Holiday = workday

Happy New Year! The holiday season's finally coming to an end. Low season should start soon. Another reason to not be a photographer: holidays are workdays if you shoot events. While your friends are having fun, you're working. Don't become a photographer!

Once again, Happy New Year!

Be your own boss

If you want to be a freelancer so you can "be your own boss," you've come to the right blog. This is the blog where you find out that as a freelancer, you will not be your own boss. In fact, everyone else will be your boss!

A boss is someone who tells you what to do and pays you. If you were truly your own boss, you'd be paying yourself, but why would you do that? You'd be taking money out of your own pocket and putting it back in. Your money has to come from other people, people you do work for.

We freelancers call them clients. Client is just another word for a one-night-stand boss. If you perform well, you two might hook up again, but there's no commitment like in an employer-employee relationship. If you're afraid of commitment, maybe freelancing is for you.

My point is don't become a freelancer thinking that you'd get to work just one day a week and pay yourself a high salary, and give yourself big Christmas bonuses and paid vacations. You have to work for your clients, and you'd have to work harder than an employee doing the same type of work.

Hired help vs rude bitch

You'd think that as a photographer, people would treat you as an artist who creates beautiful imagery. You'd think that since how a photo looks depends a lot on you, you'd be treated with dignity. You'd think that you're special. You'd be WRONG!

Photographers are a dime a dozen, even though a camera alone is a dime times 10,000. Even if you take great photos, most people you encounter wouldn't know that, and oftentimes they'd treat you as hired help. Someone might even be rude to you. When I get treated that way by a guest at a wedding or whatnot, I want to just walk out on the job, but obviously that's not a good way to do business.

When someone is rude to you, you just have to "accidentally" take a few bad photos of that bitch. We all have confidence issues to some degree, but people who don't respect others are generally more self-conscious than most. Use that to your advantage. Stick your lens in her face. Make her your victim. Tell her to suck in her tummy and smile better. She won't bother you again.

Your mom has a camera

You can't just get a camera and call yourself a professional photographer. You need a computer and peripherals.

It has to be a fast computer because it has to run the latest version of Photoshop. Photoshop is like your photography license. If you don't have it, you're not a working photographer. Photoshop is industry standard, and we know this because it has also become a verb.

"Photoshop this, photoshop that."

"See Spot walk. See Spot photoshop."

"I'll photoshop your mom!"

Knowing how to shoot is not enough. You need to know how to photoshop.

You need to be able to deliver files to your client quickly, so broadband internet connection is a must. But you can't send tens or hundreds of megabytes by e-mail, so you need some other means of sending files. This requires some Internet 101 knowledge, which should be no problem for you if you grew up using the internet. If you didn't, or you don't even know what FTP is, you should find a different career.

Sometimes files are so large that sending them over the internet isn't practical, so you also need a DVD burner, a stack of recordable DVDs and CDs, and mailers for transporting the discs.

Not so bad so far, right? Wait, you also need a photo printer so you can show print samples. You'll need an extra hard drive sooner or later, and another one later on. You need a graphics tablet so you can photoshop faster. You need a big, high resolution monitor and need to know how to calibrate it correctly. You also need a comfortable chair.

Did I forget to mention photography equipment? You'll need some of those too.

Welcome, you wannabe!

Hi everybody, and Merry Christmas! My name is Daniel Kwan, and I'm a photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I have been primarily a nightclub party photographer for the past year, and a general freelance photographer shooting anything and everything for about two years. Maybe longer. I forget. Anyway, over the years as a photographer, I have learned a whole bunch of stuff about the business, the perks and the pitfalls, the bright side and the ugly side, and I want to share my knowledge with those who are thinking about getting into the field of photography.

Today's entry is an introduction, so I'll just give one simple advice which you'll thank me for later: DON'T become a photographer!

Once again, Merry Christmas everybody!