Day One
Last week was my last week with my previous day job.
Today is day one of my new job: Photographer, Blogger and Entrepreneur.
Over the last year I have been thinking a lot of where I want to go and what I want to do with my life. Between running the blog, taking on photo assignments, developing products like the bokeh masters kit, being a software lead in Texas Instruments I had to show an ID so my kids and wife will let me enter my house.
I also felt that I could not keep doing all my tasks at the same level of execution that I would like in the long run.
So a decision had to be made what has to go out.
It was not an easy decision. Photography and the DIYP blog is obviously where my passion is. And this was a main motivator to my decision.
Over the last year, I was getting a very strong feedback from the DIYP community about posts, the Flickr pool and the bokeh masters kit. This was major factor #2. Factor 2, obviously would not be there without you readers whom I could not thank enough.
So, starting from today, I am letting my past as a software engineer and project manager behind me and I will be focusing entirely on a new/old career.
I have set a few goals for the next year, at the end of which I am going to review them and see if I made the right decision.
Goal #1: Make the DIYP Blog better, bigger and more involved with the community. DIYP today is a great place to hang out. There are many, many great posts and tutorials, a [mostly] lively Flickr discussion board and image pool. And great conversations going on in the comments. There are weeks, however, with only one post and sometimes even not that.
Over the next year, I am going to invest a lot in the blog, making more posts and upping the quality. Some will be long step by step, tutorials, some will be quick tips, and hopefully many of those will come from the community.
While stats may not be the best way to measure the success of this target, they provide some good intell on the direction and power of the blog. So I would like stats to double at the end of the year.
Goal #2: Grow my photography career. I've been working as a paid photographer for about two years now. I've been doing mostly children, and maternity sessions, as well as some assignments for the business market. However, I was lacking focus. While I am still not sure which of the two directions is the one for me, or if I can do them both in parallel, I plan to invent a major part of my time photographing (and marketing, networking, editing, and proofing).
So don't be surprised if you see an occasional post about the business of photography as I see it.
Goal #3: Continue to create photography products. Building and marketing the Bokeh Masters Kit is the thing that enabled me to make this move financially. The strong response from the community has actually kept lots of sleeping hours from my family as we packed and shipped the kits. With the overwhelming response I realized that there is a market for products in the spirit of DIY. There are a few products in the queue, and hopefully you'll see a few launches on the blog as the year progresses.
As I said before, one of the strong pushes I got to make this move is the support the DIYP community is providing. If you'd like to help pushing this blog forward there are many ways to do so:
Spread the word: help us reach a wider audience by following DIYP on twitter and twitting about new items, sharing us on facebook. If you used one of the tutorials to make a great picture, mention the tutorial link in the captions. And generally tell your friends about us.
Get involved: I learned that many, many wonderful and talented photographers are reading DIYP. I stand small when seeing the knowledge they bring to the Flickr group or when answering questions raised in comments. The best way to get involved is to take part in those discussions. Ask questions in the pool when you are facing a difficulty. Answer and give feedback is you are more experienced.
Write for DIYP. I am always on the look for tips, ideas and tutorials. If you made something cool and want to share it with the community, drop me a note and we get things going. If you build something cool and blogged it, share it on the comments or on the Flickr threads. If you see something cool on the web, share it via twitter, Flickr or the comments, so we can inform the rest of the community.
Lastly, at the risk of sounding too sentimental, thanks you all for reading, participating and making this possible.
Heading to a great year, please join the ride,
udi
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Comments
Best of luck
Hey Udi congratulations on the career change. You only get one chance to live your dreams and I have no doubt you will exceed your hopes and aspirations. I'm actually looking at early retirement end of 2011 and expanding my photography horizon, looking forward to it, it is so much fun!
Best wishes to you and your family.
Brian Carey
Congrats! I know you'll feel you made the right decision
I look forward to seeing how you make the most of this great opportunity Udi!
Congrats!
Wishing you all the best as you start this new journey!
John
WOHOOO... when i was reading
WOHOOO...
when i was reading this, i got tensed that what if you will leave photography aside.. but now iam so happy that you chose this.. i really love your posts here and your work is amazing, specially the bokeh kit..
I wish you the best for the future !
thanks
Abdallah
Nice!
Hey, good luck on the new journey...!
All the best on the new path
All the best on the new path that life takes you - hope that it works out well for you as you have really given tons to the photography community, without asking anything in return, you deserve whats good in life.
Starting out
Good luck Udi,
Hope this new shift brings a fresh horizon and your family sail in fair weather, you have a friend on the horizon looking forward to your ventures,
Rich
Congratulations! Well done.
Congratulations! Well done. This is inspiring.
I wish you the best of luck
Udi,
You are making a bold and brave move and living the dream of many photographers who wish to quit their day job in order to pursue a passion. I have confidence in your decision and wish you the best of luck. I look forward to the new product and improvements to the blog!
Good luck!
Good Luck!!! :)
I've been enjoying your blog for sometime now. So I just wanted to leave a comment for encouragement and wish you all the best in your future endeavor.
Nice!
Way to go, Sir! Congratulations.
Congratulations
It's great to be able pursue something which you have a passion for. All the best and good luck with the website.
I drop by from time to time and always find someting interesting to read.
Keep up the good work!
Best wishes on your rebirth as a photographer on this Easter Sunday!
Your site has been an inspiration to me (especially the lighting mods) and I wanted to give you encouragement on your new path.
Hey, nice man. Good luck in
Hey, nice man.
Good luck in this new journey.
Congratulations & good luck!
Wow -- big move to make in a rough economy. I'm rooting for ya'!
wow!
Wow! It's a bold, brave move!! Best of Luck to you!
I just think, that if you were able to create this website, strong connection to people while you were working full time job, than you'll be able to achieve double or triple now, when you can concentrate all your time and efforts on photography!!! Yay!
Hi Udi, I hope for you and
Hi Udi,
I hope for you and wish that you will succeed with your choice and your new self assignments.
Please continue sharing with us your excellent blog and ideas.
I was with a similar decision at the last year and 2 months ago decided (also after examine again my bank account ...) that for now I will return to the daily writing SW code job.
Efi
thank you, thank you and thanks again
The response to this post has really inspired me.
thanks for all who took the tine to say somthing, give a welcome note or share a similar experiance. I said it before and I say it again, I would be nothing withought DIYP readers.
Wonderful, and thanks !
Congratulations and good luck. It always feels good to set goals and accomplish them. And I want to thank you, this site is great, it helps inspire me, shows me anything is possible, even for someone who can't afford all the crazy expensive equipment.
Great move
I'm working as a software engineer and share your passion to photography so I can really understand the your reasons so my best wishes for success to you.
good luck!
It takes guts to take such a decision!
I wish you all the best in your new life. You'll succeed.
Great Leap Forward :D
Wish you all the best!!!
Dave T
www.davidleetong.com
Bonne Chance !
Wish you the best... From France :)
Good luck
I wish you the best of luck as you embark on a journey that I would love to be in. I look forward to more posts from your blog.
Go for it!
Go for it, Udi! My wife and I have a dream that's possibly quite risky and involves emigrating - but we intend to do it even if it fails. I don't want to get to the end of my life, look back and think, "What if we'd done... X.. Y.. Z..?" and never actually tried it. As you said, you get one shot a life so I really hope that this works out for you, and if not you've at least given it a shot. I appreciate the hard decision to give up jour job - I'm kind-of at that place now. Looking forward to the next chapter of DIYP and hope to be able to contribute a bit more myself.
Matt (UK)
Good job
I wish u the best... good luck
Wishing you the BEST OF LUCK!!
I wish you the best of luck on your new journey. On the third day he arose! Feel good in your decision and never look back. Only the future lies ahead for you. And I feel the future will shine on you. Your posts have helped me so much with my photography. I will spread the word and help out on this end!!
Congratulations and best of
Congratulations and best of luck, Texas Instruments loss is our gain. :)
Good luck
It's gonna be tough but if anyone can do it, you can. Go for it my man
Best of luck! : )
Best of luck! : )
Congratulations! It's
Congratulations!
It's inspiring to see someone following their dreams, and makes me feel like someday maybe that will be me.
I wish you the best of luck with everything and will be following your new/old career with interest.
Way to go
Being in between jobs myself, wondering what to do next, this kind of reading is very inspiring. It is often hard to break up from the security of everyday life, even though it might not be exactly what you want of it. I think your brave doing this and following your dream and heart, and It is a solid reminder and inspiration for other to do the same! :)
Good luck!
Good Luck
It's definitely better to try something (within reason) and live with the consequences than to have to live with the 'what if' question. That was one of the major things which pushed me to go self employed a few years ago and I don't regret it at all. I wish you all the best - it'll be exciting (and daunting) and I'm sure it'll be great.
Good Luck!
I've been following along here for a while now and I am always impressed by the ideas I see here. Just want to wish you the best of luck as you start your new career! Seeing other photogs do this successfully makes it look all the more possible to the rest of us who are still at home dreaming!
Congratulations!
Good luck and glad to hear someone is following their dreams.
Congratulations!
I am a stay-at-home Dad trying to build a Photography business in order to continue spending as much time as possible at home. You and this site are an inspiration to me, thanks for all of your hard work. Karma will pay off for you.
hi there!
hi,
It has been a marvellous journey together with you on all your articles and thoughts-sharing. Wishing you a great success in thsi new endeavour.
your loyal fan from Malaysia,
Ken
Kits kits kits
I think you stumbled/discovered/masterminded upon a brilliant idea with your bokeh masters kit. As you know, visitor to this site love the idea of modifying or customizing their photography. And your bokeh kit was a super simple and cost effective way to do this. You gave people the exact tools to accomplish a certain look. What if you extended this to a lot more DIY projects? For example, I love the projects you cover, I want to do almost all of them. But I don't always have the materials; and, I don't want to spend several hours shopping for the materials. But I love constructing if I have the materials. (I think you see where I'm going) What if you covered a DIY project and sold the materials as a kit to make it happen? For example, the DIY steadicam is something I would buy immediately if there was a kit. But, unfortunately, I've slowly been acquiring the materials to build it over the past two months, when I would've drop money immediately on a kit. You could sell them via paypal or amazon or whatever. Just my two bits.
Congrats on the jump. You've got more courage than me.
Congratulations Udi! I dream
Congratulations Udi! I dream of my "day one" where I can finally shed the 8-5 hat but it is still a ways away. I don't think you will have any problems at continuing the success you've achieved thus far.
Good luck and I look forward to seeing the new product launches.
More social media
I was wondering if you have a Facebook presence. I write articles for wikihow.com and they do a lot of research about where people are coming from. Since I primarily use Twitter to share my articles, I was stunned to find that most of the traffic (between the two) was coming from Facebook.
Just an idea. Kudos for making what had to be a very hard (and scary) decision.
100% support
I will give you 100% of my support.
Start up a DIY Photography
Start up a DIY Photography Fan Page on Facebook!
Congrats on the new career change.. I wish I could do the same.
Follow your heart
Congrats on the big decision, following your heart is never the wrong choice and I envy you for taking the plunge. I'm sure you'll look back at this day and wonder why you didn't do it sooner.
All the best and I can't wait to see what comes next on the site.
Wade
Congrats!!!!
Congrats on your career choice and good luck!
Congratulations!
Good luck! I'd love to be in the same position.
Congrats!
This is a big move! I wish you the best in this new chapter of your story :)
Congratulations!
Its truly inspiring to see someone actually follow their dreams, as the old saying goes 'fortune favors the bold!'
Congrats!
I recently made the switch to full-time myself. Congratulations and best of luck!
Congrats on your big move!
Congrats on your big move! The best of luck to you in the new chapter of your life.
Congratulations!
Congtatulations Udi,
You have taken the least taken path, and a mighty correct one if you ask me; so I congratulate you for that.
Fret not, success it is for those who persevere!
Congrats!!
Hi, my name is Yole, I'm from Caracas, Venezuela.
This is my dream too, I'm a system engineer but I want to be a professional photographer, it's hard because in my country we have many problems incluiding the economy and leave my job is like a suicide, but this is my dream, I have a year thinking on this, even I have a blog too (www.foteando.net) but it's really complicated to me :(
I confess that since I start to read you, you have been a marvelous inspiration to me and you have been so helpful, my first backdrop was made with one of your projects and I think I have read your entire blog.
You have a wonderful future, keep going!
(Sorry about my english, I speak spanish)
good luck
I wish you good luck and I understand your previus position completly. We dream about the change and work hard for it. You have done the first step: congratulation!
Best of luck to you
I wish you the best on your endeavor. It is tough to let go of the security of corporate work(of course nowadays, that security is much less), and venture out on your own. But, you have had a great headstart and have a decent enough following to pull this off. Just keep the content coming and don't forget to have fun.
Good luck and Godspeed!
Besides my best wishes and support, I was delighted to read all the best wishes and support you got from so many people. You are true to your heart, and I sure hope it pays for you. It sure pays for us readers :)
Respect ...
and the best of luck with your (new) mission in life
Back to lurking ...
Congratulations!
I am rather new to your blog. I am loving it! Thank you so much for all that you have found to share! Thank you also for encouraging others to share! More ideas make for more creativity from everyone!
Congratulations on leaving your J.O.B. and focusing on your passions.
Blessings,
Tonja
All the best
HI Udi,
Hope you remember me.. Very good move.. All the best for your new career!!! Even i love photography, but am not such a good photographer, just like it as my hobby. Anyways, Keep in touch...
Best Regards,
Achuth
Good luck my friend
Hey Udi,
As a Texas Instruments colleague I can definitely say that your new career decision is a great loss to our team, but as your friend (which tried to convince you to take this step long time ago) I feel very proud in your decision and sure that you will succeed.
Good Luck man and keep in touch (don't forget the Bokeh, I'm still waiting ;-) )
Guy
GOOD LUCK
good luck with your new profession..!
Good luck, Man
Here's to the next chapter...
Wishing you the best. Your site is an invaluable resource.
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