Have you ever dreamt of becoming a working professional photographer? A career that would allow you to spend every day working at something you love? How would your life change?

Well, if you aren’t making any money as a professional photographer, what’s holding you back?

If you are like most of us artists, you have a fairly low sense of your photo abilities. We tend to be afraid our work won’t “measure up” and we may even be laughed at. We tend to compare ourselves to the top pros working for the top magazines. Or, those astounding photo contest winners we see that take our breath away. We just know we could never compete with THAT, and so we give up our dreams and return to our everyday dream destroying, soul killing lives.

Big mistake!

Think about it for a moment, are those shots really the day in and day out images of a working professional? Nope. The magazine shots are usually the result of thousands of dollars worth of computer retouching - on top of the work of some of the most talented photographers. The contest winners are once in a lifetime shots! If they were the photographers normal work, they wouldn’t have bothered to enter the photo in a contest! And THAT’S what you are comparing yourself to? Not good.

Swing by the local mall, go to the first portrait studio you see, (there’s usually several) and watch for a little while. Soon, you’ll be saying to yourself, “I could do better than that!” Want a tip? You probably COULD do a better job.

Most of the mall photographers you see are part time kids - still living at home and working to earn a little extra spending money. They don’t have any special degrees or any special talent. The store manager spends a day or so working with them to teach them how to load the camera, helps them learn a few simple poses then turns them loose!

Most likely, they walked into the mall one day, saw a help wanted sign and thought, “That looks like an easy job!” Then they applied - got lucky - and were chosen. Or, just as likely, one of their friends works there and they got the job that way.

In other words, with no special talent or background, they stumbled into what you would think of as a dream job, but have always considered as out of your reach!

Let’s discuss their abilities and knowledge. (I’m hoping the standards are higher now!) Some time ago, I had a chance to talk with the manager of a local branch of a chain baby portrait studio. She’d been manager for three years and had NEVER even bothered to look and see what brand of camera she was using. When asked, she had no idea. AND I guess one lighting setup fits all because the lights were permanently attached to the wall.

Now, before I get a lot of hate mail from mall shooters - I’m sure some, possibly even a lot of you ARE very good shooters, know everything about photography and are conscientious at what you do. That wasn’t my point. The point is, to make a good living as a professional photographer you don’t have to be another Ansel Adams. You merely have to be competent at creating and shooting the basic poses that people buy. That’s it. It’s easy.

Then, once you learn the basic poses and lighting patterns, you need to learn a few time tested and proven marketing strategies. Ones that will have potential clients banging down your doors and clamoring for your services. To learn these, check out my website - the links are in my resources box. I believe ANYONE with an interest in photography and just a tiny bit of competency, can be making money with their camera within two weeks. By anyone, I mean YOU.

Everybody has images that they want to share with friends, family or people on the internet. This is where free image hosts come into play. They offer their services to the world for free. They allow you to upload your images, with one click. They have become so simple anyone can use them. They have also become very versatile at the same time. Most new image hosts allow for people to upload an image and have it resized to a specific resolution.

Image hosting can be used for many reasons. If you are a member of a forum for example, most of the free image hosting websites will give you a link of you photo/photos so you can then display images in the forum correctly. Image hosting websites are very popular with forum users because of this and is very easy to do.

Free Image hosting websites allow you to upload as many photos as you want, and they will give you various photo links, for use in emails, websites/blogs and forums. If you register at an image hosting website like Speedimg.com, its free, and has many added benefits, over un registered users. Registered users, have the ability to se how many image views there photos have had, all your photos links are stored within your account area. Unregistered users, cannot tell how many image views their photos have had, and cannot tell if they are popular or not. They also have to store all the links they got when they origionally uploaded the photos on their hard-drive.

Most image hosts offer a premium service as well. Premium image host accounts often include unlimited bandwidth and unlimited picture uploads. Some image hosts even offer a monetary bonus if your images get a lot of views. They also offer you amazing privacy for your images.

When you have decided upon the free image host you want to use, you are going to need to know how to upload photos to them from your computer. It is very easy to do. When you are on the main page of the image hosting website, you will see a button which is usually called browse, just click it, locate the photo on your computer, and click on the upload button. Once it is uploaded, you will be presented with a list of links for your photo, its all very easy to do this.

If you have many images to upload, and want to save time doing this, then Speedimg.com is the free image hosting website that you should be using, as you can upload 5 different images at one time with them.

While many offer free image hosting facilities, sometimes it is better to pay the membership to these websites who offer it. the benefits of this are that you can keep track of your images from your members panel, you can see how many image views your image has had and much more. And remember, with most free image hosting websites, if you do become a member you are not restricted to small file sizes for uploading.

Most of the image hosting sites offer free image hosting facilities. Just host your image with them and get your image on the web for free. Few of the free image hosting websites give you unlimited download facilitys, unlimited MB file size and the images are hosted on very fast servers. Even the uploading is free and registration processes are just a formality.

Sharing your photos with the world is very easy to do when they are hosted on free image hosting websites. All image hosting sites will give you some form of links, then you can send the links to you family and friends all around the world.

Through free image hosting services, you can also look forward to sending your images in print to loved ones. The print would easily surpass those made through average ink-jet printers. Few photo hosting sites offer Canon- print images. In all cases, the prints come very nominally.

When you want to upload your images and share them with the world, you go along to a free image hosting website and locate the images on your harddrive or camera etc and press the upload button, and thats it. You will then get links to share with your friends and family, or to put the pictures onto your website or blogs.

If you are curious to know about the process of uploading an image on the web, you mustl be aware that it is a user-friendly concept. First, you need to choose an image that you would like to host. Next, you need to click on “Upload Images” to transfer the file to an image hosting server. Once this is done, the uploading process is automatically completed and you are eligible to get pasting codes for your blog or social networking sites like MySpace.

Link building through the free image hosting sites is very easy to do. Your photos will then be showed on the social networking websites and also online auctions. Custom generator facilities can let you upgrade your text, change it partially or completely, add a certain background, and on the whole completely morph your photos.

Some free image hosting websites will also have stats that will show you how many times a phot was viewed and some can even tell you more about who just downloaded your image, maybe you have an admirer?

Free image hosting services also provide you with information on who just downloaded your photograph through the web. So if there is web paparazzo who loves you, you will always get to know.

Showing your images to the world has never been easier, thanks to free image hosting websites.