The life of a career changer is not easy. That’s what I’ve experienced during the last year. As I mentioned in a previous blog-post I had and have to pay off some debts for my education and photo-equipment and it is not possible to conjure a fully running business out of nothing. So I still have to earn my main-income as a social worker, I kicked my second job as a Taxi-driver and I do my best to build up my business slowly but steady beside my regular job.

I’ve read lots of books about photography and photography business during the last year and realized that a successful business requires much more than being able to take good pictures. Things of importance are:

• love and passion for your work
• believe in yourself
• your own unique style
• business skills (the book “Best Business Practices for Photographers” by John Harrington helped me a lot)
• good equipment (the better the business, the easier to invest in high-quality equipment)
• time and patience
• knowing what you want
• good communication skills
• the ability to structure the things you’re doing

… the list goes on and on. These are just a few things which are important to mention.

One of the points which troubles me most is time… sometimes I wish a day would have 48hrs.

Sometimes it’s frustrating to depend on a regular income as a social worker and have to burnish my income with photographic assignments. I wish it would be other way around.

But there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel:

During the last year the number of assignments increased and if everything goes alright, it works out in future. On one hand it makes me unhappy to have not enough time for photography, on the other hand I’m lucky to have a regular job which I still like. Due  to I don’t depend on economic success in photography I’m able to work on my own projects in times of no assignments.

Street-photography for example is one of my passions which rarely brings money as long as you’re not a well-known photographer …

… an assignment I really loved to do was with the band ‘Eurasia’ for example. The shooting happend in July and it was a great pleasure for me to work with these musicians.

Finally, I would like to quote from an e-mail newsletter I received today:

Our industry is in a slump, and I am not referring to the assignment market shrinking or to the lower fees being paid. I am referring to the ongoing negative attitudes and actions that many photographers exhibit daily regarding their potential clients, each other, and our industry.

Now is the time to stop ALL of the pessimistic behavior, the low-balling, and the seemingly constant complaining that permeates on- line list serves, blogs, and daily conversations. This negativity is a poison that continues to fester and infuse our industry and your life with misery.

We as individuals can indeed take leadership and turn our attitudes around. If we choose not to do so, it will be us, not our clients, or royalty free images, or the Getty’s of the world who will be responsible for the demise of our industry.

- ©  Selina Maitreya Full Article here.

In consequence of the high costs of my photography training last winter and investing in quite expensive equipment my financial situation is not the best. The travel to California, India and Nepal from May to August wasn’t cheap as well. Even though I completed some photographic jobs I had to look for another steady income. So I decided to get a taxi – driver license because this is a way to earn quick money without being bound on a fixed job. I started driving taxi last week and it is an experience which would be worth to start a new blog about the things happening there… but I don’t want to get lost in writing weblogs.  My main focus for the coming month lies on a new project which will be long-term based. I’ll document the life of drug users in my city.

Really good work relating documentary-photography about the junke-scene was done by Jessica Dimmock.  She published the book “The Ninth Floor“. Do not miss the impressive multimedia slide show of “The Ninth Floor”!

Since I’m  working with addicts (personally I prefer the term “users”) for years, it is my personal concern to document their lifestyle and to give them a voice through my pictures.

To claim my blog @ Technorati I need to put this code here: J7JF4VMGZY9X

This is my friend Sirish from Kathmandu. He is, so to say, the father of my homepage.

When I was in Kathmandu this year in June/ July together with my girlfriend we sat together with Sirish at Snowmans Cafe near Freakstreet and we were talking about photography. I mentioned that I have a Photoshelter website (now the archive section of benowhere – photo.com) and that I would like to have a custom made site earlier or later. Sirish suggested that he would like to design the website for me.

A few days later we met in his flat and started talking about the concept. I wanted to have a simple site, not overloaded, without click-able gadgets and other confusing stuff. We were talking about the photo on the main page as well and Sirish suggested to take the Portrait of Jakob which I shot a few years ago. As Sirish I like the expression of  Jacob’s eyes which are focussed to something which was fascinating him at this moment – and as conscious observing is one of the essences of photography I thought that this photo is the right one for my homepage. After lots of nice meetings at Sirish’s flat and a lot of Skype calls to his best friend Kebin who lives and works in the United States and who was responsible for uploading the homepage and giving it it’s final shape the page went online at the beginning of August.

I was already back in Austria and the plan was that we manage the site from three continents – I submit the content and Sirish and Kebin are realizing the appearance of the site… But soon I learned that cooperation through three different time-zones via Skype and e-mail is a thing which does not work well. Things like SEO (search engine optimization) and special wishes of  the “look and feel” of the website are too complicated being discussed via www. It takes too much time as well to wait for e-mail replies or calls via Skype to talk about everything.

So I decided to find someone close to my home who can manage and design my site . I asked my friend Klaus, a professional musician,  by whom his homepage was designed. He recommended Erwin Vindl who plays with Klaus in a band project called “Comin and Goin” and who is a lot into photography and webdesign (have a look on his Flickr site and his homepage).

At the beginning of September I met Erwin for the first time and we were evaluating the site. There was a lot of work to do in the background (SEO optimization and lots of other stuff), the weblog had to be set up and I wanted some additional categories on the site like multimedia and panoramas. During the redesigning – process I also found out that i want the homepage to have in a continuous design and that I prefer black background to the previous gray background. At least Erwin redesigned everything step by step and also rewrote the site from php to html. The outcome is what you see here at the moment and I’m quite satisfied.

I want to say thanks’ again to all the above mentioned guys for doing such a nice work!

A picture is worth a 1000 words. – this sentence might not be new but it might explain the reason for the fascination of photography. This blog will be about my passion for photography, current, past and future projects I’m working on and it will contain some of my thoughts about photography as well. At the moment I’m still mainly working on my website and beside that I do some small assignments. Behind me lies a three-month travel to California, India and Nepal and a vacation in Croatia with my daughter Maya.  I took a one year break of my job as a social worker in a drug-addicts drop-in centre so I was able to do my master degree in photography.
My website is still under construction and my portfolio in progress. The work you see there at the moment is a cross section of my past work specialised on the theme ‘Life’. My preferred objects are humans and their lifestyles but I also love taking pictures of architecture, landscapes or play around with  HDR (high dynamic range technique). My homepage as well as my skills are under development as they will be throughout my lifelong photographic journey…