Mike Silversides Photography

Mike Silversides Photography is finally a go. I’ve been thinking about becoming a professional photographer almost as long as I’ve been taking pictures. I was all set to get started earlier this spring. But the unexpected expense of buying a new car, and the suggestion of my wife to come up with a business plan, has really slowed things down. And it probably going to take awhile to really get going, but this is the start.

My current system is Minolta Maxxum based, and I’ve had it just about as long as the Maxxum line has been around. In fact I still have my original Maxxum 7000 kicking around. Sometime soon I'm planning to get a new digital SLR, but I learned to take pictures with my 7000, and I have thousands of slides filed away.

My plan had been for me to look into getting into stock photography sales sometime next spring. But I signed up for the two week smugmug trial and got hooked. There's a lot to like about the smugmug web site if you're looking to get online as a photographer (professional or not).

I'm starting to do some online research into stock photography and found this interesting site. Too bad it looks like Bahar Gidwani is shutting down DIMdump. But there's lots of good stuff, like this post about pricing models that got me thinking that the limited download smugmug pricing options I mentioned in my last post may not be so bad. Also, some encouragement from Bahar's final post.

Wil Wheaton has this to say about creativity:

Stephen King, in his fantastic book On Writing, said that if writers don't make the time to read, they shouldn't even attempt to make the time to write. I used to say something similar about actors or anyone who wants to work in the film industry: if you can't get out to see movies, and if you're not going to watch TV, you're going to have a really hard time being creative in those mediums.

Well, I finally did it. I put down a deposit for a new DSLR. I've got mixed feelings about this. It's a lot of money and I'm just getting started. But by buying the top of the line Canon DSLR I know that the camera won't let me down.