professionally speaking

Many people (not including my husband) look forward to seeing my photographs after a trip. My husband (in the way husbands do) thinks of my photography as something he needs to endure (waiting while I get one more shot of whatever, wherever we are) but not everyone feels that way about my avocation.

I have written a bit before about how I became a better photographer but I will reiterate that story here in summary only... it was to help my mother (who loved to travel) travel with me when she no longer had enough mobility to be there physically... I tried to show her the things and places I was experiencing so she could too, despite not being on any given trip.

I started to have my photos published and to sell some of my photos a number of years back.  A half dozen of them from Mendoza, Argentina were picked up by the Denver Post for a lead article in their travel section. (a few below)

And then several of my photographs were picked up by various organizations to promote locations (an online Seattle guide chose one of my Pike Place Market photos to use;

the "Westin Finds" for New Orleans chose one for their online guide

and one made it into a similar publication for Warsaw, Poland.....etc.)

People bought them for their homes.  Also, one became a poster for a neighborhood garden walk.

And the AFAR travel magazine even published one of my Slovenia photos- in this

the original photo-

with my original copy-

Lake Bled, Slovenia: A Fairy Tale

We arrived on a day with a dusting of snow but the ferry man was still willing to row us over to the island in the middle of Lake Bled. Happy to have the fare, he broke a sweat as we huddled together for warmth. Slovenia is an undiscovered gem- Ljubljana is stunningly beautiful and virtually the entire old city has been made into pedestrian only streets. Visit the market, eat in a river side cafe, but be sure to get outside the city as well - the countryside offers much and can easily be done in day trips from LJU. The Slovenians joke that if you play the accordion in their country you invade a neighbor because Slovenia is so small. "Good things come in small packages" has never been more true!

But recently one of my photos made it into a completely new arena- CD cover and label art...

so- another avenue of creative outlet... here is the original photo that I took when in Morocco last February with GA...you can see it started out quite a bit differently before the graphic design work of Mary Lewis created a coordinated color scheme for the CD cover and label...

so there seem to be many outlets for the creative spirit of my photography... and thanks Mary for recommending that your client take a look at the Morocco albums on my website - https://ourmoroccanodyssey.shutterfly.com/  

It is always nice to be appreciated....

so the question is: at what point can I declare myself a professional photographer? Is it about money? or art?