If you want to be thoroughly disheartened by the prospects for staying a pro photographer in these times, you could read Vincent LaForet's blog entry on the dismal state of the industry. However, if you tend to be highly anxious, you might want to skip it. My normal tendency is to treat such prognostications as an existential threat, and therefore, panic. Whereupon Robin has to talk me off the ledge, about every other day. It was like that back in 2002-2004, when a lot of my colleagues got out of the business during the slowdown after 9/11.
This time? I'm not freaking out. I seem to be nesting. Or cleaning the nest. I appear to have a great need for order lately.
We're going to be OK through this. Although my income for the year is down about 30%, we have savings. Robin has a counter-cyclical business—everybody's going back to therapy now. We have no debt. I'm cutting back on expenses (no 5D Mark II for me this year, and I might skip Photo Lucida), I'm eating lunch out less and making my coffee at home.
What I'm doing is stripping and rewaxing the studio floor. It hasn't been done this thoroughly since I moved in, 15 years ago. I'm making order where I can, since the world otherwise has so clearly gone off the rails.
A business model that only works with no debt is a scary proposition, however, I find myself in the same position. My business could not carry any major debt and I could not draw enough extra from the business to pay an "average" Denver metro area house mortgage since the loss of a twenty plus year advertising client. It makes me wonder how viable commercial photography is as a career. By the way, I am also "cleaning" more as administrative work avoidance than anything else. Must be a creative thing!
Posted by: Bruce Nall | November 19, 2008 at 05:24 PM
A guy who has only known success and is in a charmed position proclaims that the industry is in trouble. What, after three or four years as a freelancer....
Need a little bit more experience and depth before I go believing a newbie like Vincent.
Posted by: Can't Stand the weather | November 20, 2008 at 07:50 AM