How to Specialize

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 3. November 2011 - 5:33

With some many photographers, everybody screams at the top of their lungs that you should specialize. Notice that this is often coming from a generalist that specializes in pressing the shutter button.

Here's a guy that takes specializing to the nth degree: Martin Waugh of Liquid Sculpture. He lives in Oregon and makes a very good living making photos of water/liquid drop. Very nice, very profitable.

If you are looking for water drop photos or videos, he's your man. As far as I know, he's the only person in North America that makes a full time living making photos of water drops. Other people do some here and there, he makes it full-time. When an ad agency wants water drops, they turn to him. He has (almost) no commercial competition. He's #1 on Google for photos water drops.

He makes a good living:

  1. No, or almost no, direct competition
  2. He specializes in a very, very small niche
  3. He's very easy to find: he is #1 on Google for photos water drops
  4. What's the potential market? From posters, stock, postcards, to ad agencies…
  5. The images are timeless