In my career as a photographer I've had to make some hard choices...

This is by far the most difficult, and I've struggled with it over the last few months. For more than six years I've been dedicating my life to landscape photography, creating photos like the ones below, but the truth is that while landscape photography is personally rewarding and my photos have been enjoyed by many people, it just isn't a viable way of making money. I'm tired of scratching for a living. As much as it pains me to say it, I'm at a point in my life where I need to prioritize my long-term potential and build up a nest egg for the future: I've decided to focus all of my efforts towards a genre of photography that will almost guarantee a good living.

These kind of photos do not make money:

---

Heeding the crow of the cockerel

It's a new dawn for chicken photography, which has been rising rapidly in popularity over the last year or two and is now one of the hottest genres in the art world. Famous portrait photographers like Annie Leibovitz (that's her photo to the right) have begun photographing chickens instead of just people, because ultimately that's where the money is. Magazines like Vanity Fair no longer feature people exclusively - they're listening to the demands of the public and are starting to showcase Ameraucana and Rhode Island Red hens instead. Camera brands like Nikon and Canon have been pushing their high-ISO capabilities to keep up with the needs of poultry photographers around the world whose livelihoods depends on using fast shutter speeds to create high resolution prints to cover the farmhouse walls of their clients.

Yes, it's a hard market to crack into, and the pecking order is already being established, but it's better to get in late than never, because chicken photography is here to stay. People have domesticated chickens from as far back as we can remember, and chickens have putting omelets on our tables for thousands of years, but it's only recently that we started to appreciate the true beauty of the chicken.

The idea of getting into this full-time was hatched last year when I was lucky enough to be able to practice chicken photography at my sister's farm, and I've been sitting on it ever since. One feather in my cap already was the publishing of a 2018 Chicken Calendar that featured twelve of my own photos. It's this early success that convinced me I had what it takes to go full-time and compete against some of the biggest names in the industry. You never know when a new opportunity will crop up, and you have to be prepared to take it.

The truth is, I was feeling all cooped up with landscape photography. With landscapes, you're limited to the natural world around you, and there's precious little of that left on the earth. With chickens, a whole new world of opportunities presents itself! They have a remarkable range of expression, and half the fun is working with them to reveal the inner chicken inside. It's a beautiful thing when they finally relax and can just be themselves in front of the camera. It's moments like this one that make chicken photography so rewarding: emotionally as well as financially:

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To see who made the cover of the latest Poultry magazine as Sexiest Rooster Alive. Hens everywhere are flocking to the newstands to comb through them for photos like this:

Major Fowler giving me that broody look that the chicks dig.

Ruling the Roost

It's going to be a tough road with so much competition, but I feel that if I put the same energy and dedication into this as I did with landscapes, in the next five years I could be among the top thousand chicken photographers in my province, and be perched for success with a six-figure salary. Hey, it's always good to aim for the golden egg, right?

While I plan to concentrate on environmental poultry portraiture to begin, I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket - I may branch out into doing chick and senior portraits, and while right now I'm not comfortable with shooting maternity and newly hatched portraits, who knows what the future holds? If it pays well enough, I will consider anything.

---

Time to get cracking

This will be my first month full-time photographing on the farm. Wish me luck as I set off on this new adventure. To those of you who will be disappointed that I will no longer have time for landscape photography... well, I'm sorry, but we all have to make a living the best way we can, and I think I've finally found my calling, and the sound of that call is cockadoodledoo!!!

Thank you to everyone for reading this and for supporting me on my new adventure!

---