success

You know we’ve all got a confident side and a not-so-confident side of our personalities. Let’s develop and strengthen the confident side. Here are 10 points on how you can gain confidence to know you’re ready to make money in photography. Follow these 10 points. You’ll gain a lot of confidence. Don’t listen to that other side of your personality.

The "Creator Exodus" is a phenomenon that has been accelerated by the COVID-19 era. With the requirement for non-essential businesses to operate from a remote-first capacity, the 2020 experience has encouraged creators at all levels to redefine their metrics for productivity and success.

The Internet gives the illusion that everybody can be “somebody”. It surely has opened the door for some, but the hard truth is that most of us aspiring artists (including us photographers) remain largely unnoticed for our entire lifetimes, even with the mighty power of the Internet and social media.

It’s an ongoing joke with my friends and I that I am really not a fan on the current marketing messaging that the “universe has my back” and that the success of my business is down to my “mindset”.

What if your house burned down? Have you still “made it” as a photographer?

I attended the Palm Springs Photo Festival last week for the first time. I have heard for years what a great event it is but never could get my schedule to work so that I could participate. Well, this year worked out and I was so happy that it did.

It's probably the most asked question that anybody with a modicum of photographic success gets asked: "How do I make it as a photographer?" In many ways an impossible question, photographer and educator Ted Forbes of The Art of Photography tackles it beautifully in this inspirational and educational video.

What's your greatest career success? What about your greatest failure? Your greatest fear? And what's the best advice you could offer to someone starting out in the world of photography? These are the questions DIY Photography recently asked 4 top creatives.

Why do some professional photographers fail to make it in business?

If you can’t cut it technically or artistically as a photographer, then clearly your photography business will have a very limited lifespan. But there are other ways in which you can take your eyes off the ball when turning pro. Here are some classic examples of failure that are easy to avoid when you know how...

Most people see me as a “professional”… as someone who is smart, who has their act together or as someone who knows what they’re doing all the time.

This makes me laugh.

It’s been a tough few years and people are frustrated with the state of the industry. Everywhere I turn, people seem to be saying that a photography career isn’t what it used to be and that budgets are tight. Many of the blogs I read and the message boards that I visit all seem to be repeating the same message: There’s no work, there’s no money, and the competition is too intense to succeed. To quote one frustrated photographer, “How do you f’ing make a living shooting pictures anymore?”

There comes a point in any passion or career when you feel like you hit a brick wall; you feel like you’re standing there motionless while everyone else is carrying on achieving things and becoming more successful than you -- whatever your definition of success.

But as you'll understand once you watch this fantastic two-part video series, everybody who has ever achieved anything has gone through this (sometimes many-year-long) phase. We just never hear about this lost chapter in their lives.

These short interviews that National Geographic has been putting together for its PROOF blog are quickly becoming some of our favorites. Quick, to the point and always very inspirational, they feature masters of their craft who have reached great heights in their photographic careers.

This latest video features renowned climber and adventure/travel photographer Jimmy Chin talking about both the good and the bad of what he does.

There's a belief that being successful as a photographer these days runs the possibility gamut from difficult to almost impossible, but examples like Wyn Wiley seem to run contrary to that belief. Wiley is a very successful 21-year-old photographer, and in the Lincoln Nebraska TEDxYouth talk above, he blows minds by sharing his incredibly optimistic and inspirational world view.

Pursuing a career doing something you love can be a terrifying thing, and so we often look to the people who have "made it" in our field as sources of inspiration. We see the work of a Heisler, Hobby or Arias, and it helps us to push through when times get tough, as they inevitably do in any pursuit.

And if, once in a while, we get the chance to hear these successful people to talk about how exactly they made it, and what it takes to be a successful photographer (or anything really), then we've gotten really lucky. In the video above we get exactly that, from eight of the world's best known and most successful photographers.

Remember that tiny Lomo-inspired fisheye camera we featured back in February? It turns out there's actually a market for that camera, and the gadget's creator is now reaping the rewards as orders for the gadget have been pouring in.

One year ago today I took a photograph that would change my life. A single frame turned my whole world upside down, and brought on a storm of media attention, praise, criticism, confusion, wonder, and doubt. After one hell of a ride this past year, I think today is a good day to finally tell this photo's story...

Instagram is holding onto its place as the darling of the mobile photo sharing world. After adding a whopping …

Here’s a pretty inspiring video that poses a simple question: “how bad do you want it”? It’s from motivational …

Earlier this year we saw the launch of two search engines -- Stolen Camera Finder and GadgetTrak Serial Search -- that help find stolen cameras by searching photos on the web for the serial numbers. The idea is neat, but no one knew whether it would actually help recover stolen gear or not. Turns out it does work.

If you look at the Top 100 Movies chart in the iTunes Store, …