You Love Photography

You love photography! If you are like me, you absolutely love photography. You wake up thinking about it, you go to sleep thinking about it. Now do not get me wrong, my absolute favorite thing in the world is being a husband and father, and I would choose that over photography, hands down, no question. You do not have the wife and family that I have without feeling and knowing that there is in fact a God and he loves me very much. The fact remains, that I also feel like photography was also a gift form above, I know this because of the passion that I have for it. I "worked an event" Saturday, shooting the Adventure 5K with Capstone Photography , I battled ever changing lighting, contestants that had their Bibs covered (every shot needs to clearly show the Bib number), and all of the things that a sports photographer always expects to be challenged with, sounds like work, doesn't it? It wasn't, it was truly a blast, I felt a little down when the last runners passed, for the event, the opportunity, my adventure, was now over.

The fact is that if you wish to make a living at photography, or at least support your habit, by selling enough to pay for some of your equipment you will have to put a fair amount of non-shooting work into it. I manage 3 separate websites http://www.paulmangold.com/ , http://paul-mangold.artistwebsites.com/ , and my Zazzle Stores , for the purpose of selling my work. I also have my Facebook page , this blog, a Twitter page  , I'm also on Pinterest, Panoramio, Google +1, and LinkedIn all in an effort to market my art (my photography business). Although this side of my art is not nearly as much fun, I have to say that I am learning something new each day about business in the new online world in which we live. When it comes to selling your work, you will also want to try to get into your local library, coffee shops, and any other location that looks to display the work of local artists, after all, your getting your name, and your art out there, creating excitement and interest in your work. I hope that I'm not in anyway scaring you off, if you really want to sell your work, in know way do you have to do what I am doing, your tactics, your business plan could be similar, or far different from mine. The fact is that you should never do anything that takes away from the joy that photography brings you. Be true to yourself, be true to your art, be true to the blessing that you have been given.