Tom Reichner wrote in post #18944328
I don't know if I'm a pro or not.
. That would depend on what definition of "professional" one is going by
(there are many definitions of the term that are all just as accurate and valid as the others).
. But over the past 10 years I have made more of my income from selling photo rights than I have via any other endeavor, so according to some, that would qualify me as a pro.
I specialize in wildlife photography, and that is where is 98% of my photography-derived income has come from.
I started learning wildlife photography by going to the local zoos day after day after day, and photographing the same animals in the same cages over and over and over again.
. I tried as hard as I could to get better.
. I would get home at night and download the photos and scrutinize them to death, trying to figure out how I could improve the results.
. Then the next day I would be back at one of the zoos, putting my theories into practice and seeing if I had gotten any better.
. I spent so much time at this for months that it was like a full time job for me.
While I was still working on my craft, I decided to move out west so that I could be closer to the kinds of animals that I really wanted to photograph.
. So I sold my condo and drove out to Washington state and stayed in a friend's basement.
. I spend tons and tons of time driving and hiking out in the remote areas looking for animals to photograph.
. I took many road trips to neighboring states to photograph the animals there.
. I was obsessed.
. Photographing wildlife was pretty much the only thing in life that I really cared about
(this is still the case).
After a couple of years I had amassed a fair amount of half decent wildlife photos, so I started to contact magazines that specialized in that type of content.
. The magazine Editor or Art Director would send me submission guidelines, and I learned that submitting images to a publication is a lot different than just making photos for myself, to "look good".
The magazine and calendar companies I submitted to had very stringent guidelines, and if you didn't follow every single little rule then they discarded your submission and wouldn't even consider it.
. No cropping.
. No noise reduction.
. No editing at all.
. They demanded unedited files with no manipulations whatsoever.
. The reasoning is that they pay a salary to an Art Director or a Graphic Artist/Designer, and they want their professional staff to be the ones editing the photos.
. So this taught me something - the importance of getting it as perfect as possible in the camera, and not relying on any post processing skills or techniques.
Eventually I had some success with the magazines, as they started to accept a photo here and a photo there.
. Back then
(2008/2009) one could get half decent money for a photo to be used in a magazine or on a calendar.
. I thought that I was on the right path to a steady, albeit lowly, income.
. I would just continue to submit more photos to more magazines, and eventually I thought that these usage sales would reach a sustainable level.
But they never did reach a sustainable level.
. This is because there was a big change in the photo license usage market.
. The demand was increasing little by little, but the supply of such images was increasing rapidly.
. In other words, there were now a whole lot of people trying to do exactly what I was doing.
. Most publications abandoned working with individual photographers and started to get their images from massive stock libraries.
. This was much easier and less time consuming for them, and somewhat less expensive.
. I still made the occasional direct sale to a publication or to an advertising agency, but these sales were decreasing, instead of increasing, despite the fact that I was putting more time and effort into it.
So I changed along with the market and started to submit images to some of the macrostock and microstock agencies.
The agencies' demands for technical perfection were absolutely extreme.
. I would see photos posted to forums such as this one that everybody thought were "great", take a closer look, and think to myself,
"that photo wouldn't have a chance in hell of ever making it through the quality control process at a stock agency." . This again forced me to work on my craft even more if I was ever to have any success selling through the agencies.
Stock agency sales were terrible for me at first, but over the years I continued to submit more and more images, and eventually I had enough quality content available through the agencies that the monthly royalties got up to a level that wasn't too bad.
. All those years of extreme effort was actually resulting in some consistent income.
. Woo hoo!
I am still at this level where the stock agency royalties provide enough income for me to survive, when combined with income that I get from other seasonal work.
. I need the photography income AND the other income in order to survive, financially.
. I couldn't do without either of them.
To be honest, if I worked harder at the business end of photography, I could make a lot more than I do now.
. I could submit thousands of additional photos to the agencies, and make more commissions off of those images.
. But I am kind of lazy and prefer to do things that are enjoyable at the moment instead of doing things that will earn me money.
. A lot of my time is spent road-tripping to take photos of wildlife, but then I never get around to submitting the photos to anyone, and just like looking at them on my computer.
. Or I spend day after day just surfing the internet, looking up stuff that I am interested in and chatting away on forums like this one.
I honestly don't enjoy submitting photos to magazines or to stock agencies because it requires my mind to focus and concentrate, and I just like to let my mind wander instead.
. It is easier and more enjoyable.
. My brain likes to go to "happy places" and think about wildlife and travel and good food and football and pretty girls, and I like to just let it go to these places and think about these things, instead of making it work hard at something like preparing photo submissions.
. So I make less than half of what I could be making.
. But I am happy, and that is more important to me.
The one thing I do work VERY hard at is the actual photography itself - both the research beforehand and the outings afield.
. I work my ass off doing research because it is so interesting to me that my mind just pays sharp attention to everything, without me having to make it pay attention.
. In fact, wildlife and travel reearch is one of the happy plaes that my brain likes to go to anyway, so it isn't any effort to do the research.
. So, it is indeed, 'work", but it is work that does not take any "effort".
. Meaning that I just do what I feel like doing, but that happens to be work in this case.
. Hope that makes sense.
Anyway, that is how I started my endeavors into 'professional' wildlife photography.
. It kinda works for me, but obviously it would never work for someone who has financial obligations that they have to meet, or someone who has a family or something like that.
. If it's just you and you don't have to be accountable to anybody for anything, then it's a somewhat viable career path because it lets you have freedom to do what you feel like most of the time.
. 
