Aspiring Photographer Needs Help

Sebastian Vazquez said:

I'm done watching this post. Some of you guys are seriously ridiculous and not reading half of the responses I have typed. So I'm going to say it one more time.

In my area you need experience to get a job, but you can't get experience without a job. Unfortunately the job market is at the point where nobody is willing to hire someone who has minimal to no experience because they just don't want to train someone. The money raised yes would be used to purchase the equipment. I get it. Intentions I had for this was to offer a free service to my backers if they lived in the local area (Westchester County New York and some parts of the five boroughs.)

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Who says you HAVE to work as a EMT? Yes you hold the cert but if you need the money any job is a job. It doesn't have to be in ems.

I find it hard to believe that in the largest city in America you cannot find someone willing to pay you money in exchange to bus tables, or flip burgers, or wait, or sweep up at a barber shop or wear a hard hat on a construction site or any number of a million other minimum wage no skills/experience needed jobs. Honestly, it comes off that you haven't hardly looked at all for a job, or you think they're all beneath you (yet asking for handouts is not). Heck, the NY National Guard would probably love to pay you for your services one weekend a month, maybe there's an open Combat Camera spot nearby http://www.goarmy.com/reserve/jobs/...mbat-documentation-production-specialist.html

We've all been there, 18-21 years old, broke, waiting on that dream job while scuttling around some unrelated, unglamorous, probably ****ty minimum wage (maybe even a part time one at that) job to try and make ends meet in the meantime.....and as I'm sure you can glean from the overall reactions here, none of us thought asking strangers for handouts was a primary option.

It took you till post #18 in this thread to explain in the most basic terms your plan to use those toys to make money. Yes you say you will use my charity to buy fancy cameras and take pictures for someone willing to pay you......but what you are completely failing to do is explain to me WHY I SHOULD WANT THAT TO HAPPEN. Why are you justly deserving of my limited funds? Are you unable to find a legitimate job because you are a convicted felon who is turning to your photography passion to reform your life? Is all your money going to pay medical bills for a parent/other loved one stricken with crippling health issues that can't work/pay their medical bills themselves so you have to support them? Did you lose all your possessions in a tragic fire and are trying to rebuild everything in your entire life? No? Ok, are you going to use my donated funds to follow around and take cool pics of FDNY in action? Some neat fire/rescue scenes? Have a pretty girlfriend (or a friend who's a girl) that will pose for the camera or go take eerie pics of haunted sites in the city, or whatever else and I get a premium scrapbook of it in exchange? No? You just want to take pics? You're just a kid who hasn't bothered to look hard enough for a job? Wow.....really great story, I so want to donate a chunk of my $10.50/hr wages to you so you can buy something I can't afford myself. Still, even with that, no melodramatic, made for Hallmark Channel life story, you should still be able to argue your case. Saying "Hey I want this, give me money please. No? Mods take this thread down" tells me you can't market yourself, that you can't sell the pics you will take, and when people aren't buying your stuff, you're just going to give up, toss your fancy new cameras aside and find something else until you get that elusive phone call that might be a couple years away, effectively wasting MY money in the process.

My advice, learn to MARKET YOURSELF. Not just so you can convince us to donate, but so you can convince people to buy what you create, for that special someone you have a crush on to actuall go out on a date with you, that you can convince FDNY or whatever EMS agency (or heck maybe in 10years from now a Fortune 500 company) to hire you in a job interview, etc. Because right now this is a rather horrible ad campaign you're running.

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With that said, I am closing the thread, as that is something we do on posts in the Advertising sections.

I hope that you read the posts above thoroughly, as there is a lot of good life-advice in them.