Ok, let's do this now. Again don't take it too seriously, more like a fun experiment. We will try to determine your best fit in photo-industry based on the characteristics of your creative process. I will need a volunteer and everyone else can follow typing the answers on your phone. Great, what's your name? "Kira" Great!
First question, inspiration: do you have a few themes you revisit again and again or do you pick up and let go of inspiration easily? "Easily" Ok.
Do you like to work on your own ideas or help others to bring to life their ideas? "My own".
Temp. Do you like to work at a project for a long time or to work on something new each week? "New"
Model - do you care more about personality or physical appearance? "Personality"
Do you know a lot about fashion, or not much? Can you name 5 different shades of red lipstick or there's red and pink? "I guess I can"
Finally what about post-production, are you comfortable outsourcing retouch and even selection? "I can outsource" Great!
So here we have this several scenarios (there's more, I only put the ones I am familiar with).
Grants-Awardards-Crowdfunding is more artistic path, you basically work like all the other artists and fund yourself like the other artist - applying for grants and awards, launching crowdfunding campaign
Magazines-Brands-Personas - you basically shoot editorials, submit them to magazines and these editorials find you clients - brands, beauty salons or personas like designer, book author or public speaker.
Own studio as an enterprise - you are providing a service, you have a studio and you try to photograph as many people as possible, when all you time-slots are occupied, you hire another person, then open more studios and so on
Commercial gallery - you are represented by a gallery when people can purchase your art. You need to know a bit what's in trend, but your dealer tries to build a market for you. That's a good path, but a long one, first 5-10 years you will need to support yourself with something else.
Agency Representation-Bigger brands - it's a very good path financially, but you feel a little bit like a cog in a huge machine. You come on set, the model is ready, she is directed by artistic director, the light is handled bu technician, choosing a picture and post-production is also not up to you. At least at first.
Blog-Coahing-Public Speaking - it's a bit more teaching then photography, but you need to be good and have experience to teach
Photostocks - You create the pictures on your won and then sell them to companies through specialized website. A good way to earn money if you are into marketing as well as photography and if you can adopt quickly
Wedding-Pregnency-Love Story - this is a good model especially is you are good with people. You start with relatively small assignment - love story, and then you do wedding for this couple, then you do pregnancy photos, then children's pictures, and so on. You can also get a good referral by producing worth-showing wedding album and printing some photos big for couple's home. Here the photography is just one side, you also need to be their photographer, get them.
Music and celebrity - here you need both photography and fashion and people skill, but this path can be a very cool one, with a very interesting life.
Let's consider these two in connection to our test. If you are grants-awards-crowdfunding photographer, you will need to undertake ambitious projects and hence they need to mean a lot to you, you definitely need to work on your own original idea to be considered and you need to be able to stick with it for months. You can have different approach to choosing models, depending on your aesthetics, you don't need to know a lot about fashion and you need to show only end result (you can not send 100 images to award committee and say why don't you pick one you would like to consider for a prize).
Weddings-pregnancy-lovestories are quite the opposite. You need to pick up inspiration easily depending on the couple, be good in both suggesting fun ideas and listening to their input. Pace can be different - the longest cycle I did for a wedding is 7 months, the shortest for love story - 3 days. Model - you need to develop personal connection, it's half of your work. You don't need to know fashion so much, and you need to let them have their pick for final images - sometimes the things they look at are something you would never think of and one guest's face could be more important when picking the photos then cool composition.
Ok, I think that for you (Kira) this one would be good, the second one. What are you doing at the moment? "I am actually in film production, but I will consider what you said with attention" Great:)
Ok, here it is for you again in one table: