Mike Grandmaison – Making a Living as a Nature Photographer

on August 4, 2011 at 2:02 pm

“MAKING A LIVING AS A NATURE PHOTOGRAPHER” is a “dream job”! Success in these extremely competitive times however is not guaranteed. It requires a great deal of Passion, Practice, Patience and Persistence, my “Four Ps for Success”. Excellent, technical photo skills are not sufficient to earn enough income to raise a family and create a retirement fund; it also requires good business acumen and marketing savvy.

You will spend a good deal of time exploring the outdoors, capturing “grand landscapes” as well as more intimate views. In these hands-on, practical sessions, Mike will share his approaches to photographing different subjects under various light conditions and offer tips and tricks along the way. You will consider the appropriate and necessary tools or equipment for the job at hand, whether it’s capturing a bird in flight, correcting for “falling trees”, or dealing with a high contrast lighting situation. He will invite students to look through his viewfinder and offer advice on exposure, histograms and composition. You will discuss the entire gamut of capturing, downloading and saving images in the field. Mike sold out last year and he is well on his way to selling out his class in 2011.

Back in the lab, you will translate the “vision” captured on that 12 to 25 MB RAW file of 0s and 1s. Mike will demonstrate his workflow in processing digital RAW files using the “software tools” While it’s true there exists a plethora of photographers with great equipment, what separates the “pros” from the “enthusiastic snappers” is precisely the consistent, high quality of those processed files.

Once those “masterpieces” are processed, what next? The next challenge is finding someone to lease those images for a sufficient fee to continue pursuing the passion of creating images. You will delve into the realm of today’s “stock photography market” and discuss the business and marketing approaches that have shaped Mike’s success as a freelance nature photographer. Finally, he will share his insight into the process of making a photographic book, from conception to printing, using examples from his last 4 coffee table books.