Making money from your passion is one of the greatest feelings ever. People around you start respecting your work and as time goes, you start getting more and more offers and invitations to take part in various projects. At that point, I see two mistakes a lot of people make. First of all, they are accepting all the photography offers even they don't want to work on that project or they are not yet that confident and skillful. Secondly, they don't know how to price their work and mostly end up underpricing their effort. After a while, you'll be bored shooting something you are not interested in even though you are well paid. And of course, not every time you’ll have free reign to do everything you want. Every photographer's dream is to start selling prints of their own work which they are proud of and passionate about.
Here is a story how it all happened. As on any other Thursday, I brought my camera with me to the center of Prague to take some street shots for a couple of hours. Over the years I developed my own style in approaching people on the street while taking photos of them. First of all, I only take candid photographs as they are more natural to me, especially in street photography. I'm just walking until I see something or someone, that really catches my eye, then I come right in front of them and start taking photos of them from around a fifty-centimetre distance. I never ask for permission, because people posing is never as natural as I want. Yes, of course, with this approach, I get a taste of someone’s knuckles occasionally and I’ve gotten into several serious conversations with lawyers. Once in a while people are really nice about it, they ask politely if I can delete the picture. But I'm inexorable and I know my rights and they can't do anything about it. For this kind of street photography, you need to overcome your fear of interacting with strangers and the fear of getting attacked. Anyway, I was walking down the street when I saw two tall men standing and smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk. The reason why they actually caught my eye was that they were pretty nicely dressed. I literally ran towards the older one and started taking portraits of him. I snapped around four or five pictures. Right after I was a little worried about the other guy, who was much younger and he looked tough, but I kept taking photos. The younger man turned to me and he asked me what I was doing, so I answered bluntly, I was taking photos. Later he wanted to see the photos, so I showed him some of them on the screen of my camera. We started a pleasant conversation and it turned out that he was the son of the older man. He pointed on the jewelry store, which was right next to us and he told me to come over tomorrow because he wants to buy a print.
Here is a story how it all happened. As on any other Thursday, I brought my camera with me to the center of Prague to take some street shots for a couple of hours. Over the years I developed my own style in approaching people on the street while taking photos of them. First of all, I only take candid photographs as they are more natural to me, especially in street photography. I'm just walking until I see something or someone, that really catches my eye, then I come right in front of them and start taking photos of them from around a fifty-centimetre distance. I never ask for permission, because people posing is never as natural as I want. Yes, of course, with this approach, I get a taste of someone’s knuckles occasionally and I’ve gotten into several serious conversations with lawyers. Once in a while people are really nice about it, they ask politely if I can delete the picture. But I'm inexorable and I know my rights and they can't do anything about it. For this kind of street photography, you need to overcome your fear of interacting with strangers and the fear of getting attacked. Anyway, I was walking down the street when I saw two tall men standing and smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk. The reason why they actually caught my eye was that they were pretty nicely dressed. I literally ran towards the older one and started taking portraits of him. I snapped around four or five pictures. Right after I was a little worried about the other guy, who was much younger and he looked tough, but I kept taking photos. The younger man turned to me and he asked me what I was doing, so I answered bluntly, I was taking photos. Later he wanted to see the photos, so I showed him some of them on the screen of my camera. We started a pleasant conversation and it turned out that he was the son of the older man. He pointed on the jewelry store, which was right next to us and he told me to come over tomorrow because he wants to buy a print.
So here is the photo that I picked to be printed. I would say it’s a pretty decent portrait. When I was photographing the old man I was really focused on fitting him into the frame. I was also concentrated on the background as I wanted it to be as clean as possible. Another important thing was the angle from which I was capturing him because of the light that fell on his skin. It made a really nice shadow on the left side of his face. When you are taking a portrait of someone, you always want to focus on expressing their personality and character through photography as it is the most powerful and essential thing. The day after I printed a 30 x 40 photograph on matt paper and successfully sold it to the guy in the jewelry store for $70. And that is how I sold my first ever print.
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