When you become a photographer, you’re sort of expected to choose a genre.

Are you a wedding photographer?

Are you a landscape photographer?

Portraits? Boudoir? Street Photography? Choose wisely.

Maybe it’s childish of me, but I want to do all of that. Whenever someone starts to ask me if I do {insert type of job here}, I cut them off. “I do everything. What do you need?”

It probably isn’t the wisest business model, but I don’t see any reason why I can’t be great at several of these things. Of them all, I have the least interest in wedding photography, but I’ll take wedding jobs. The goal is to make a living doing the kind of photography that pays the bills so that I can afford to make the kind of art I want to make.

Money isn’t the goal for me, but it is a necessary evil.

I ran across this opportunity online. They’re looking for applicants to go to Hawaii for a month. They pay you some money and put you up in a house for free. Its called an Artist-in-Residency program.

Let’s set the Way Back Machine* to 2010. I was in Hawaii with my family. I loved Hawaii and would seriously consider living there. My one regret is what could only laughingly be called my photography at the time.

I flat out had no idea what I was doing at the time. I had a Nikon D40 DSLR and a lens that I had purchased for my original Nikon N65 film camera. Turns out that lens didn’t work so well with the DSLR. The only decent photos I took were with a Nikon Point-and-Shoot digital that I brought along.

I’ve wanted to go back to Hawaii for years now. So cut to today and I see this Artist-in-Residency deal and I think “is someone up there listening?”

Do I take a chance on what almost certainly seems to be a scam?

The upside would be the chance to live out my dreams for a month without worrying about money. I have no idea what the downside could be.

I have no idea what to do.

*Hey kids! Remember Mr Peabody and Sherman??