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Anonymous
Choice #1: Commercial/glamour/product photography. Usually requires college degree. Must spend 5-6 years as a studio assistant making slave wages, changing batteries, sweeping floors, clamping backdrops, getting coffee, etc. Experience gained invaluable and irreproducible outside studio environment. Able to go start own studio afterwards, to great success.
Choice #2: Photojournalism. College degree usually required. Already mentioned that newspapers don't hire freelance; you're right. You don't have to just produce photos better than their staff photogs, you also have to beat the AP/Wire service. Photo editor's preference: staff>AP/Wire>freelance. Only choice is to go work for the newspaper, which is incredibly hard with no journalism degree, and impossible for "beginner photographer"
Choice #3: Fine art. Take your portfolio (you better have a damned good portfolio put together, and several copies of it.) to a local photography gallery and prepare for rejection. Gallery curators in big cities go through 50-100 portfolios a week and accept maybe 2-3. Of those 2-3 portfolios, maybe 10 photos will be sold, 3 of which will be yours. Gallery gets a 40% cut of a $300 print. Bummer.
You want to go turn a few bucks with your camera? Shoot weddings, but remember that you're responsible for most peoples' single largest investment in photography. Better be good enough to do it.
Bottom line: photography is a hobby and an art, not a money making venture. The people who make the most money off photography are agents and gallery curators.
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