I’m Talking About the Business of Photography

by | Jun 9, 2024


Each year on June 9 we celebrate National Earl Day to honor those legends who are named Earl. While the name is uncommon these days, those who have the privilege of being named Earl deserve a shout on today and that’s what’s behind this post.


Today’s Post by Joe Farace

Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions —Edgar Cayce

How I made this photo: Regular readers of this blog know that one of my favorite places to test new cameras is to photograph the gazebo at O’Brien Park in Parker, Colorado.  This image was made using the Nikon D800 with a 24-120mm f/4G ED-IF lens (at 24mm) with the structure tucked into the upper left-hand corner of the frame I could see some slight pincushion distortion. Exposure for this photograph was 1/320 sec at f/9 and ISO 100.

Most of the traffic on this blog occurs during the week, Monday through Friday. If you are a regular reader, you may have noticed that for, some time now, I’ve been posting on Saturdays and Sundays, making this a seven-post-a-week blog. This increase in the number of posts was an experiment but now seems to be the way the site operates—at least for now, Many times, these posts are not accompanied by social media shout-outs so you’ll need to visit to find out what’s new.

Business Sundays

How come there aren’t more questions about the business of photography in your Q&A posts? I would like to start a photography studio and need all the help I can get. —Earl. Tucson, AZ

The topics on my weekend posts tend to be slightly different than my typical Monday through Friday posts, with Saturday posts amounting to what I might call “anything can happen day” as they used to say on the Mickey Mouse Club. This includes running posts like Joe’s Book Club, Joe’s Movie Club and anything that happens to strike my fancy for that day. On the other hand, my Sunday posts tend to be business focused as you may have noticed..

But, and this is most important bit:  As far as I can tell.—please tell me if I’m wrong about it—most of this blog’s readers don’t care about the business of photography or, at least, don’t care for my opinions on this subject. Instead, they care about how to make photographs, not how to make money making photographs.

But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll email a PDF of my semi-autobiographical eBook about the business of photography for free to you, Earl, or anybody else who wants a copy. I never got around to having it copy edited or finishing all the eBook’s cosmetics—because nobody seemed to care—and the only person who actually read it, John Larsen, says there are a few cosmetics glitches. If you don‘t mind a few textual, grammar and cosmetic faux pas the book is yours. Click Contact and I’ll send you a copy.

Or, you could just buy one of my books. Just a suggestion…


If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.75, Starbucks and Dunkin’ have raised their prices), click here. And if you do, thank so very much.

If you’re interested in learning how I shoot portraits and use cameras, lenses and lighting in my in-home studio and on location, please pick up a copy of Studio Lighting Anywhere that’s available new from Amazon.com for $34.95 or around nine bucks used, as I write this. The Kindle version is $19.99, if you prefer a digital format format.