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Saturday, 12 October 2024

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In every field it seems like the jump from happy amateur to profitable pro is a totally fractal explosion of knowledge, technique, and equipment requirements. Leading into a massive pain in the ass and loss of fun. Possibly some money.

Luckily there are people who don't foresee that, and we end up with artists and other treasures. Not me, sorry. If everyone thought about consequences, we might not even have children. Optimism is essential to life. Sorry - blind optimism...

"the ideas come easily and the execution comes hard" might be a good title for a photography blog

Speaking of photo magazines, not sure about "greatest", but there was a "great" story in the Washington Post about an iconic photograph that many of us know but don't know much about.

Gift link: https://wapo.st/3Nm7RGg

Published a couple of weeks ago, but I missed it then.

In 1969 I was working for a newspaper in Southeast Missouri cleverly named "The Southeast Missourian." I'd only been there for a little more than a year, but decided to go back to school to get a master's degree in journalism so that I might have some prospect of working at a larger paper (and in fact, my next stop after the master's degree was at The Miami Herald.) In any case, the Missourian in (I think) late December published a real estate section which attempted to picture every new house in the circulation area built in the year. The Missourian did not have a staff photographer, but they had me, a reporter who owned a Pentax Spotmatic with 35, 50 and 135mm lenses, and had a dinky little photo lab in the basement. Anyway, the very kind editor of the paper offered me (IIRC) $5 for each house I photographed and printed, as a kind of bonus send-off for when I returned to college. He also gave me a long list of new addresses. In one weekend, I photographed (on Plus X, I think) about fifty houses, and in the next few nights, printed them. I'd roar up in my car, stop in the street, shoot the house, and roar off to the next one. I don't think I spent more than a minute per house, including the time to get out of and back into the car. The photos sorta sucked, but they used them. The $250 I was paid would be the equivalent of about $2,300 today, and I was forever grateful to John Blue, the editor. I'm not sure about this, either, because it was so long ago, but IIRC, the houses mostly cost in the $25,000 range.

Just to add, I lasted at my only paying photo job for about 3 months. I landed at my second career in scientific publishing after that photo gig, where I spent 10 years before retiring. That contract opened my eyes to the gig economy, where lots of people work hard but only a few make any money.

Much thanks to robert e for the tip on the Washington Post photo story about the circumstances surrounding an iconic DC photo. It had me wiping away tears while reading it.
And many, many thanks to you Mike for providing a forum for all of this to come together. Always great stuff! As we all know - it’s very difficult to have a career as a self-employed photographer. Props to those who have pulled it off.

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