Who are U?

dreamless

I've always wondered how many people here on dgrin (smugmug) actually make their living in Photography so I thought I would ask.

Do you make your living in Photography or are you just starting out, would you like to one day or is it just a hobby? If you make your living some other way please share.

I guess it would make sense for me to start. I do not make a living at photography, I'm new to it and eventually I would like to make enough money at to support my hobby/habit.

I make a nice living as a Systems Engineer, meaning, I travel all over the United States installing computer equipment for companies...servers, storage area networks, etc. I also do services related work like Windows Server installs, VMware (virtualization), email servers, etc. I've been in this industry to the last 12 years professionally and doing related computer stuff most of my life. It's fun and in my current job I get to travel a lot (sometimes to nice places). I also earn a lot of travel rewards that makes traveling personally a lot cheaper.

I think this will help us newbies to get to know people around here a bit better and I hope everyone will join in. Tell us about U!

Thanks

ShepsMom

My full time income is from my real job in a mortgage industry. My photography is more of a gig i get here and there. I make some money, but nothing i can live on comfortably, regardless, i treat it as business, and eventually would like to make it a full time opportunity, or may be, a supplemental income when i retire. I do not advertise, and really should be, right now, it is all word of a mouth. It's scary really, when i type "photographer" in my local area, there are about 25698 photographers. My town isn't that big, about 300K when not in season. Tough competition, i tell ya!

jogle

I work in the film industry at a visual effects company, I'm a 3d modelling lead and although we have a couple of dedicated staff photographers, a small part of my job involves taking photos onset, shooting reference and sometimes in the studio. My credits if you are interested.

But mostly I shoot for myself, being a visual/artistic job, there are a lot of very good photographers from all over the world here and we push, encourage and colaborate with each other on an internal list. We've held a couple of exhibitions and many of us do photography gigs in our tiny amounts of spare time. Also a few of us make a trickle of play money from stock. Being in New Zealand there are always a steady supply of stunning scenic shots.