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Well, I've teased you long enough...we always deliver on our promises around here. You want to know how to make your name shine above all others? You want to know how to make the world beat a path to your door? You want to have people point you out admiringly? Then why are you taking photographs of strangers in the street that you delete off your card when you get home?
There's part of your answer. If you want to get paid - whether in money or praise - have something to sell, someone to sell it to, and somewhere to sell it. The market for random pictures of random people on the street or random bits of crumbling cement is limited. The advertisements crying for this sort of image have been been conspicuous by their absence in the last few years. The random and concrete market has...crumbled.
Can you make people look good? If you can, show them. And remember that good is their idea, not yours. If they are not into the buzz-cut post-apocalyptic gothic grunge look - the thing that you absolutely rocked in TAFE - it is going to be difficult to sell them pictures in your style. Particularly at a wedding. If your sitter has more wrinkles than you do, and more money, you will have to re-invent your style if you want to see any of it.
Can you do something that no-one else does? No, I don't mean that thing with your tongue. That's disgusting. I mean photographically. Have you found a niche that you can fill that no-one else can? Or would? Or should? This is no time for sqeamishness - there is money in the air. If you are the country's best chicken photographer it is time to get out your Buck Buck Bacaw, plug it in, and get busy.
Can you do it cheaper than anyone else? Well don't... Clients can outbid you downwards all day and night. Never cheapen the trade...you'll end up with less money than you need to live decently and have no way to raise the fees. When people try to chisel you down - glare at 'em.
Can you talk to people? Without swearing or spittting, I mean. Can you teach? Can you give an audience the impression that you know what you are doing? Perhaps the lecturing side is the thing for you. If you've got a genuine message to impart, get someone put you up in front of a class of hopefuls and let them have it. The worst they can do is throw coffee and stale biscuits at you. You might become the darling of the trade.
Can you stand the monotony of product shots for catalogues? If you are puzzled by this and say that product shots aren't monotonous - that they can be little works of art - you have a good future in the illustrative section of the trade. If you are prepared to photograph groceries, you will never go hungry - you can eat the models. Not sure what the people who make sex-shop advertisement pictures get paid in, but...
And finally - if your own images look terrible, but you can recognise merit in those of other people - and if you are prepared to promote those other people...well you can become an agent, organiser, promoter, employer, manager, or other administrative type. The creatives who make the fancy pictures may be flakes, and if you can manage to control those flakes, you may be more valuable to the profession and the art than anyone.
