Employment (Orange: sales, Home Depot, weddings)

[photogOC]

Thanks for a taking a few minutes to read this post and even respond if you have any helpful information to add.

This may be nothing new to many of you; you may be currently out of work or know of a friend or family member who has just experienced a pink slip. Or, you may be one of the lucky ones, still working and just glad this post doesn't pertain to you.

In any event here is my story.

I have been searching for work for the past 19 months, specifically a photography related position as an in-house staff photographer, or working for a publication, shooting products or other assignments’. Prior to the economic bust, I found myself transitioning from employment to looking for employment.

It's not that I was fired, rather; I found that the company I had been working for, for 13 months was doing things that I felt strongly were illegal or at the very least immoral towards their customers and essentially threatened the employees and that's why I left that company.

I felt I could no longer be involved with a company like that, once I found out what they were doing and that it was getting progressively worse.

I left on what I felt were good terms. I gave them 2-3 weeks notice, I received a raise and also was asked to train new employees as well as cover other employee's customer routs, towards the middle of my time with this company.

I did a good job, timely, well prepared, professional, and frequently went above and beyond my job responsibilities to insure the job was done in a way that exceeded the owners expectations all the way to the last day.
The owners even wrote me a letter of recommendation.

After leaving the company I decided to refocus my energy back to what I loved doing, photography because the job I had been doing was unrelated to photography.

Although our family really needs two incomes, and we could just make it on one, we were not getting ahead financially; rather slowly slipping a little more behind each month for the past 19 months.

Although I haven't had much luck with even an interview, I've tried to apply to traditional jobs, with my personality many of them are related to sales positioned, since I had about a year prior experience as an assistant Manager for a retail photography studio. I applied to over 30 businesses, like Fed Ex, UPS, Living Spaces, Home Depot, Even Ralfs delivery driver and many others.

I've been very committed to trying to find an in-house photography position with a company here in OC, however; each time I submit my resume or a link to my portfolio I do not hear anything back from these companies, such as Pacific Sun wear, Tillys, New Egg.com and others.
I've applied for over a hundred positions and am listed on about thirty web sites, including all the major job board listing web sites and many others including using the new social web sites craze such as Twitter, and Face book, LinkedIn as tools to network, as well as my own web site.

After years, months and many hours of research, looking at other photographers web sites who like me, have their shingle hanging out there as a commercial photographers I find that we all have our unique style and subject matter we focus on. Nothing new there, so why the problem finding work in this field I ask you?

I also did additional research at the web site below to see if I am pricing myself out of a job when they ask for salary requirements’. Here's what I found.

Read further.

I recently did another search of the web site at the, Bureau of Labor and Statistics. [url=http://www.bls.gov]U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics[/url] and looked up the pay and other information about photography.

I'd done this a few years ago also, but this has significantly more information about not only photography related jobs but also everything you could imagine.

After researching the salaries’ of photographers and taking into account my own experience, equipment expenses/overhead, and what I offer in terms of customer service I have come to the conclusion that I am perfectly positioned for a salary within the median range of the statistical data but also appropriately positioned for acquiring a position with a company as a photographer in southern Ca. as well as for freelance for this industry.

Here is some information I've copied and pasted for additional information that supports what I've said so far, this information is provided by [url=http://www.bls.gov]U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics[/url]
Here it is:
Some photographers specialize in areas such as portrait, commercial and industrial, scientific, news, or fine arts photography. Portrait photographers take pictures of individuals or groups of people and often work in their own studios. Some specialize in weddings, religious ceremonies, or school photographs and may work on location. Portrait photographers who own and operate their own business have many responsibilities in addition to taking pictures. They must arrange for advertising, schedule appointments, set and adjust equipment, purchase supplies, keep records, bill customers, pay bills, and—if they have employees—hire, train, and direct their workers. Many also process their own images, design albums, and mount and frame the finished photographs.
Commercial and industrial photographers take pictures of various subjects, such as buildings, models, merchandise, artifacts, and landscapes. These photographs are used in a variety of media, including books, reports, advertisements, and catalogs. Industrial photographers often take pictures of equipment, machinery, products, workers, and company officials. The pictures are used for various purposes—for example, analysis of engineering projects, publicity, or records of equipment development or deployment, such as placement of an offshore oil rig. This photography frequently is done on location.

So, everything you've read so far in these two paragraphs talks about what I've done over the last 8 or so years.

If you know of anyone who is looking for a photographer who is passionate enough about what they do to go on a forum like this and try to reach out to others / network with who might need a professional, experienced, photographer please drop me a line in the forum. or go to.
[url=http://www.photogoc@live.com]Bing[/url]


Thanks!
[FONT=Arial][SIZE=2][FONT=Arial][url=http://www.ocregister.com/articles/business-needed-photography-2488276-offer-say]Business in the Spotlight: TC Photography & Design | business, needed, photography, offer, say - News - OCRegister.com[/url] [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT]

As of July 18th 2009 the date of this posting, I have not had any interviews or other interest so far.

Note* Over the last 19 months it's not that I have not had work, I have worked for a publication, designing a couple ads for them, and also a local company who i did a small job for. We've lived in Orange County going on 6 years and have had about a dozen small jobs as a freelancer. The largest one was for Georgia Pacific, the design job was for Ladera Ranch Magazine, and several others for small, Sole Proprietor companies. I've also been published in a news paper article and had some of my digital photo retouching shown in a calendar. Some of my images have been used as stock photos, and lastly, I have photographed a few celebrities.

[Charles]

Would you consider leaving California?

Top 10 Companies Hiring Now - Careers Articles

Sears Photography Is Hiring NOw (http://www.myglamourgoodies.com/directory/review.asp?id=80 - broken link)

hiring photography OR photographer - Google Search

I wonder how photographers stay in business considering the quality of the digital cameras and photo editing software available.

I have three kids on soccer, basketball, and swim teams and as any sports parent knows, there is always a team picture thing sometime during the season. What do you get? You get a paper team photo and maybe an individual paper photo. Paper - 15th century technology that you can't email unless you scan it (and lose about 30% of the quality). I just bring my Nikon DSLR and take a bunch of team photos and email them to everyone on the team and email them to our parents in CA. Who needs a photographer? My pictures look better.