I'm a neighbor of John's over here in Efland NC.

By day I'm the Senior Facilities Engineer for a Biotech company in RTP.

Weekends I do on track instruction for various high performance driving schools in the south east. Also my video habit revolves around amateur motorsports. You'll see some of my work if you watch Born Country on CMT this weekend. The episode is about the 2007 One Lap of America. I shot a good bit of what you'll see on and around the track.

Chris

And, that is why it was so good, easy to understand, you hit the mark!

Mike

It is so interesting to see the many other facets in our lives.

What is everyone doing to make a living?
 

My goal is to make a living with my camera. My dream is to become a movie director. However, it's hard to earn money with shorts/feature films. The costs of making one are high and they require a lot of time. So basically I would like to be making movies all time but that won't generate much money at this point in my career. What are good ways to earn money with my camera?

I would like to hear from you how you are earning money with your camera. What type of shooting do you do? What type of clients do you have? What kind of rates are you charging and how long does a project typically require? Do you focus one one type of client or do you take every job you can get? These are some of the question I would like to ask fellow forum members.

I am based in The Netherlands, Europe so I do not think I will be competing with most of you. I just hope everyone is willing to share this information with me as I am struggling to pick a direction in which to take my career at this point. I do have a 40-hour regular job so filming for me is in the weekends.

Many thanks in advance.

My main occupation would lie somewhere in the realm of pomology.(For those of you out there who know what pomology is you get extra credit:) Pomology is the growing and caring for fruit. Basically my main occupation is working at an apple orchard. On Friday nights from 6pm-10pm I make anywhere from 200-350 Apple Cider Donuts. If you love Krispy Kreeme donuts you would love these even more. Then after I get home I get about 5-6 hours of sleep and get up at 4:45am on Saturday morning and go to a Farmers Market in Bloomington, MN. I get to Market at 6:00am and have an hour to set up, before the Market opens at 7:00am. I sell about 50 varieties of Jam, 4 different dried apples, Apple Butter, A couple different varieties of apple sauce, and the donuts until Noon. Then I pack up and come home. After the first or second week in August we will be picking apples and making Apple Cider to sell at Market.

But that’s not the only job I have, on Tuesdays I mow a 3-acre lawn and do yard work for a couple in Eden Prairie, MN. That takes up 6 hours of my day. An hours drive both ways and 4 hours working there.

I also work at a Dairy Farm at least once a week. Lately I have been hauling manure. The only fun part about that is you get to drive the skid-loader. The worse thing that could happen is if you lift the bucket to high with out leveling it out the contents that are all wet will splash over the back and come into the cab that doesn't have a door. That is really gross, I have done this once. :)

But there's one more job I have. On the days I'm not doing anything I work on a construction crew if their doing work on a day that I'm available.

And in my free time I get to mow my 3-acre yard. And when I have time left over I get to make short films. I also shoot Rubber Stamping Tutorials for Stampin Kub.

Cape Cod Central Railroad Train Car Cleaner

kinda rolls off the tongue

By day I'm a computer applications trainer - MS Office (especially Excel and Access), Visual Basic, Project Management. In the past worked in the travel industry, have freelanced as a professional writer and photographer, produced industrial training
videos, and worked as on-air talent in talk radio. Aspiring to return to media work after 20 years as a trainer to do voice talent, sound mixer and designer, and ultimately producer/director.

Janitor. I clean up other peoples junk all day :)

im a workshop manager for one of the oldest Suzuki dealers in South Africa,make some spare cash filming BMX and speedway racing

I don't teach film anymore, just focus on production (film, tv, video) and freelance writing.

heath

My mom swears I'm an artist, but I'm not. I'm a carpenter, and I work with tile too. Heavy framing as well as finish trim work. Make cabinets now and again, and I've done more than my share of roof work. Oh I've run a lot of pipe too, along with electric (fun combinations). But all that crap is just for money..

What I really love to do is race motorcycles. Superbikes in particular. Been fighting for checkered flags now for nineteen years. I write about it all as well - here: http://www.gotagteam.com/TalesFromTh...AFMround4.html

Putting those stories together is what brought me here, actually. First it was the writing, then came photography to help the stories along, which ultimately lead to video. Now I'm hoping to be able to pull it all together through videography. But holy mother is there more to this than I ever imagined. My head spins every night..

I'm learning that I do everything backwards in life - I even learn backwards. In fact that's how I ended up here, trying desperately to discover general knowledge buried deep inside these heaps of technical conversations amongst the giants.

Glad to meet you all!

NICE! I love those bikes, the speed is amazing.

I know what you mean about the learning backwards deal. I wrote my first visual basic program in 1999 and sold like 60 copies, 80,000+ free downloads , and I still don't even know what half the code means, LOL.

In this forum, finding a simple answer is sometimes...well, is not simple, lol...

Jon

May I venture as to say that you probably get some pretty good material? (no pun intended)

I swear it takes me half an hour sometimes just to click "Submit New Thread" just because I know my questions are so juvenile. It's kind of like a homeowner approaching the counter at a busy plumbing supply place and asking "Um, I need one of those... well.... they kind of go up, and then they have a big round thing on top with a blue bottom?" Then the big dirty guy growls from behind a plume of dark, crusty cigarette smoke and says, "Head south on I-90 and try the place with the big orange sign out front that says Home Depot"

But every time I finally do hit it, I'm surprised how nice people are to me. Great place..

Corporate videographer/editor at the municipally owned power and gas utility. I'm the entire department. One sweet gig after 14 years in news.

I have no aspirations to shoot/edit/create any type of film production.
A few forays early on proved to be way to much work for the money.

In fact I just bought my first personal video cam 2 years ago.