I need to accept, that if I am to become a professional photographer then I will be setting up a business. If so, then I will also need to accept that my chosen photographic path will need to provide me with an income on which I can live. While for some this may indeed be the case for myself it is not.
As I have stated in a previous post, I have no desire to create a business and no therefore no real desire to become a professional photographer. For myself, I just want to create images of things that I find interesting and/or important and, to try and understand how photography works – just why do some images have such a deep emotional impact upon me while others leave me cold and uninterested. This is the real reason why I have chosen to study photography. If, somewhere along the path to such understanding it becomes possible to make some money from photography then good and well but making money has never been my primary aim in this area.
When the making of photographic images becomes a means to making money I feel that personally, I will have lost something – It will become just another job and I already have one of those. Of course, having stated that, then there is no harm in looking at what is involved in creating a photographic business.
This weeks lectures outlined some of the tasks that it will be necessary to perform – a brief list being shown below :-
- Production & Account Management
- Marketing, Sales and PR
- Customer Service
- Administration
- Legal Requirements
- Technical Support and Development
- Human Resources
For myself, this would be taking me from the aims for with which I pursue photography – to relax, gain knowledge and to have fun.
Hiraeth Photographic 