught up with me and I had to get a real job.
I moved back to Birmingham and work in retail. Now I do photography only for fun. One teacher who saw some of my pictures said that I was too artistic for commercial photography. Therefore I have began to direct my efforts toward selling photographs in art shows, galleries, and of course a web site.
| Ten Advantages To A Career in Photography. | Why I got out of Photography. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Get to do something creative. | 10 | Yeah right, ever heard of “grip and grin,” or "product on white seemless?” |
| 2 | Don’t work in an office. | 9 | If you get any work at all. |
| 3 | Flexible Hours. | 8 | Yeah you are never really off work. |
| 4 | No one ever insist that retail is not glamorous. | 7 | Glamour still takes sweat. |
| 5 | Pay is good. | 6 | If you are one of the few who makes it big. |
| 6 | You can own your own business. | 5 | And you can go bankrupt. |
| 7 | Work with beautiful models. | 4 | In your dreams. |
| 8 | Get to go to exciting places. | 3 | Like Vidalia, Georgia. |
| 9 | Meet interesting people. | 2 | You can do that anyway. |
| 10 | Photographers aren’t eagerly waiting for their retirement. | 1 | There is nothing to retire from, no 401k. |
