Damned If You Do; Damned If You Don't

My photography hobby is a great one, but I've wanted it to pay for itself, or at least help offset the costs. Generally speaking, I have a lower-end DSLR, but it is adequate for most of my needs. Obviously, I'd like to have a better camera, but I figure that's in the future. I'm happy with my Canon 400D (otherwise known as a Canon EOS Rebel XTi).

One thing that is in the back of my mind is that eventually, this camera will need to be replaced. When that time comes, I'd like to upgrade to a better camera. So I'm looking for ways to get this hobby to pay for itself, or at least make a little bit of money that I can set aside for photographic expenditures in the future (lenses, or even a second camera). A second camera would be nice, but I'll definitely need to buy a camera when this one wears out. And it will wear out.

To date, I've made no money (zero) with the hobby. It has had it's health benefits, as far as it has gotten me out walking more, which is a good healthy thing to do. However, that isn't going to buy a new camera when the time comes.

I photograph whatever I am interested in. I've done some nature shots, landscapes, architectural, wildlife, cars, and sports. Most of my photography has been shooting hockey. I was the official photographer for the Tulsa Rampage junior hockey team this last season, but they are a charity and so this was a non-compensated position. I also shoot the Tulsa Oilers hockey team, representing Pro Hockey News with media credentials (which gets me into the games for free). I've even written a little bit in addition to the photography.

All along, I've gotten static from some of the other photographers because in the past, they had gotten paid for their efforts, but with the tighter economy, the teams weren't paying for their services, and instead were getting "free stuff" from a few of us that were shooting for the fun of it. However, how long can you shoot for the fun of it, if you're not getting enough to pay for your equipment.

So I've felt the need to be paid. I've felt pressure to be paid. However, when I finally got around to setting up a site to allow me to sell some of my photos, I was immediately challenged (on facebook) for not paying the CHL licensing fee. This guy claimed that he (and others) had paid and he felt that I should as well. When I asked who to contact about the licensing fee and how much it was, he clammed up. This makes me doubt if he was ever really licensed to sell CHL-related hockey photos. Either way, I felt like they were blasting me for doing free hockey photography, and then when I set about selling my work, they blasted me again. I felt like it was "damned if you do, and damned if you don't".

Regardless of the external pressures to not give my photographic services away, I still feel the need to be paid. So how do I go about getting this hobby to pay for itself? How do I get paid?

I covered a Muay Thai mixed martial arts fighting event recently, and noticed that the official photographer was doing something a little bit different from what I'd envisioned for selling my photos. Rather than selling individual photos, he was selling a DVD with all of his photos from that event on them. He was pricing the DVD at $25, which seemed like a cheap deal for all those photos, but it was more money than I'm getting now. I e-mailed him about it and he said that most people were just wanting to get the free photos for their websites and/or facebook pages, and that selling individual photos was more trouble than it was worth, and that although he only sells a couple of DVDs per event, that it's more money than he was getting otherwise, and he still has the option of selling larges prints for anyone that might want them.

I thought it was a good idea. I'm not sure yet how it might work for me, but I know that during hockey season, the parents, grand parents, aunts and uncles of all those junior hockey players want photos and seem to be willing to pay for them. I should've taken advantage of this last season, but I didn't do that. I'm set up for next season, and am figuring that I might consider that DVD option along with individual prints. Either way, it's more money than I'm getting now.

I've always avoided wedding photography in the past, although I've done a couple of weddings. Generally speaking, weddings are high pressure because you have to get it right. You can't shoot it again "tomorrow" if things don't go right. At least with digital photography, you have a clue at the time of the shoot, whereas in the past with film photography, it was a shot in the dark as to whether you were going to have good results.
As much as I don't like wedding photography, I think that I'm going to pursue it in the near future, as this might be a way to get some money. If I do a wedding per month, that might be enough to pay for the hobby.

Looking At Some of My Photos

From time to time, I go back over my flickr site to view the various photos I've taken. Most of my favorites are sports related, but I have a few favorites of other types as well.











I think there's a common theme here. These happen to be some of my most popular with other people as well. At another type, I'll try to post some of my wildlife and landscape images that I'm proud of.

Trek Yourself Widget

Oklahoma Aquarium

I went to the Oklahoma Aquarium (located in Jenks, Oklahoma) yesterday. I'm happy with the photos I took, but was a bit rushed. I was there while waiting on repairs on my truck. While waiting on the repairs, I walked around town and ended up at the aquarium.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

The Colonoscopy

It's a subject that feels very private, embarassing to talk about, and so you don't read much about the subject, except for the medical definitions; the colonoscopy. I reached the age (and passed it a little) of when they recommend that all men start getting this procedure. I'd heard about it years earlier and so I was not looking forward to this. I wont say I was scared, but I wasn't looking forward to it; and the fact that I couldn't find anything from someone that had it, I was convinced that it was going to be a horrible experience.

To put it in laymen's terms, they run a tiny video camera up your butt so that they can check for any signs of cancer or things that are pre-cancerous. Is that embarassing and graphic enough of a description?

It's no wonder that no one wants to talk about this. They just want to get it over. And of course, that is what causes the "fear of the unknown". I was convinced that this would be a horrible experience.

Rather than to go into much detail, I just say that the procedure was pretty much nothing. You wont remember it. They give you 2 drugs; one for pain and the other that causes amnesia. What I remember is laying down on a table, seeing the doctor for about 10 seconds, turning around to get comfortable; and the next I remember is being dressed already and my wife asking me if I was ready to leave.

There never was any pain. The most pain I had was in getting the IV in my arm. It was so cold that day and so the nurse had a difficult time finding a vein in my hand, and because the preparations for the procedure require no drinking from midnight on that day, I was a bit dehydrated, which makes finding a vein difficult. So they had to do it in my arm. I hate needles anyway, so this was not fun. It was necessary and I kept thinking that if this is the worst of it, then I'm okay. It's better than having cancer.

I can honestly say that the worst part of the whole thing is actually done the day before. At noon the previous day, I had to start drinking this stuff they gave me for starting the colon cleansing. It was a cherry flavored drink, but as far as I was concerned, it was like drinking cherry flavored power steering fluid.

After drinking that mess, I mixed up a drink they wanted me to have at 18:00. They recommended that I drink it cold (because it tastes better, they said), so I mixed it up earlier and had it in the refrigerator. At 18:00, I started drinking that stuff. I had to drink 8 ounces of the stuff every 15 to 30 minutes (4 drinks of 8 ounces each).

I can tell you this drink was nasty. It tasted like it had already been through me once.

Nasty!!!!

And then at 21:00, I had to drink another bunch of this stuff, 8 ounces every 15 to 30 minutes, 4 times. So I had 32 ounces that I had to drink at 21:00, and another 32 ounces that I started at 18:00.

This stuff was nasty. I could barely get it down. However, this was the most effective laxative I've ever seen. It worked. By 23:00, I was pretty well cleaned out. I drank lots of water. During that time, could only have clear liquids, so I was careful about what I could drink, but had no food from about noon on.

And then after midnight, I had no food or water until the procedure. That's where I messed up on scheduling. I should've scheduled the procedure at 8:00 or earlier, because then I wouldn't have been in such agony all day wanting to eat or drink. My procedure wasn't until 13:30.

My recommendation is to schedule a colonoscopy for early Monday morning, that way the preparation stuff can be done on Sunday and not require two days off work.

Oh. I forgot to mention the fun part (if you can call it that). They pump you full of CO2 so that they can get the camera in easily and see inside. However, afterwards, they have to make sure the gas is out before they send you home, so while you're still recovering they take you to "the fart room". I'm told the farts are award winning as far as volume and length, but because of the drugs, I barely remember one time. I wish I'd had a recording device though, because it was a good one.

Now, this story wouldn't be complete without mentioning that after this whole thing was over, it wasn't so bad. The worst part was the preparation, not the procedure itself. And the good thing for most everyone else, is that afterwards I found out that there is an alternative to the junk I had to drink. They have pills!!!!

Are you kidding me?

That doctor knew this was available and made me drink that nasty stuff?

Never again!! It's the pills for me next time. And if there is ever a way I can force some of this nasty bile down that doctor's throat, I plan on doing so. I was so angry when I found out that there was an alternative to the torture that I went through having to drink that nasty stuff.

Anyway, I got a "clean" bill of health. They found nothing even remotely suspicious so I wont have to have another colonoscopy for a few years, and I do plan on insisting on the pills rather than the drink.

I hope I haven't left out any important aspects of this, but mostly I just wanted to get across to anyone that will have to go through the procedure for their first time, that it really is nothing to worry about. The laxative and not being able to eat was the worst part of it. Better scheduling, and the pills instead of the drink, would make this whole thing a better experience.
And of course, having the colonoscopy for early detection is a smart thing to do.

The Illusion

A few years ago, I worked for a company that appeared to be a real financial opportunity. Everyone thought so. However, I looked at the overhead costs and never felt that way. I felt uneasy about it and often made suggestions for projects that would increase efficiency and lower this overhead. Management always rejected these ideas, feeling that they were unnecessary. When I explained that we were operating at a loss; that it costed us more to offer our services to customers than the market would be willing to pay for, their resposne was "we'll make it up in volume".

Make it up in volume?

Are you kidding me?

All that means is that we go deeper and deeper into debt and only appear to be doing well. They, like many companies, could do some creative accounting and put things on the books so that it would appear that with our ever increasing revenues, that the company was strong and had a great future.

They made it look as if even though we weren't profitable, that with increased revenues, we soon would be. And of course, it was all an illusion.

That company, in the wake of the realities revealed with Enron, soon went Chapter 11, just as Enron did. Hundreds of thousands of 401(k) plans took the brunt of the losses. It was a horrible thing. It was a preventable thing.

All that said, this is the same thing that we are doing with our economy. And the saddest part is, the people in charge, Democrat and Republican alike, have no clue that they are going down the same paths. In fact, they plan on using trillions of your dollars to make the problem worse. Essentially, they hope to "make it up in volume".

Cutting past the shell game that they've turned this all into, the fact is, it all boils down to spending more than you bring in. All roads regarding this economic disaster lead back to spending more than you make.

Sub-prime mortgages; bottom line is that people were buying homes that couldn't afford them. As long as we were "making it up in volume", in essence, keeping the collective spending going, the illusion kept everyone happy and things could continue on. Underneath though, the fact is that it was an illusion and the money wasn't there. The value in the economy wasn't there. It was a myth.

And contrary to just blaming all the Wall Street guys, the fact is that these bad loans were packaged and sold as mortgage backed securities. Those securities were bought in good faith on Wall Street, as they were valued according to rules that Congress set up. Congress allowe these worthless pieces of paper to be valued as if the mortgages were those of people able to actually make the payments. Those worthless pieces of paper made victims of a lot of Wall Street guys too. They bought paper that everyone should've known they were bad, yet they were valued according to "the rules".

People say that regulation would've fixed this problem, but they're wrong. It might've fixed some of the problem, but the fact is that regulations existed, but just didn't apply to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Government wanted them unfettered by regulation, and now they're blaming those that want to deregulate, as the ones that created the problem. The fact is, most of those in government are guilty even if they claim they're not.

People can point at the business men and say "greed". That greed was the issue. Well of course it was, but it was greed on every front. There were people in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that got huge bonuses for makingt hose ridiculous mortgage deals. However, they did so from encouragement from Congress, who were greedy for re-election and they didn't care that people couldn't afford those homes. It was all about votes. The greed was with government. The greed was with the people taking out mortgages knowing there was no way they could pay.

The government was greedy in another way, with overall spending, spending so much more than they brought in with tax revenues, and as a result, rather than to cut spending, just printed more money to pay for their ridiculous spending. Their spending was for things that would get them re-elected; that gave them power. There was greed there too.

And all that government spending ... the printing of money to pay for it ... just devalued the dollars that were in your pocket, and throughout our entire economy. It made the economy overall less valuable, although no one (except a few of us) realized it.

The "experts" on economic affairs, were schooled on the theory that debt didn't matter, and that with a consumer driven economy, that all they had to do was to keep consumer spending up, and things would be okay. But they never stopped to realize that this was still just another way of saying "we'll make it up in volume". You could never keep this thing going forever. There would come a day of reckoning.

During the Clinton Administration (and I'm not blaming Clinton) they reformulated the way that calculate the overall output of the economy (what we used to refer to as the GNP (Gross National Product). They came up with a new name the GDP, or Gross Domestic Product or the GDI (Gross Domestic Income) and with this new formula, was able to make everyone think that the economy was doing better than ever. Of course, no one considered that a part of this "new" economy was the DotCom bubble which burst in those years. That in itself, should've been a warning, as it showed that the Dot Coms were a false economy. How could people not see that a lot of the rest of the economy was built on false illusions as well?

Part of the calcuation for GDP includes government spending, including the spending into debt. So it's an indicator of output of our economy, when in reality, there's a major portion of the calculation that is actually losses. How can you be telling how strong your economy is by counting losses as value? There's no value in a loss. PERIOD. You can play with accounting rules and suggest depreciation and all sorts of creative accounting, but the bottom line is that a loss is a loss.

It is not a benefit. It is a loss. It is not a value, it is a liability. And that's what our economy has been built on.

So to try to remedy this most recent economic upheaval, the geniuses in government, still drunk with spending our money, wont admit that they might've been a part of the problem, want to spend more of our money, to try to get the economic spending machine (the consumers) to buying again. The theory is that if they can just restore consumer confidence, that they can get the charade moving again, and we'll be back in the mode of "making it up in volume" without having to pay attention to the fact that there is less and less value to the economy.

The spending the government is looking at, is in the trillions. It will essentially, devalue what money we have left, even more. So our economy will be worth even less than it is now, but people wont realize it because there'll be revenue flowing

in the economy. They will continue to calculate GDP and tell everyone "look, we fixed it". But they didn't fix it. They made it worse.

Geotagging Photos

Ever since I first heard about geotagging photos, I have been intrigued with the idea.  This was especially so after being on sites like flickr that allow you to associate each photo or a series of photos with a position on a map (geotagging).  The thing is, this association was being done manually by selecting a series of photos, and then placing a link on a map position.

I kept reading that eventually, cameras would have built-in GPS units capable of doing this geotagging automatically.  In addition, I found that the EXIF data that is available in most jpg files include longitude and latitude, although most are blank because this information isn't available unless the EXIF is manually edited.

Well, I recently bought a Amod AGL3080 GPS Data Logger.  This little device is only a couple of inches in size.  It's light and inexpensive.  I clip it to my camera bag, but some photographers clip it to their belt.  It is a GPS unit without any screen or read-out capability.  It merely makes a GPS log that can be later retrieved via a USB interface, to get the logs onto your computer.  Then with the help of some software provided with the unit, the photos will be matched up to the longitude and latitudes from the log, via their timestamps; this works if you make sure to set the time in your camera within reasonable accuracy.  The software will make a reasonable approximation and match with the GPS log.

I read about the process and figured that it was too good to be true, but it isn't.  It actually works and it's pretty seamless.  The only thing that would be simpler is if it were built in and plugged the EXIF inside the camera.  Until that day, this process is working fine for me.