A Web Visitor Writes. I am starting out in professional photography…

This article is the first in a series of five that will provide informative and (likely) heavily opinionated suggestions on how to succeed in photography. I received an email through one of my websites. The web visitor asked: "I am starting out in professional photography and admire your work. I was wondering if you had any advice." I've taught photography to many including nine-year old (underprivileged) children. BTW: they make the best students of the art and I'll talk about that more in future articles. Narrowing "it" down to a list of 10 or more things you'd want to do to succeed in photography was a fun challenge for me. "Sure," I thought to myself. "I'll just summarize several decades of dedication and commitment to my craft with a few bullet points. No problem!"

I replied to the sender with my carefully drawn game plan for success. Sent the email. Felt lifted with excitement. Poled my email client for new messages and THERE IT WAS: "Mail Delivery Subsystem: Message Not Delivered." The reply email from the web visitor was invalid. I spent a long time thinking about how to respond to this guy. My heart sunk. Then, I realized that this effort was NOT wasted. That, in fact, it was the work of a higher power calling upon me to share this divine wisdom with the masses. - OR - the guy who made the request for my help just doesn't do well with entering his valid email address correctly. Either way... let's get started (although, and this is between you and I, I think it is the higher power thing going on here. Besides, that gives me a bit more of a creative buzz.)

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