Just some thoughts....and a bit of history

So here's my story for the last 5 years. I started shooting stock photography for Rubberball Productions in 2004 right after graduating from BYU. I started on a good salary and moved fairly quickly into a bigger salary+a percentage of my sales each quarter. After about 18 months into the job the real money started coming in. Life was great! I did what I loved, I came home after work at a decent hour, spent a good amount of time with my beautiful family. I had made it!....or had I? hmmm, not so fast Mikey. It wasn't long before the economy came crashing down, I had a two year limit that I could receive royalties on my images that was fast approaching, sales in general took a nose dive, and my new images that I was working my tail off to create were not getting posted, so the number of images I was getting a royalty on was depleting quickly. On top of that, I was asked to take a significant pay cut. This is what I call the perfect storm. It wasn't long before lay-offs started to happen. I knew that my days were numbered as an employee at Rubberball Productions. What was I going to do with my career. All I knew was photography, after all, I made the decision to be a photographer as a junior in High school and haven't looked back since. I just couldn't see myself doing anything else! So it was a natural move for me to simply keep shooting stock...despite the fact that it is a very difficult industry to make a living with. It is now the beginning of April. I was officially laid off mid July last year, and I have shot about 1,200 images, about 500 of them are live and starting to make sales. Being on my own is very difficult. I had a team of about 5 very talented colleagues that made the things possible. Now I do most of the pre, post, and production on my own with my wonderful wife, Cindy using every free minute she can conjure up to do the business end of things. She is also very good at keeping me on track. She even assists, and models from time to time. I couldn't do it with out her, no way, no how. Even though getting laid off was a very scary and difficult thing, I would never go back! It is 10 times more rewarding to produce an image and know that I own the copyrights, and can do what I want with that image. I love looking back at a shoot and knowing that, for better or worse, I own it!

Read this article by a great photographer, Jack Hollingsworth, who articulates much better than I can the tenacious spirit one must have in order to plow through the many obstacles in search of the few opportunities. Read it here.