Reply To: "You Should Quit Your Day Job and Focus on Photography"

[fstopper89]

The photographer I occasionally 2nd shoot wedding for is not only a full-time engineer for a large company, but does a wedding almost every single weekend. I honestly don’t know how he does it. He has a handful of regular employees (my best friend was his head photographer for awhile until it got to be too much for her with having a full-time job as well, so now she does occasional work) and I am one of his few occasional fill-ins now. He usually does the editing for every wedding but sometimes has one of his employees do the editing. He can get a wedding done in 2 weeks. It’s nuts. Besides that, he has a family with two young children and they recently moved to a bigger city while he keeps an apartment in their former town where the photography studio is based out of, where he stays 2 days every week. He’s extremely successful with his business, and a very booked and sought-after photographer. I feel honored that he considers my skills to be equal to his standard and has offered me many more opportunities as an employee if I were willing to move three hours west but I’m not. Even with how successful his business is, he apparently still sees a need to maintain his other engineering job (which I’m sure pays a ton). I’m not sure if his wife works. It’s possible she doesn’t and takes care of the kids, so maybe he’s providing dual incomes for the family.