Thanks Fred. Good advice. I acquired my current maladies by living life to it's fullest ... the heart issue was inherited, and is now well under control ... the knee injury was a result of a 3rd career teaching Isshinryu karate to DEA task-force agents, and the slipped disk is due to that old knee injury. I still work-out and keep fit. Coffee is the one vice I allow myself but not to excess ... once the knee is repaired, I should be back on my Mountain bike, walking urban streets with my camera, and pushing the envelope again.
Regarding a career in photography.
Yes you need business skills ... but I'm going to make a case for what Dick seems to want to try.
If you can determine a need, have an innovative way to solve some problem, the skill and necessary equipment to fill that need, a case can be made to make a go of it. You need business skills only if you have business.
Bare with me as I provide an example. Before I retired from advertising, among others, I was in charge of the creative for a major Unilever food Brand. To produce one TV commercial required first creating and producing 3 or 4 different commercials for testing. This was true for every brand I ever created TV spots for .... be it Lincoln Motor cars or some P&G Cold medicine.
The division manager at Unilever insisted we video the test spots rather than use drawn animatics (sort of a cartoon). The cost of each video production averaged around $40,000 to $50,000 each, so it was not unusual to spend $200,000 for test spots that would never be aired. They also were very hard to correct once shot, if the package label changed, it had to be changed in 30 frames for every second it was on screen using a very expensive and time consuming process called Rotoscoping.
I came up with a way to shoot the same thing using stills ... as live action using a locked down 35mm dslr and powerful, fast recycling studio strobes, then using motion editing techniques to make it seamlessly flow properly. Doing it this way cut the production budget in half ... and any changes were easily accomplished in Photoshop on the spot.
As a result, I did all the test spots for the brand for a decade ... which paid for my entire studio and all of my gear ... and produced quite a profit margin for my upstart studio. I also did print ads and collateral work for everything from industrial clients, sporting goods companies, financial institutions, high-end jewelry ...which I won based on problem solving ideas I could execute.
I had the good fortune to work with the best commercial photographers in the world, one trait I noted that all had was the ability to leverage their talent against a marketing communication need of a client.
I have often thought to teach professional photographers how to identify marketing needs and how to mesh with a client's brand personality and bring it forward using their talent and skill.
-Marc
Regarding a career in photography.
Yes you need business skills ... but I'm going to make a case for what Dick seems to want to try.
If you can determine a need, have an innovative way to solve some problem, the skill and necessary equipment to fill that need, a case can be made to make a go of it. You need business skills only if you have business.
Bare with me as I provide an example. Before I retired from advertising, among others, I was in charge of the creative for a major Unilever food Brand. To produce one TV commercial required first creating and producing 3 or 4 different commercials for testing. This was true for every brand I ever created TV spots for .... be it Lincoln Motor cars or some P&G Cold medicine.
The division manager at Unilever insisted we video the test spots rather than use drawn animatics (sort of a cartoon). The cost of each video production averaged around $40,000 to $50,000 each, so it was not unusual to spend $200,000 for test spots that would never be aired. They also were very hard to correct once shot, if the package label changed, it had to be changed in 30 frames for every second it was on screen using a very expensive and time consuming process called Rotoscoping.
I came up with a way to shoot the same thing using stills ... as live action using a locked down 35mm dslr and powerful, fast recycling studio strobes, then using motion editing techniques to make it seamlessly flow properly. Doing it this way cut the production budget in half ... and any changes were easily accomplished in Photoshop on the spot.
As a result, I did all the test spots for the brand for a decade ... which paid for my entire studio and all of my gear ... and produced quite a profit margin for my upstart studio. I also did print ads and collateral work for everything from industrial clients, sporting goods companies, financial institutions, high-end jewelry ...which I won based on problem solving ideas I could execute.
I had the good fortune to work with the best commercial photographers in the world, one trait I noted that all had was the ability to leverage their talent against a marketing communication need of a client.
I have often thought to teach professional photographers how to identify marketing needs and how to mesh with a client's brand personality and bring it forward using their talent and skill.
-Marc