Spending Money

Being a photographer is not a cheap profession. I can't even focus all of my time on photography, I have a “real” job to cover most my expenses. I just recently came to realize that having illegal software was not something that I wanted to be associated with anymore. So after a long time using the trial version of Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom I could finally afford to make my first big software purchase. I would highly recommend giving both of these applications a try, they are very much a huge part of my photography. If you buy the two expensive applications together through Adobe.com you save exactly $125, which i definitely took advantage of.

My goal for the rest of the year is to be completely debt free (minus the student loan), and be able to afford to lease a brand new 2008 VW Jetta SE for 3 years. The main idea behind getting a car, would be the trunk, just so i can keep my gear safe, and out of sight. This is very important to me, especially since I currently have a 1990 Volvo 740 Turbo station wagon. Where you can see what I have from a mile away.

I plan on saving a lot of money by doing less of the things that I don't need to do. Unfortunately, I will occasionally do these things. No more expensive movie theaters, no more buying things that I will use just once. Selling expensive things/toys that I hardly use. This should be no problem, now that I have everything that I will need for my photography for the next few months (besides a really nice zoom lens, but that will come later in the year).

So, what's the plan now? You may ask, but this is about as good as I can answer.

I am planning on spending the next year working on my portrait and stock photography portfolio. I haven't really accomplished anything in the stock photography world. In fact, I have been denied many of times, and have unsuccessfully added no photographs to iStockPhoto to date, but at least this time i have made it past the qualification tests. I haven't gotten a chance to take too many stock photos, and have only submitted one. They are very picky, and the photograph i submitted had some visible sensor dust.

Which is mostly my fault, I should have cloned out the small yet faint black dot.

Stock photography is a trick. Especially when i have a hard time just being able to setup some sort of photo shoot with a friend! But hopefully this week will be a start with that. I am still enjoying my Nikon D300, and will hopefully continue to enjoy it as i get more used to the features that it offers.

I also convinced myself to get a Wacom Bamboo tablet. Wait, whoa! I know i was saying i was trying to save money, but it was only $67 through Amazon. It is a low end writing tablet used by a lot of photographers out there, and i have wanted one for as long as I have ever doodled on a pen and paper!