Trying out a career helps you discover if it's right for you. This week: photography
Photography is a career of contrasts. It can be high art, hard news or a matter of snapping celebrity cellulite. It can be highly lucrative, but, then again, you may not make a bean. Whatever way you look at it, though, photography is a highly competitive profession in which only the talented survive.
"It can be difficult to get into college to do photography," says Gerry O'Leary, an award-winning Dublin-based photographer who specialises in architectural images. "Most students in Ireland and the UK never actually make it into the profession after qualifying."
O'Leary, who is self-taught, says that only about half of the professionals working today studied photography at college.
If you're still reading after all that doom and gloom, it's also worth realising that there is always room for a talented newcomer. According to O'Leary, photography tends to choose you rather than the other way around. "If you feel a desire to open newspapers and magazines just to browse the images, if you're enthralled and excited by arresting images, if you love taking snaps from an early age - for me it was about 10 - and if you feel an unquenchable thirst to pursue this profession, regardless of financial reward, that's how you know."
Work experience doesn't have to be arranged formally. O'Leary advises simply to start taking photographs. "You will only learn by doing," he says. "Find a mentor, another photographer, and once you have established contact you can e-mail your images for a critique."
He advises looking at the Irish Professional Photographers Association website (www.irishphotographers.com) and maybe even finding a little work.
"If possible, get a job assisting your local photographer on Saturdays. This is the ultimate in learning the art of taking pictures," he says.
Talent isn't the only requirement if you want to be a photographer. You need to be good in business, and if you are photographing people you need to have good communication skills and a pleasant disposition. If you can do it, the rewards are substantial.
"The greatest satisfaction is self-fulfilment," says O'Leary. He also cites as advantages the fact that many photographers are self-employed and that, if they are successful, they can earn comfortable livings.
So the message is clear. Whether you want to follow in David Bailey's footsteps, and specialise in pop culture, or in Tom Stoddart's, and specialise in conflicts, you should get snapping now.
But if photography is really for you, you probably won't have much of a choice. It will have chosen you already.
