Pam and Jeff Farr... this photo was taken by our youngest student — a 10-year old!
No, we didn’t set this shot up — she did — and yes, she did real paying sessions with real clients!
How did she do it?
She learned a small set of “right” skills that allowed her to do professional work quickly and easily, rather than letting herself get bogged down with things she didn't need to know!
And there is a big lesson.
Broad-based learning is fine. You should always be expanding your "base." But if you want to get to a specific goal quickly, learning the wrong things, or learning more than “just enough” will only slow you down!
By the way, the totally cool Not Your Normal School of Photography Hat, as shown above, is available at NYN Photo Store.
A short course on how to get your photography career started, start a photography business, and make decent money with your camera... work when you want — work where you want — have pre-sold clients automatically calling you!
Introduction — Let’s Get Started Learning The Business Of Photography
If I could give you one overriding “secret,” it would be — get started. Use whatever resources, knowledge, and powers you currently have to begin moving in the direction you wish to go.
Do not worry about what you don’t have.
Just get started in some way.
Does that sound silly? Simple?
Should you stop reading right now?
Well, of course not. There are a lot of details you need to know, knowledge that will accelerate your progress and will keep you from repeating known mistakes.
But in the end, nothing beats getting started, and that’s what most people never really do!
In the next few days — or the next few hours if you decide to blow through this course all at once! — we’re going to talk about some very important principles you should consider if you’re going to do “photography as a business.”
Do not tread “lightly” on this material, it is the important stuff that few teach and most ignore!
Keep in mind that your success as a photographer in business will depend more on the intangible “attitude” skills than your photographic talents.
Look around you. A lot of people have talent. Few can turn it into a profitable business that supports their lifestyle. What makes the difference? The ideas and concepts that make the difference between success and failure in this business are what we will cover in this course!...
A few “housekeeping” notes...
Some people like to read online, some don’t. With this introductory course you can do either or both — you can take the entire course online now, or you can print off the lessons by using the button at the top of each lesson.
Navigating the course... You’ll find a button the top of each page which, as you might guess, takes you to a table of contents page that links to all the lessons in this e-course. It also links to the course catalog page for the full course descriptions and enrollment if you are interested, but do take the free e-course first!
Some of the lesson pages are long, so if find yourself at the bottom of a page and want to take a quick ride to the top, just click on the “top of page” button and the bottom right of each page... 
.
The “Secret Of Making $2,970.00 In One Weekend Photographing People and Pets”...
As a bonus to this online course we've included the classic book, The Secret Of Making $2,970.00 In One Weekend Photographing People And Pets.
This was originally a “real” printed book and it has helped and inspired more photographers than anything ever written on the subject of making decent money with your camera without destroying your lifestyle in the process (business has a way of doing that if you don't do it right!!!).
We ultimately printed over 20,000 copies of the "Secret of" book and people regularly told us that they read it as many as a dozen times, and we often heard how they carried the “little yellow book” with them everywhere they went!
The original “little yellow book” is now out of print, but thanks to the modern miracle of online delivery, The Secret Of Making $2,970.00 In One Weekend Photographing People And Pets lives on and has been downloaded nearly 100,000 times as an e-book, and now it is part of this online course.
In the "Secret of" you'll learn how we got started in the business with next to nothing, nearly went out of business, but eventually discovered how to make large amounts of money in short periods of time working when we want, from our home-based studio.
Technology may change, and the “delivery vehicle” may change, but certain core principles, like the ones you’ll find in The Secret of Making $2,970.00 In One Weekend Photographing People and Pets, don’t!
In fact, sometimes, when your ideas are a little “ahead of their time,” it’s a good thing when the technology catches up.
And that’s certainly the case here.
These days, it’s much easier to set up a business that enables you to work where you want and when you want than it was when Pam and I first started doing it.
And it’s also much easier to set up systems that allow you to have pre-sold clients automatically calling you, and systems that can run the bulk of your business while you're off doing something else.
Most people still don’t realize the full power of setting up these types of systems that work for you all day, all night, all year, and can be accessed from anywhere with Internet access (these days, with mobile, that's just about everywhere!), but the door is wide open for those who do...
Pam and Jeff...
Like you, I believe in taking time off. My wife Elaine and I spent most of February in India. My upstart business barely missed a beat. I ramped up shooting before we left and doubled marketing on our return. Auto replies and a carefully scripted voice mail greeting handled inquiries in our absence. When we came back, March “came in like a lion” with record print orders and good bookings going forward. — Not Your Normal School of Photography Graduate, George Delgado
Thanks to modern technology automating our businesses, we can concentrate on doing the things we like to do instead of what we have to do!
I call these techniques the “total freedom business” and we will talk more about this later in the course. But the best place to start the path to “total freedom” is at the beginning with the classic “Secret of” book which will tell you how we “broke free” of traditional business constraints and the principles we used...
Special note — I’ve left most of the book the way it was originally written way back in 1997 because it is as relevant and inspiring today as on the day it was written. Pam, however, no longer makes $2,970.00 in one weekend (her session fees have jumped up a bit, and her pay for a day’s “work” can be near $3,000), and some of the techno-details of what we do have changed, for example, we no longer use film, but those are minor changes, and do not affect the true “secrets” of making large chunks of money in short periods of time photographing people and pets! Note that I have also left the photographs in black and white as they were originally printed in the book, even though the original photos were in color. You will, however, get to see some of Pam’s work in full glorious color in the 6-day e-course.
The 6-day e-course, by the way, picks up where the original book leaves off and it gives you more details about how we set up our business (and why) and we will cover some technical issues on lighting and equipment, too. By the end of this course you will have a clear understanding of...
- How to set up your business to match your lifestyle
- How to choose a profitable market and an effective business model to access that market
- The equipment you'll need to do professional level work
- How to set up a basic studio lighting system
- How set up an automatic marketing system
But first things first. The fundamentals presented in the "Secret of" book are very important — probably the most important fundamentals for your business success — so again, do not take them lightly or miss the power of what’s said.
Really, just about anyone can learn to take good pictures, especially with today’s digital photography technologies, but very few can take that skill and use it to provide a superior lifestyle, and that is what the “Secret of” is all about!
Photographically yours,
Jeff Farr
co-founder, Not Your Normal School of Photography