![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.michaelclarkphoto.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/pdnedu_fall2011.jpg\" "\\"pdnedu_fall2011\\"")
A few months ago PDNedu approached ten professional photographers with a question, “What is the most important action you’ve taken in support of your photography business?” It is a big question. My answer was the following:<\/p>\nA few months ago PDNedu approached ten professional photographers with a question, “What is the most important action you’ve taken in support of your photography business?” It is a big question. My answer was the following:<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s hard to pinpoint one specific action that is (or was) most important. Throughout my career I\u2019ve always pursued personal projects that allow me to create the type of images I want to make. Because I\u2019m not on assignment when I shoot these images I have complete creative control with little or no pressure, and this allows me to experiment a lot. Hence, I\u2019m able to create images that do very well in the marketplace. And because my portfolio is full of this selfassigned work I end up getting paid commissions to shoot similar subjects, which is perfect because that\u2019s what I want to be shooting. It\u2019s the inspiration and experimentation from those self-assignments that helps me out on major projects when the pressure is on. Of course there\u2019s a lot that has gone into my career to make it what it is – much more than just shooting personal projects – but that is the foundation of my business. The rest is built on hard work, perseverance, passion, dumb luck and a lot of trial and error on the business side of things. Making top-notch images is just the first step of the process.”<\/em><\/p>\n The editors also included soundbites from nine other photographers including Stefan Chow, Matt & Agnes Hage,\u00a0Leesha Quigg , Mark Humphrey, Steve Simon, Doug Menuez, Ami Vitale,\u00a0Manjari Sharma and fellow adventure photographer Corey Rich. If you would like to read all of their responses go to PDNedu<\/a> or click here to download a high res PDF<\/a> of the article.\u00a0My thanks to PDNedu for including me in the mix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few months ago PDNedu approached ten professional photographers with a question, “What is the most important action you’ve taken in support of your photography business?” It is a big question. My answer was the following: “It\u2019s hard to pinpoint one specific action that is (or was) most important. Throughout my career I\u2019ve always pursued...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pp_embeds":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,5,28,18],"tags":[374,108,74],"class_list":["post-1117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorial","category-interview","category-marketing","category-news","tag-interview","tag-michael-clark-photography","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.michaelclarkphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.michaelclarkphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.michaelclarkphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.michaelclarkphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.michaelclarkphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.michaelclarkphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.michaelclarkphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.michaelclarkphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.michaelclarkphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.michaelclarkphoto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}