What is the difference between a photographer and a professional photographer?  Both may come out with beautiful and artistic pictures but a professional photographer makes or earns money out of it.  One must earn money for the time and effort spent on photography, otherwise, you will starve. 

But the irony of it is that having talent to create good picture is not enough assurance one will earn good money.  Photographic sense or sense of photography means a subconscious automatic evaluation of a subject matter in terms of its proper focus, exposure, and composition to produce an excellent photo.  This sense is shaped through years of practice striving to capture good pictures until it becomes part of your basic senses like smell, sound, sight and touch. This we will help you achieve through our tutorial blog category.  However, equally important is to develop a business sense to complete your being as a professional photographer. In the same manner, business sense is an ability (subconscious, automatic, learned) to capture money out of a subject matter.  How? It must be shrewdly learned and practiced and this is the subject matter of blogs under this Entrepreneurship category blog.

 I will not bore you with academic discussions of management/marketing etc., tools and techniques of business. But bear in mind, that microwave, computer, internet, radio, tv, etc., are mostly military inventions converted by business sense of entrepreneurs into viable consumer goods.  As a starter, I would say you need foresight and creativeness.  Foresight demands that you will have to identify things that will be needed and prepared when commissioned to cover an event.  The most common sensical thing to do is to prepare a checklist and a countdown schedule. Foresight means that will also have anticipate problems and be ready with solutions. What if I lost my camera on location? What if my SD card gets corrupted? What if my transport bogs down? If things like these happen and no provisions  for  solutions,  you lose money.  Creativeness means you can invent ways to earn more money than relying solely on your contract fee from the client.  As a matter of fact, some waive their fees just to get  free publicity and ancilliary businesses. We will tell you stories of low budget couples  getting services free of charge as long as  the photographer is exclusive and guests are requested not to take pictures or bring cameras.  The pictures are then posted and emailed in the internet where guests can order their copies of the pictures retouched, framed and delivered C.O.D.  Creativeness means also your  two way relationship with suppliers.  You get commissions from event organizers, caterers, venue, florists, hotel bookings etc..  for referring clients to them. Of course you may have to give incentives to them if they refer clients to you. Business sense means you are sharp to spot this opportunities and automatically, without hesitation, apply your cutting knife.

SEE YOU ON OUR NEXT BLOG!