Stupid yes, trolling not at all.
In that case, there are some serious realities to consider.
If she wants to make money at photography, her business skills will need to be equal to or greater than her photography skills. So much that I personally think it would be worth it to take business courses alongside the photography classes. I would hope that a graduate level degree in photography would do that already, but if not, it is something that needs to be looked at.
It is really, amazingly tough to make a living at art. I know very few photographers who do photography exclusively. Most of 'em have another job. I’ve tried to make a go of it on a number of occasions, but it came down to: those who appreciate my skill and talent at producing a great image, are not the ones with money. The economy sucks, and no one is spending money on luxury items like a portrait photography session. You might have an easier time if you do kids and weddings. Weddings likely more than kids, because unless you live in or near a rich suburb, people will be going to the WalMart studio to get photos for 20 bucks, not paying $300 for a custom portrait session.
If she absolutely, positively feels she needs to make money doing this, or it isn’t worth it, take a good, hard look at your local market. If you want to do custom craft, you need people around with enough cash lying around to spend on it. If you want to do senior portraits, you’ll have to make your money on volume, not your ability to charge a custom rate for each session. Weddings are a fairly stable market, but they are a LOT of work, and require a lot of equipment (at least two cameras, two or more lenses, shoe-mounted flashes, etc.). Five hours at a wedding will translate into well over a thousand images to post-process, so you’d be looking at, probably, 15-20 hours of total work.
I mean, this doesn’t really dovetail with your original assertion that she just wanted to pursue it and “see where it goes.” I think you have to be really passionate about art to do something like that, the art needs to be meaningful to her in and of itself, because there ARE no guarantees that there will be that big payoff at the end. (These days, I think that’s largely true for most degrees, actually.)
It’s a RARE artist who gets rich from their art. Most of us have a day job, most of our art is fairly work-a-day. I do this because there’s literally no other career I could get into and 1. be even decent at and 2. stay sane. You don’t want me as your accountant, your lawyer, or your financial adviser. I would suck at those jobs, and doing them would make me miserable. But I sure as hell am not getting rich from my art, and have to fight every day to convince people that what I do, if it’s valuable enough to WANT, it’s valuable enough to PAY FOR. It’s unbelievable how very few people recognize that. (Yet I have literally been paid to sit at a desk and do nothing, more than once, at entry-level AND professional-level. THAT is what passes for “more valuable than art.” It drives me mad.)
I’ll also note that photography will almost certainly have to be a freelance career. The Chicago Sun-Times just laid off their ENTIRE photography staff. They will be hiring some back, but as contractors/freelancers. They’ve also seriously proposed (last I heard) training their journalists on how to take decent photos on their smartphones, and running those alongside the story instead.
That’s a good point, and probably points to an unexplored tension.
I can make a case, though, that the two assertions are compatible. One can “see where it goes” and also “feel confident that wherever it goes, I’ll end up doing something valuable” at the same time.
But still, you make a good point. The rest of your post was very helpful as well.
Glad to help.
I’ll also point out, I have no degree in photography, graphic design, or film, but I’ve done work in all three. You don’t need a Masters degree for an arts career. You need to know how to do the art. You can get adult education classes from places other than an accredited college. I took photography classes for a year at an adult education/community center/gallery, and while I don’t have a certificate to hang on a wall, I have a good portfolio, have done some gallery shows and have had things published, and have used the photography a lot in the marketing/design work I do for my theatre company. I’ve done a few commissions, and have had many more people tell me they wish they could afford me, but I can’t make money charging what they can afford.
So, as others have said, a DEGREE may not be what she needs, but some training, and mentorship, and some method of learning about the business side of things, and coming up with a concrete business plan.
Oh Frylock. You can say it here, but PLEASE don’t bring up the third kid business to your wife. It will make things so much worse for her (and you). Do you think she might be sensing your resentment?
I was just telling you how you come across, a general feeling by your posts. I’m not going to take you up on your “challenge” on finding a “textual claim” because that’s really not important here. Of course we can’t know the whole situation, or know you or your wife, your motivations, interactions, etc. Take what you can use and let the rest go.
I really do feel for you and your wife, and hope it comes together for her. I wonder if you both just need to let it go for a few weeks, plan some fun things with the kids, take off the pressure. Then slowly work it out after the break. She’ll get there, but I suspect she’s feeling the pressure right now, if not from you then from herself. I wish we could have a girls-night-out with some of the other female Dopers. 
Ha ha of COURSE not!!
It just kind of came out. I shouldn’t have said it here. But it is, in fact, something that underlies a lot of my own feelings about things right now and it felt for just an instant like I oughtta spill. So there it went.
Yes, I agree that low key and relaxed is the way to go here. I really do have to kind of stand aside, take burdens when they are the kind I can take, and let the pressures in her and around her work out as they will. (If I do or say much more than this, I’m just another piece of pressure.) But this doesn’t make me feel less helpless–it underscores it in a way. But anyway, I do want to reassure you I have a handle on what my role is, here. I’m just really, really, really sad about what’s going on with her right now. And like I said in the OP, there’s literally nobody I can talk to about it, and it seemed to me that talking-about-it needed to happen.
Slight update: She just posted to facebook that she’s working on a job application. Said something to the effect of “I had kind of an existential crisis last night about where my life is going. Figure I can at least make a little money while I think about things.”
So. We shall figure out how to make kid-trading-off work. I’m fer it.
Right now I’m thinking it’s going to have to continue to be a holding pattern for us til the twins are in school. Luckily pre-school is subsidized around here so it may only be three years…
bolding mine.
The best jokes just write themselves 
She can still do something meaningful with photography. Many animal shelters appreciate it if a decent photographer is willing to volunteer time to take flattering photos of the animals. Often shelter staff doesn’t have the time, interest, or knowledge to take a nice photo of the animals they take in, so you might have a blurry or unflattering pic (if any) of the animal. It has been shown that having flattering pictures of the animals on the shelter’s website increases the rate of adoptions. My father in law does photos for his local humane society sometimes.
If she could tolerate looking at some very sad photos, I also know there is a market for people willing to retouch birth photos of stillborn babies. This is because often families of still born babies really want to have a photo of the baby to remember him/her, but often the birth photos of a stillborn are not very appealing without some editing as you can imagine.
These are just examples of some ways she could still use her interest in photography to do something “meaningful”/important even if she doesn’t become a professional or get a degree in the subject. I am sure she could think of other ways to apply her interest if these don’t appeal to her at all.
Having a passion for something is a good thing even if you don’t make that passion your career. Honestly, I think it’s generally not a good idea to go to college unless you’ve done research on the job outlook for what you’re considering doing and really think that a college degree will help your job/earning potential. Nowadays, for a lot of people, it’s really just an expensive way to pass some time before finding out your degree is in a saturated field.
I went to film school as an undergrad with what were, in retrospect, astoundingly vague plans for how I was going to make that in a career. It turned out that I wasn’t particularly good at making movies. I could have worked my butt of to build a modest career shooting local commercials and cheap weddings, but I realized I was never going to be much more than mediocre.
So I flailed for a while, worked some terrible jobs to pay rent, then gamely followed another dream. I found something that really suited me and slowly shaped it into a rewarding career that I’m actually quite good at. Through it all there was a lot of grunt work, a lot of false starts, a lot of questioning myself, a lot of make-do jobs, and a lot of risks. It’s been alternatively jumping off of cliffs, and spending years hoping boring jobs pay off in the end. But as I’ve built skills and focus, it is doing that. Once I got my ego out of it, my “failure” stopped bothering me at all, and I actually do use the skills I learned in film school every day.
My point here is that a rewarding career is a process that’s rarely much fun-. If your wife wants a career, which seems like an absolutely normal desire from my perspective, it’s going to involve more than taking some classes and hoping something blossoms. She should get in to a related workplace, even as a secretary, as soon as possible so that she can learn the industry and start making connections. It will be a ton of work and rarely particularly rewarding on a daily basis, but that is life. Millions people people do it.
For the OP, it sounds to me like she wants to get out of the house (understandable- some people find staying at home amazingly tedious), and she is probably under a great deal of pressure to do something great with it, rather than just doing something that passes the time.
Buy a copy of “What Color is your Parachute.” Encourage her to spend her time how she wants, even if it’s taking a shift at WalMart just to mix it up a bit. (and I’m sorry Frylock, but you are coming off a bit more like a disappointed father than a supportive partner- it might help to be a little less defensive, and just disregard advice that doesn’t seem relevant to you rather than mounting a defense that’ll dig you into a hole.)
i work full time, my husband is in pharmacy school full time, we have twin 5 year olds and a newborn and we make it work. We scrape what little we have for childcare and thank goodness kindergarten starts this year so we can save some on preschool expenses. Its not impossible.
I’ve just been reading this thread instead of posting, but THIS was the tipping point/post.
If one person “misunderstood” or “misread” your posts, sure, it’s probably on them. If multiple people have “misunderstood” or “misread” your posts, perhaps you should listen to them instead of dismissing them.
You could, for example, ask them what gave them such an impression. Note that a genuine inquiry is NOT something like
My Armchair Diagnosis is that you may have problems understanding subtext in communication. This quoted bit is full of it. It’s clear you don’t think they have any valid points. I basically get, ‘It’s still clear that you’re wrong. Go ahead and try to prove your point, but it’ll just be that you didn’t understand it at all.’
And if you don’t see how I can see that, I rest my case.
People are allowed to disagree with you, and to point out how your posts are coming across to them. Whatever the nature of their feedback, if it is presented civilly – as it has been in this thread – it’s completely within the rules here.
Calling people jerks, OTOH, is not. Knock off the personal insults.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
Fair enough.
I can still legally maintain, though, that Astro’s reading is a misreading, and objectively, demonstrably so–and that the presuppositions that must have gone into that misreading are of a decidedly uncivil character.
Who dismissed anyone? I explicitly told them to show me the evidence, and I’d show them mine. That’s not dismissal, it’s engagement.
I did that! I did that in the very text of mine you quoted!!
To the contrary, the problem is that many people do not know how to read for literal content and trust it, and insist on inserting what you call subtext, and what I call their own unfounded presuppositions about what people must mean.
lavenderviolet, even sven and April R, thanks for the thoughtful posts. You make good points.
zweisamkeit, uh huh it is so genuine inquiry. I said show me the evidence. I told you what I expect the evidence to show, also, but this does nothing to negate the inquiry. If someone thinks they can show that the meaning they’re claiming is in the text, then I want to talk about that. I know how to talk about this kind of thing, and I know how to evaluate claims about it. (I also know it’s a slippery area where the objective facts can be hard to discern, but we all know that.)
Of course I have a strong impression already of what an actual inquiry will reveal, and I noted that. But noting that I have expectations does nothing to negate the invitation to inquiry whatsoever.
Again: Read for literal content, and trust it.
She may not want a career as much as “to get out of the house” - kids can be exhausting. But she may feel an obligation to make a financial impact - and have come to the realization that visual arts is not going to be that path - with or without her limitations.
A part time job may be what she needs at this moment, something to get her out of the house and make her feel like she is simultaneously contributing. When the kids are a little older and there is a littler more money, then taking up a “follow your muse” hobby. In the meantime, its probably important that she CREATES, doing dishes, laundry, raising kids, and then working a part time job doesn’t always feel like you are creating - if that is photography as a hobby, or drawing and painting, or gardening, or quilting or glass blowing or playing the guitar, or beading or whatever, and she may need to try a number of things before she discovers her creative outlet.
For most people, we are not so lucky that our creative outlet is something that pays us an income. So we garden or play the piano for our own enjoyment - and we work jobs and raise kids and keep house because we have to. When you are lucky enough to get paid for what you love, then you have been very lucky.
I mean look, we have Astro who I strongly disagree with, and we have some other posters who say they agree with him but on examination seem to only agree with one aspect of what he said–and a non-central one at that. We also have several posters who don’t seem to read it the same way as Astro.
I mean if there were a bunch of posters who agreed with Astro concerning his main points, that’d be one thing. But there aren’t a bunch, and even the ones there are haven’t indicated agreement with the actually objectionable parts of his reading. So Astro seems to be the odd man out here. Even if some were to chime in now insisting the buy every bit of his post top to bottom, it still remains clear that that message is not the one most readers in this thread came away with. So we’ve got two groups (one of which may only consist of one person) who have different readings of the text. The difference clearly isn’t in the text–it’s just one thing. So where is the difference? In the people reading of course. So the question is, which group is getting their reading from the text itself (if either) and which is getting it from somewhere else? Well, my claim is that Astro’s reading requires substantial presuppositions not found in the text. I’ve said some things about this already. Hence if any group is actually reading for comprehension rather than for accusation, it’s the group that’s not Astro.