Made my own job as a photographer
Well, somehow I have made it 12 years as a full-time professional photographer. Like most businesses, it has not been a smooth, linear progression going ever upward, but rather a roller coaster. Jason Collin Photography as an official licensed business started in June 2009. However, I was first paid for photography in 2008 when I still lived in Tokyo, Japan. In 2009, having returned to Florida, circumstances convinced me I needed to create my own job, and I made the bold leap into being a full-time photographer immediately, no keeping a part-time job or anything.
It was a 100% commitment to sink or swim.
Weddings and portraits at first
Like many photographers, I started out shooting weddings and family portraits. I found it sad to photograph weddings in a way, being there on the happiest day of someone’s life, and then I just go home later that night and quietly edit photos in the dark. Plus, the economy in Florida was getting worse and worse, and there was no middle ground for shooting weddings. So I transitioned to being a commercial photographer, as businesses still had money, and I liked the variety that being a commercial photographer brought.
The bottom falls out
Just as things were going well in 2013 and I had the best year of the photo business ever, and as I was on the cusp of making a leap forward, come 2014 for no reason at all, the bottom fell out of the business. The next year I suffered a major knee injury and could not work normally for nearly 12 months. From 2014 through 2016 those were lean years for the photo business.
Radical action brings radical results
Then in 2017 just as suddenly as I left to live abroad in Asia in 2000, and as suddenly as I dove into photography full-time in 2009, I left Florida late on a Saturday night with no real plan, even sleeping in the backseat of my car with my dog that first night, but found photography work while on the Road for three months until by chance I ended up in Albuquerque and proceeded to have the three best years for the business by a long shot, by double and then triple my best year in Florida.
The future is unpredictable
Will there be a 24th year anniversary for Jason Collin Photography? Who knows what the nature of photography will even be in another 12 years. Whatever comes, bold choices will continue to be the way I live.