Business Idea - Create your Own Jobs and Employ Others
Entrepreneurship involves starting and running a business. This begins with deciding on a business idea to embark on. A business idea can be developed by identifying a need and trying to meet the need - this defines entrepreneurship.
To develop a business idea, you need to be creative and innovative; that is bringing up a non-existing, new and original idea/or solution to meet the need; or by being adaptive, that is looking for a new way of using an already existing idea to meet a need. While you may be thinking on what business venture to go into, permit me to offer you a suggestion:
Freelance Photography
What is Freelance Photography? You may ask. Freelance Photography has to do with taking pictures for selling to different organizations rather than being employed by one particular organization. A freelance photographer is someone who uses a camera to take pictures for different clients. Such a person is not employed by any particular agency. He is a self - employed professional with no long-term commitment to any employer.The beauty of this job is that it can be done either on a part-time or full-time basis. Freelancing may be a perfect choice for somebody who wants an additional income without quitting his job. Whichever way you choose, whether full-time or part-time basis, there is a huge money to be made in freelance photography. I'm talking from experience. I practised what I'm writing about here when I was serving the country as a corps member.
Just like any other business ventures, your success as a freelance photographer depends on some factors which I will like to address here.
How to Become a Successful Freelance Photographer
There are many factors that will help you succeed as a freelance photographer. These are:1. Your Photographic Skills: No one can be successful in any business venture without learning the relevant skills for the business. Spend quality time to learn the craft. You can acquire the needed skills through many avenues. Take photography classes through community colleges, adult education centres or long-distance learning. For the Nigerian community, you can enrol with a local freelance photographer in your community where you would be trained on the craft.
Technology has so simplified life this day that you can take advantage of technology to learn about this craft. There are websites that offer free photographic training. Websites like Alison offers free interactive self-paced classes on photography. You can sign up and learn everything you want about photography. The key to mastery is practice. Spend quality time to practice any new skill you acquire until you master it.
2. Reliability: One factor that is so paramount to your success as a freelance photographer is reliability. Try to be reliable in all your dealings. No clients would want to deal with a liar. Just like the old saying goes about real estate -- what are the most important three things: The answer is location, location, location. The same thing goes for freelance photography as follows. The three most important things for freelance photography is reliability, reliability, reliability.
Your success as a freelance photography depends largely on this factor. Work on building a reputation for being reliable. Make sure you deliver what you promised on time and on budget. Try everything possible to make their work ready before/or the exact date you promised them. This will make them come back in subsequent time, thereby helping you to build a client list and referrals that testify to your reliability and professionalism. Avoid telling lies.
3. Communication/Negotiation Skills: This is another all-important skill that you need as a freelance photographer - your ability to negotiate and communicate effectively. You must learn how to communicate in a clear and business-like fashion with your clients. Spell out exactly what you can and cannot do. When you decide on a price and a schedule, let it be clearly understood. When there is any change in prices, make it clearly known to your clients and you let them know what you can and cannot do based on your original understanding and cost.
4. Your Portfolio: Your portfolio has to do with samples of your past work that you can showcase to your clients. It may also include the records of your past dealings with other clients. That is, what others you have worked for before say about your dealings and professionalism. A good portfolio will definitely help you to get new clients and better-paying jobs. So spend time on building a good reputation.
Having considered factors that determine success as a freelance photographer, another key issue that is paramount to your success is having the necessary gadgets. You need a good quality, user-friendly camera to start with.
Permit me to offer you a suggestion - The Canon EOS Rebel T3 12.2 MP CMOS Digital SLR with 18 - 55 mm IS II and EOS HD Movie Mode. This is such an excellent, from Dawn to Dusk camera, with ISO 100 - 6400 for shooting from bright to dim light. It has a broad range of ISO settings that enables shooting from sunrise to sunset and helps ensure capture of the finest details.
The sensitivity is highly optimized such that the subject can be captured clearly and easily at high shutter speeds without flash, with minimized blur and noise. This means you don't have to spend additional money on flash. In bright scenes, as in long exposures in daylight, optimal exposure can be achieved with a fully open wide-diameter lens. No dark filter is needed.
It is a "Just Grab and Go" Camera. Parameters for white balance and picture style are already set. It features a wide repertoire of technologies which includes shooting video in brilliantly clear, exactingly sharp high definition for playback on your HDTV. It's such an awesome camera. This superb camera can shoot at a powerful rate of 1280 x 720 at about 30 seconds (precisely 29.97seconds) or 25 frames per seconds. It can take HD video almost immediately through its intuitive operation and layout.
This camera has such an incredible autofocus, with high speed, reliable 9 - point AF system utilizing a high precision f/5.6 cross- type centre point. Its easy to use 9 focus points can be chosen automatically or manually selected. It comes with the Canon's newest Dual - Layer Sensor, with 63 zones. It has the capacity to measure not only the amount of light but also colour and luminosity, thus delivering a very high level of accuracy for better results every time. It has a metering sensor, a powerful sensor that has a colour measurement functionality, therefore Exposure errors and Focus errors caused by different light sources are minimized to the barest level, thus giving stable exposure from shot to shot in situations where light changes, such as sports on a cloudy days or indoor holiday scenes.
The Canon Rebel T3 operates with quite an effortless speed that operation is nothing other than intuitive. The Rebel T3 is one of the fastest cameras available in the market today. It has an instant startup time, a speedy autofocus and a minimal shutter lag. The super technology behinds its operation enables it to shoot up to 3.0 frames per second, in bursts of up to approximately 3 JPEGs or 2 RAW files, this means you won't miss a shot with such incredible speed. With its huge bright 2.7 inch TFT (thin film transistor) LCD (Liquid Crystal) monitor with 230,000 pixels and a viewing angle of 170o, it is a perfect for Live View or viewing settings like AF, Metering, ISO, AF points selection and flash options.
The maximum brightness of the EOS Rebel T3 LCD monitor is about 30% greater than its predecessor, which is a big benefit when you're using the camera in bright sunlight. With its Live View Function, you can view your subject directly on the huge 2.7 inch LCD monitor. It is easy to magnify any part of the scene 5x or 10x for precise manual focus. The EOS Rebel T3 offers you two ways to use Auto Focus along with Live View Function. You can even choose a grid overlay, perfect for keeping straight lines in your subject in your pictures. In studios, Live View Function can be used remotely via a computer through the EOS Rebel T3 DSLR's USB connection.
The EOS T3 uses popular, inexpensive and available in increasingly large capacities, compact SD, SDHC AND SDXC memory cards. It comes with a nice, chunky battery which delivers excellent battery life. The menu system is easy to learn and navigate through. That makes it a good offer for a student or someone that wants to learn photography in general and wants a camera they can grow with. I greatly recommend it for starters.
This camera may not be the sexiest or the best camera in the market but it is a simple, enjoyable camera to shoot with that delivers with little effort and it appeals to quite a broad range of photographers from DSLR newbies, to hobbyists, to even professionals looking for a lightweight back up to their higher end gear. At its current market price, it is a great value for the money. I highly recommend it. Why not head over to your favourite electronics store and grab yours now.
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