In December I'll have a masters of Architecture. Right now I live in Rhode Island with dreams of moving to NYC. I'm at a pretty big crossroads - I like architecture and have done well in school, but I've also been gaining significant interest in photography lately, with more formal portrait work and my first freelance event photography job over the weekend. Photography has been a hobby for about 6 years now. So in January, I can either look to become an architectural intern, or a photographer's assistant. The architecture job would set me up for a long career, but ultimately it's 80-90% boring office work. The photography could be an exciting career driven more by self motivation and entrepreneurship, with a good amount of creativity involved, but there are probably risks involved. There are certainly many more factors to the decision than I can convey, but based on this information, I'm interested to hear your first instinctual answers, or stories of the trade from those who may be involved in both.
You can always be a photographer. You need to take advantage of your education and get some weight on your resume in the architecture field. You can always go try photography later and if that doesn't work out you have your education and job experience to carry you through life with a profession that will always be in demand.
Architecture first. With a good solid education that you have that type of job will produce the bucks to put you on a solid financial footing. It will also provide the funds for ANY of the toys you may need or want. Being self employed as a photographer is a whole different business model. You have to wear all the hats to begin with and that leaves less photo work and more 'boring' office work to be done.
One of the best architectural photographers I knew started off as an architect, he is in the Detroit area, Balthazar Korab.
Of course it depends what you want to shoot, portraits are different than buildings. I also don;t know how much CGI is killing architectural photographers.
There are many better ways to make money than being a photographer, why ruin a perfectly good hobby by making it pay for itself.
Thank you everyone for taking the time to respond. You all seem to be in agreement, which makes it pretty clear what I should do. Now I can focus on school, thanks.
Photography is just great as long as you don't try to make a lot of money with it. You paid lots in time and money to get into the architectural profession. In my dotage I am having a great time with photography. I got a very lot of creative acceleration by forgoing any pay.
Greg Hawkins wrote:
Every architect makes money, very few photographers make enough money to support their hobby, let alone make a living at it.
Take the architect job, get married, buy a house and cars, raise several kids, just drink the punch like the rest of us.
Sometime after the kids are born, pick up a cheap 50 megapixel point and shoot camera, buy a copy of CS10 and come back here and start reading the forums again and live happily ever after.
Despite this guy's cornball avatar, this is good advice.
ironically, i'm the exact opposite of you. In spring I'll be graduating with a degree in photojournalism, with hopes of pursuing my masters degree in architecture. I'd really like to become an architect and do photography on the side to help me pay through school.
You will have to work equally hard at both. Choose what you are the most happy doing. You can make a pretty decent living at both and both require a lot of marketing savvy.
