I’m in the process of making a go of it as a professional photographer. I haven’t yet achieved that goal, but I have already learned a lot about what it takes to get there and make it.

I got my first national exhibition at the age of 27 in 2010. That was 4 years ago, and I’m now 31. That’s not exactly what most people would call an overnight success, but I’m happy with my progress so far.

I was just thinking I haven’t had a blog post in a while and I thought of this post. You may notice the title isn’t in the same font as the rest of my blog posts, that’s because this isn’t an actual blog post, it’s an excerpt from my forthcoming book, “How to Get a Photography Career” (which is also why there are no links):

This past summer (2011) I held an exhibition at the Leica Gallery in New York City called “Bathrooms for Breakfast”. It was my first exhibit at a national gallery and it sold out. Here’s a little background on how I did it.

I had been working on this exhibit for almost 3 years. This gallery is pretty selective about who they choose to show and the process is pretty rigorous. They don’t just let anyone show there, so I was pretty excited when they told me I had been accepted to show there.

And if you’re thinking, “That’s great! Congrats!” then you’re probably not an artist. Artists are never happy with what they have achieved, they are always striving for more, always looking forward and never looking back. That is why artists rarely get married or hold down jobs or have children; their art is their life and

One day in the fall of 2003 I was sitting on the floor in a friend’s art studio, surrounded by piles of photographs, looking at her computer screen. We were looking at a website that would be my first solo exhibition. It was an online gallery called Canopy and I was stunned.

I grew up in Florida and moved to New York when I was 22. In Florida I took classes at the local community college and mostly shot landscapes. In New York I went to Parsons and got my BFA in Photography in 2004. Since then, I’ve done a lot of personal work and worked on various group exhibitions here in New York City.

What has been most eye opening is that photography is not just about taking pictures. It’s about business, marketing and networking just as much as it’s about taking pictures. While all these aspects of photography are important to learn, the most important thing is to just get out there and do it; you’ll pick up the business side of things as you go along. Which brings me back to that online gallery site…

Canopy was founded by graphic designers Amy Troost and Scott Snibbe with their partner Kai-Uwe Bergmann who runs the curatorial end of things, while they take care of running the website

“The most important thing in art photography is the idea. There are many ways to express an idea, and the physical technique is only one of them. The most important thing is to have an idea that you believe in. That’s what will make your photo different from everyone else’s.” – Steve McCurry

I’ve been a professional photographer for over 5 years. I started out just like everyone else, shooting anything and everything that interested me and posting the images online. I finally got my first paying photography job when I was 20 years old and it was thanks to my blog.

Towards the end of 2010, I decided to quit my job, sell all of my belongings, and head to Iceland on a whim. I’d never been there before and had no real concrete plans. So I asked a friend if she wanted to go with me and soon we were on the plane bound for Reykjavik. From there we rented a car and traveled around the country for 2 weeks taking photographs.

When we returned from our trip, my friend mentioned to a few people that I had been showing her photos from Iceland in an attempt to sell prints of them. A few weeks later one of those friends contacted me about buying several prints as gifts for her boss’ upcoming birthday party. She bought 11 prints and gave them all away at the party! That’s how my first real photo sale happened.

From there word spread quickly amongst my friends’ friends who wanted to buy prints as well, so that by the end of 2011 I had sold over $5,000 worth of

Hi! My name is Mike Bowers and I am a professional fine art photographer. I have been making images for more than fifty years. These images are my personal work and represent my view of the world.

I am now retired but until recently had been working as a professional photographer for over thirty years. Most of that time was spent working as a staff photographer for national magazines and newspapers in the United Kingdom, which included many years working at The Sunday Times Magazine in London, England.

I continue to shoot commercially on very rare occasions and still do some one-off personal commissions but focus most of my time on creating my own projects.

Although I am an experienced editor with an eye for good composition, I am not a computer expert so this blog is about how I did things the old fashioned way; by shooting film and then working like crazy in the darkroom to achieve the results I desired.

I hope you enjoy the blog and if you do please tell your friends about it! It would be nice if this blog got lots of visitors from all over the world rather than just a few people from my local area who already know me! (Last updated April 2016.)

I think I’ve been a photographer since I was about 8 years old. It’s been a part of my life since I was born. My mother always told me to follow my dreams.

I used to take pictures of anything and everything when I was a kid, but it wasn’t until later in high school that I started taking it seriously. When I started high school, I was one of the youngest people there. As some of you might know, being the youngest in class isn’t always the easiest thing to deal with. There were a lot of times where people would make fun of me for no reason at all because I was younger than them.

Really though, that didn’t bother me at all because when people would make fun of me or flaunt their age over mine, it really made me want to do better for myself and for them so they could see that age doesn’t matter if you have talent and drive. This made me look at photography differently than before… it gave me something to work towards.

When I got my first camera, it changed everything for me. Before then I really didn’t know any other photographers, but once I got that camera, it opened doors and paths for me that were previously shut off. Now thanks to photography,